How Security Automation Enables Business Agility

Last updated at Mon, 30 Oct 2023 18:16:25 GMT

Security teams are facing a difficult moment in tech right now. Threats are increasing from all sides, while it’s getting harder to keep good, knowledgeable employees around. At the same time, it’s becoming more and more complex for security ecosystems to adapt to the changing IT landscape, and maintaining control over systems continues to be a top priority for IT and security managers. How can any organization’s security team balance these priorities in a rapidly shifting security landscape while staying agile?

We have one answer: security automation. And, thanks to InsightConnect, it’s easier than ever to automate the most important security features in your ecosystem.

Reactive vs. proactive security automation

Security automation tends to fall into one of two categories: reactive or proactive.

Reactive automation is used by security analysts who are just trying to get through their day by responding to alerts. They use automation to help put out little fires, but they’re still overwhelmed by the fires and never really get to the root of what is setting the fires in the first place. In these cases, automation is not an ingrained part of the security process.

Companies that engage in proactive automation see it as part of their tech stack. For these organizations, automation is an integral part of helping them scale and work on larger projects. These companies are adaptable, and as they hire new people, they get new ideas, especially thanks to their automation services.

Keep knowledge in-house

One of the greatest plagues to security programs is the high rate of turnover in the technology sector. It’s just part of the current working world, as employees change jobs more quickly than in decades past. However, this means that every time you lose employees, you lose a treasure trove of knowledge they have about your processes.

InsightConnect allows your team to automate processes and capture them for future reference so that these processes don’t follow your departing employees out the door. Even if former employees were the ones to create the processes, your organization can still retain the information after they leave.

On top of that, the process is codified in the organization’s system, making ecosystem-wide integration even easier. This feature also allows the process to be displayed virtually through flowcharts, which make it easy to share information with others.

For instance, if your CTO needs to present your anti-phishing process to your CEO, InsightConnect can provide a visual flowchart that makes it easy to walk through the workflow without having to get into contextual detail.

Prevent employee turnover in the first place

In the increasingly competitive landscape of IT security personnel, finding and keeping good talent keeps getting harder. One reason good security analysts leave is because they’re bored by repetitive, manual tasks, such as triaging endless security alerts.

InsightConnect can help automate and orchestrate any repetitive task. Instead of replacing analysts with automated processes, tools such as our SDK actually open them to do more important work, like hunting for threats or investigating email phishing. Entry-level analysts can learn the tricks of the trade and by working with automation tools, keeping them engaged, and making them more likely to stick around longer.

Sharing is caring

While many CISOs or CTOs won’t openly admit it, security is one area where sharing techniques is helpful to everyone, even among competitors. The truth is, in the security realm, the foe is not each other, but the security threat itself. Being able to see how others are responding to threats can inspire your team to find a new way to automate your own defenses.

The InsightConnect marketplace has over 250 automation plugins to help security teams across a spectrum of organizations. By giving teams the ability to collaborate with others on security processes, your team can iterate on those processes and share them through workflows.