Automation becomes relevant in cybersecurity
Cybersecurity threats management is becoming a challenge for the organizations. It is not just about attacks able to achieve their goal and put at risk company’s information and operations. Although such extreme scenario may not occur, so many sophisticated cyberattacks have been carried out that the simple day-to-day risk management becomes a challenge for the people in charge of security.
As in other areas of the organizations, the answer seems to be the progressive automation of activities with the purpose of facing risks with effective results. Anticipating what many may be thinking, let me say that from my own experience, at Ikusi, we know that automation of certain security tasks may decrease the time devoted to risk management; for example, the identification of a malicious IP can be reduced from 25 minutes to 5 minutes, and this is a fact that cannot go unnoticed.
Automation is the means, however it won’t be so useful as it is if we are not able to define and describe the processes and procedures regarding cybersecurity operations in order to establish, based on the criteria we have already set, the use cases to be placed first that will allow us to optimize our cybersecurity operations.
Furthermore, there is an additional problem in the organizations. Companies are adding more security layers that, far from operating in an integrated manner, do so independently. However, since the threats are constantly increasing, integrated responses are being developed. Such responses collect threat data and security alerts from different sources. Furthermore they are able to analyze such data and generate a quick and effective response to vulnerabilities with a reasonable resource consumption.
A support mechanism is required to manage said information and to perform cybersecurity operational management more easily and with the purpose of providing a comprehensive view of the information from several platforms in a structured manner.
This joining mechanism is known as SOAR, the English acronym of Security Orchestration, Automation and Response. A technological control aimed at establishing a way of operating and executing automated and/or standardized activities in order to respond to cybersecurity incidents.
The following are the main benefits associated to a cybersecurity automation process:
- Standardization of recurring activities in order to minimize errors.
- Optimization of resources in the operational activities with the highest value.
- Improvement of response times in case of incidents.
- Efficiency in threats detection and consolidation of information for investigations.
We would finally share this reflection with you: according to the most recent annual risk report of the World Economic Forum, which include, among others, the opinion of 750 experts and decision-makers worldwide, cyberattacks will be one of the top threats of 2020. A change in culture and business procedures is required; automation should be considered as one of the core points in the fight against cybersecurity threats.
Are we ready to face this challenge?
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