By Sameet Gupte, Co-founder & CEO, EvoluteIQ
Cybersecurity risks in rapidly emergent digital environments are getting more complex and difficult to counter. Traditional methods are no longer effective and adequate. According to insurer AIG, ransomware claims alone have grown 150% since 2018. The post-pandemic remote working system brought about even bigger cybersecurity issues
for the enterprise security teams. As per a report by Cybersecurity Ventures, global cybercrime costs are expected to reach USD 10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from USD 3 trillion in 2015.
Deterrents in the current cybersecurity systems and why end-to-end intelligent automation is the ultimate panacea
With the cost of cybercrime continuing to soar, many organisations have already invested substantially in multiple cybersecurity technologies and solutions that help automate the detection of threats and initiate “first response.” However, most of the work is still manual and involves a significant contribution from human workers.
Intelligent Automation, with its cognitive fabric, can enable these human workers to focus more on critical issues, reduce errors, and increase productivity and effectiveness.
There is a rising trend within enterprises to leverage some types of artificial intelligence (AI) based solutions for IT operations (AIOps) and security operations (SecOps) tools to address the ever-increasing security threat. However, none of these tools or platforms are “End-to-End.” Fragmented use of such technologies creates a further burden on
security professionals who battle every day to ensure that all the systems and data are safeguarded for their organisations.
Given the critical nature of this job and the overwhelming number of alerts that get generated and queue up, it is only a matter of time before some of these alerts get missed. It has been observed in multiple industry surveys that more than 35% of the security teams either ignore the threat alerts when the queue is full or are unable to
respond to them in time.
This is where End-to-End Intelligent Automation can enable organisations to build an ecosystem with robust security operations capabilities leveraging security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR). As per the 2023 IBM Cost of Data Breach Report, it has been observed that it costs firms without automation 70% more per security breach than those with automation. Having an intelligent automation platform for security enables a faster time to identify and contain breaches, as the response time is quicker and issue identification is more accurate.
Here are some of the use cases where Intelligent Automation can help upgrade cybersecurity defenses:
1. Security professionals to focus on more critical issues
Cybersecurity professionals are expensive resources within the company. Intelligent Automation allows them to focus on more critical issues, while automating mundane tasks like monitoring, software updates, etc.
2. Data analysis from various sources
Organisations can leverage Intelligent Automation by automating repetitive tasks like fetching URL intelligence, looking up IP addresses, retrieving logs, etc.
3. Automated proactive threat identification
The function of proactively searching for threats through the network traffic and identifying user/behavior anomalies can be automated to increase the security quotient of the company.
4. Protection of confidential data
Automation can be used to securely manage the entry of sensitive data, personal information, and transfers via email, chats or messaging apps. This eliminates the need for humans to touch confidential customer data, credit card information, etc., creates a higher degree of security, and lowers human error.
5. Compliance & audit
Most industries like BFS, Healthcare, and Insurance need a high degree of compliance and regular audits. Intelligent Automation can help automate those security tasks and provide the required detailed audit logs to eradicate human errors in compliance and logs.
6. Monitored software updates
Organisations can use Intelligent Automation to proactively search for the latest software updates online at regular intervals, download the relevant software update, and initiate the process to update the same once verification and authentication are completed.
7. Security dashboard and report generation
Security teams can define processes where the system can automatically generate reports of all incidents so they can check and prioritise critical issues.
8. Proactive monitoring of legacy systems
All organisations have a countless number of systems operating within the IT estate of the CIO. Some of these are homegrown, some are COTS products, some SaaS, etc. This creates multiple integration points and vulnerabilities within the ecosystem. Intelligent Automation can help create proactive monitoring of these points to eliminate virus attacks and malware distribution.
Final reflections: The impact of intelligent automation on cybersecurity
Using intelligent automation for better-equipped cybersecurity represents a big advance in digital environment security. Relying on end-to-end automation solutions cuts down on the heavy lifting of human operators, thus letting them work on much more severe security aspects while building upon the potential to determine and eradicate real-time threats.
Robust security defenses can be well maintained with intelligent automation since cyber threats continue to grow at a pace never seen before. But it’s crucial to use these technologies carefully, with a plan in place to mitigate any dangers and a clear grasp of any that might arise. When implemented carefully, intelligent automation can serve as a
strong, preventive defense system that keeps businesses safe in an increasingly digital environment.
