by Rob Pooley
Solutions Director
Connect with Rob Pooley on LinkedinAutomating Cybersecurity – Embracing responsible automation to stay ahead of attackers
Robert Pooley, Saepio Solutions Director, talks us through how to embrace automation and stay ahead of the attackers.
The attack surface continues to grow. The threat actors continue to innovate. The frequency of incidents continues to rise. The cyber skills shortage remains.
Automation is now an essential component of a successful cyber security strategy as it empowers security leaders to tackle these challenges head on. It enables rapid and consistent threat detection, removes human error and significantly improves incident response times. Ultimately, automation helps reduce the impact and likelihood of cyber incidents, however it must be embraced responsibly and balanced with human expertise.
We’re seeing a mindset shift: The impact and likelihood of adverse cyber events are greater than the impact and likelihood of adverse events caused by responsible security automation.
Attackers are embracing new tools to enhance their productivity. From AI-generated social engineering to automated vulnerability discovery to malicious code generators like WormGPT and FraudGPT.
They are embracing new techniques too, from malicious QR codes to bypassing MFA to hands on keyboard attacks bringing average ‘break out’ from infection to lateral movement on average to under 80 minutes.
In short, it’s more important than ever to out innovate the attacker and investment in automation rapidly strengthens the defending team. Automated systems don’t complain about mundane time-consuming activities such as investigating phishing emails, patching, tagging data, analysing security logs, and more. And they work 24×7! As security leaders forge ahead, they must harness the power of automation responsibly to optimise existing resources, enhance productivity and focus human skills on strategic initiatives whilst overseeing the systems. A balanced approach that leverages human expertise alongside automation is essential to ensure the strongest protection and it’s crucial to recognise the potential risks. Overreliance on automated systems can create blind spots and introduce a false sense of security.
As always, the cybersecurity landscape will continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Artificial intelligence-powered attacks and defenses, the rise of Zero Trust architecture and security by design when adopting cloud are significant considerations. To keep focus on strategic initiatives and stay ahead of the attackers, the Saepio team are on hand to advise where investment in automation will deliver optimal benefit to your security operations and compliment your team to achieve its goals.
