In this lesson, we'll discuss ways
that you can begin automating security in your organization.
In today's digital landscape,
security management is a cornerstone of business operations
that can bring efficiency, consistency,
and enhance protection due to automation of cybersecurity
in your organization.
Security automation involves using technology to perform
competitive security tests
that are crucial for our organization's protection,
but often time consuming or prone to human error.
This approach ensures
that defenses are consistently maintained and updated,
and security threats are responded to swiftly.
Automating security involves the use of
configurations of guardrails, security groups,
service access management, and permissions.
First, we have implementing guardrails.
Guardrails are automated safety controls
that companies put in place
to protect against insecure infrastructure configurations.
These guardrails are used to ensure
that the organization's security protocols
are being fully adhered to.
Initially, guardrails are configured
according to the company's security standards.
They are designed to be automatically enforced
security policies to prevent any deviations
that could introduce potential vulnerabilities.
Guardrails also can be configured
to continuously monitor the infrastructure
by checking your configuration and network traffic
against the established guardrails.
When a potential security violation is detected,
the system will generate an alert
and take predefined corrective actions
without waiting for human intervention.
These actions could involve things like
revoking a user's permissions,
reconfiguring an affected component,
or isolating a potential infected workstation
from the network.
Second, we have the management of security groups.
Security groups acts as a virtual firewall
for your cloud-based server instances
and their associated resources.
These security groups offer the ability
to specify which incoming and outgoing network traffic
is allowed to or from the given cloud-based server.
Automation can be used to assign instances
to an appropriate security group
with predefined traffic rules based on factors such as
the cloud-based service function, location,
or associated project.
Overtime, threats evolve and our systems can be configured
to dynamically adjust their security group configurations,
to respond to new vulnerabilities or attack strategies.
Our automated systems can also help us analyze traffic
to and from our instances
to ensure that they meet the criteria
that has been established by our security group settings
to prevent any unauthorized access attempts from occurring.
Third, we have enabling and disabling
of services and access.
Another crucial area to consider.
Automating security
is the automation of service access management
to prevent unnecessary exposure to risk
and to maintain operational efficiency.
Automation tools can be used to regularly review
who has access to what, so that we can ensure
that our employees only have access
necessary for their current role.
Service access management can be improved
to have near instant reaction times
by implementing automations
that can monitor for any unusual activity.
If a system detects unusual activity,
it can automatically restrict or disable access to services
until a human analyst can fully investigate
the unusual activity and determine if it is suspicious,
malicious, or just benign in nature.
Another use of service access management automation
is to enable or disable a given instance or service base
on predefined schedule
if the service is not continuously needed.
This helps to reduce the window of opportunity
for a potential cyber attack
since the service can only be attacked
if it is running on a given machine.
Fourth, we have the automations for managing permissions.
Managing permissions is about ensuring
that individuals have the appropriate level of access
to a system based on their assigned role.
This is often done by using role-based access controls,
known as RBAC.
Automating role-based access controls
help to assign and manage
your system permissions consistently.
Using this kind of automation,
your system can grant rights
based on a given role within your organization.
Automatic provisioning and deprovisioning
allows a system to update the user's permissions
whenever a user joins, moves, or leaves an organization.
By automating permission updates accordingly,
we can ensure that there is no unauthorized access
to our organization's sensitive information.
You can also use automated routines,
to perform regular checks on permission settings
to verify compliance with internal policies
and external regulation,
and also to make any necessary adjustments needed overtime.
So remember, security automations
are not just about reducing the workload
of your organization's security team,
but it is really about achieving higher levels
of precision and reactivity
to your security management process
to help strengthen your organization's defense
against increasingly sophisticated cyber threat actors.
To operate at the speed of cyber
our organization's most embrace automation
to safeguard our assets, our data,
and our operational continuity.