Cyber-attacks are a reality for any modern business. As companies increasingly move towards digitalization, the threat of data leaks keeps most of them on their toes. Each day, security professionals fend off attacks that can potentially bring operations to a halt, leak confidential information, or damage years’ worth of work in a few minutes. Naturally, dealing with all this requires a plethora of resources and tools that businesses are happy to provide as the alternative is unacceptable.
However, lapses still occur and the overall results leave a lot to be desired. 75% of businesses believe that their response to security threats is slow and one of the main reasons is the system’s reactive nature.
Rather than responding to threats as they occur, it’s better to analyze and address security flaws in the existing system. A chain is as strong as its weakest link and strengthening that can go a long way in minimizing the associated risks from the process.
Business process automation can be the key to doing that. By reducing the time between detection and response, security professionals can minimize the overall severity of the threats.
How Business Process Automation Can Help
What businesses need is speed. The most valued tool they can have against cyber-attacks is the ability to quickly identify any breaches, or suspicious activities and to patch up the leaks as fast as they can.
But where does business process automation fit for companies designing a defense against cyber-attacks? Most might doubt the ability of automation to combat something as severely damaging as a cyber-attack but in reality, automating the right process at the right time can act as a perfect enterprise data security net.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll be safe by implementing automation tools everywhere, even tech giants like Facebook haven’t managed to eliminate cyberattacks and security breaches despite implementing advanced automation security measures.
As the cost of cyber-attacks continues to increase, it’s only natural that businesses take every step possible to protect their assets and data from attacks. Effective process automation allows just that. It equips companies with the ability to not just detect unknown threats but rather find the underlying flaws in their existing processes to determine the source of the leak and to deal with the threat immediately.
Streamlining and standardizing the company’s existing digital infrastructure is one way that business process automation can help in safeguarding key components.
But which Processes to Automate
While you might be tempted to automate every process, the recommended approach is to target specific security processes that will make your system far more efficient and effective than before.
The first recommended process to automate is the monitoring and detection system. Having a person in the driving seat of monitoring systems is important, but you can’t have people involved in every step of the process. This would just act as an open invitation for gaps to develop in the middle of the process.
Moreover, the option of manning all facets within a company’s IT department will quickly become impractical and tedious as your business grows. Eventually, you’ll end up leaving yourself as an easy target for cybercriminals to attack. Try to use automated security monitoring tools that can detect anomalies, flag suspicious activities, and immediately begin the work on taking corrective action.
Coming to corrective action, your monitoring team will need immediate facts about the case. This includes what department was infected, why the system went down, the current damage report of the attack, and more. Investigators of security breaches usually don’t need the nitty-gritty details to find any gap in the system for every attack as their work can easily be automated with the minimal human insight needed.
Standardizing the process can help speed up investigations while also not leaving any aspect of the attack uncovered. Moreover, the more time you save over investigation, means that your team will have more time to conduct deeper forensics and design a better defense against similar threats.
As mentioned before, if you start automating business processes with the expectation that you’ll stay entirely safeguarded against threats, you’ll be severely disappointed. That’s why developing an appropriate automated response to an attack is the next step you should look for. This means that your system should be intuitive enough to immediately work out a strategy to mitigate the damage.
Be it by containing, deactivating an IT service to stop the spread of the virus or if it’s by installing security updates once a vulnerability has been identified. Humans simply will not be able to achieve the speed at which corrective actions such as the ones mentioned above can be implemented. Hence, automating a standard response to a threat will be a step toward handling the problem promptly.
Which Processes Not to Automate
As mentioned before, don’t try to automate every process. You have to think very carefully about what to leave to automation and what process requires a human touch. For example, consider leaving complex systems and workflows as far away from automation as possible. Not only would a workflow automation be too much of a hassle to implement, but even the slightest mistake will end up severely affecting your data security.
Final Thoughts
As businesses shift towards becoming increasingly digital and move towards more integrated cloud technology, they can become prime targets for cyber attacks and data leaks. In response to these attacks, companies should utilize business process automation to strengthen the key components which fundamentally make up their security.
One of the best ways to improve the security infrastructure of your company is to automate specific processes to improve their effectiveness and enhance data security. Such as monitoring and detection, investigations, and a standard response against common types of attacks. These changes can help your IT department be one step ahead of threats and can help them minimize the damages cyber attacks can cause.
