EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
DAVID SHEPHERD , GLOBAL VP OF SALES ENGINEERING AT IVANTI
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PROMOTING A ‘ SHIFT-LEFT ’ APPROACH WITH HYPER-AUTOMATION AND MOVING PROBLEM RESOLUTION AS CLOSE TO THE END-USER AS POSSIBLE CAN DO MUCH FOR CYBERSECURITY .
As the business landscape continually evolves , it ’ s important that enterprises can keep up and investing in automation is key to achieving this . The current global pandemic has placed more impetus on businesses to digitally transform in order to continue supporting their employees while they work from home , in the same way as they would be supported working on-premise . The shift to fluid working has increased the demand on IT and security teams , which they must continue to meet at the same level as before , even though they may have less resources available .
Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the remote working shift and will likely continue to do so as the equilibrium between remote and office-based working is eventually reached . Remote working places much more responsibility in the hands of employees to protect their corporate networks , which has led to a rapid rise in cyberattacks – an increase of 63 % according to the Information Systems Security Association . What ’ s more , with cybersecurity pros moved from security on to other tasks , such as IT support to enable the smooth transition to remote working , this invaluable business practice risks being left to the wayside .
This is where automation comes into play . However , due to the current complexity and dynamic nature of IT and security , it needs to be taken further than basic workflow automation and conversational bots . Businesses should therefore invest in hyper-automation in order to secure their assets and infrastructure , which Gartner defines as ‘ the combination of multiple Machine Learning , packaged software and automation tools to deliver work ’. With hyper-automation , businesses will be able to self-heal , self-secure devices and selfservice end-users proactively , predictably and continuously .
Promoting a ‘ shift-left ’ approach with hyper-automation and moving problem resolution as close to the end-user as possible can do much for cybersecurity . At its peak , hyper-automation can enable devices to autonomously self-heal and will help businesses react more quickly to real threats . Hyper-automation means autonomous discovery can take place to continuously monitor for changes to the IT environment , giving security teams maximum visibility . Algorithms will then use this information to anticipate and prioritize threats – responding to the most critical first – and proactive and adaptive remediation will take place autonomously in response to this information . In practice , this capability can respond to a critical patch being released by identifying those devices that need it installed , prioritizing it above other updates and proactively installing it before any vulnerabilities are exposed .
With the addition of hyper-automation , security teams can take advantage of automated and predictive analytics to keep on top of their business ’ cybersecurity , despite battling with limited resources . Ultimately , this means security alerts will be responded to faster , and security teams will face less pressure as devices self-heal without alerts or tickets crossing the desks of staff .
34 INTELLIGENTCIO www . intelligentcio . com