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Seemant Sehgal is Founder & CEO of BreachLock Inc., a leader in Continuous Attack Surface Discovery & Penetration Testing as a Service.
Security professionals are seeking new ways to enhance their defenses, and security automation and integration have emerged as powerful allies. The significance of automated integration has grown substantially in response to the surge of data originating from purpose-built applications, proprietary systems, work management systems and cloud or mobile-based applications, making it a potential playground for malicious attackers. The latest breaches, such as those involving Wells Fargo and Home Depot, have proven that swift action is required for both discovery and response to the rising number of vulnerabilities that may lead to these types of breaches. In addition, technology continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of enterprises, offering more adaptable and innovative solutions, such as IoT, APIs, the cloud and SaaS security testing and services. It also includes artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that are integrated into security platforms to truly benefit the customer by accelerating vulnerability identification and the discovery of patterns and anomalies associated with potential attacker entry points. Because of this, we are seeing a more continuous and proactive approach to cybersecurity to effectively manage the escalating volume of digital assets, data and the inherent vulnerabilities that come with them.
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The Rise Of Security Automation
Traditional security practices often involve manual processes, which isn’t necessarily bad depending on security and business requirements. However, human-driven methods can be time-consuming, error-prone and resource-intensive. As threats multiply, enterprises must find ways to scale their security efforts without compromising accuracy. This is where security automation comes into focus.
Security Automation Defined
Security automation simply refers to the use of technology to streamline security tasks, reduce human intervention and enhance overall security posture. It may encompass such things as:
- Orchestration: Coordinating and automating workflows across different security tools.
- Response Automation: Automatically executing predefined actions in response to specific scope requirements (e.g., discovery of IP addresses or usernames and passwords on the dark web).
- Security Analytics: Analyzing vast amounts of data, logs and events to identify potential threats within the data with automated tools and algorithms.
- Continuous Attack Surface Discovery: Evaluating and tracking security measures, configurations and possible vulnerabilities throughout the attack surface.
Integration As The Key Enabler
At the heart of security automation lies integration. Integrating disparate or siloed tools allows for such benefits as the sharing of common or overlapping security testing features and functionalities, seamless data exchange, real-time time threat discovery and accumulated threat intelligence from testing results for efficient incident response. Let’s explore a few ways integration drives continuous attack surface discovery.
- Security Information And Event Management (SIEM): SIEM platforms aggregate and correlate security events from various sources. Integrating test results from automated pentesting, red teaming and/or continuous attack surface discovery enables holistic threat identification and visibility.
- Attack Surface Management (ASM): ASM tools identify and assess vulnerabilities in assets, systems and applications. Integrating ASM with other vulnerability management tools ensures accurate vulnerability data.
- Threat Data And Intelligence: Integration allows the aggregation of data from various sources, including internal security tools, threat intelligence feeds and third-party databases.
- Cloud Security Platforms: Integrating cloud security tools within one seamless platform ensures consistent and standardized security testing across on-premises and cloud environments.
Benefits Of Bi-Directional Integration
Bi-directional integration allows data flow in both directions and provides benefits to enterprises such as:
- Real-Time Threat Identification
- Automated Incident Response (IR)
- Evidence-Based Context
- Reduced Discovery Time
Automated Scanning And Testing
Automation enables the deployment of security tests at regular intervals or in real time. Tools such as automated pentesting and continuous attack surface discovery systematically assess the digital landscape, exploiting or identifying new assets, configurations or vulnerabilities. Automated scans can cover a wide range of systems, applications and network components,
