5 Ways to Start Automating Your Cybersecurity Efforts

With a hack attack happening every 39 seconds, it’s time every single company, charity, and organization takes their cybersecurity seriously.

11:10 25 October 2021

With a hack attack happening every 39 seconds (yes, seconds!), it’s time every single company, charity, and organization takes their cybersecurity seriously. Many businesses have implemented the use of cybersecurity experts and upped their antivirus. However, sometimes it’s not enough. 

 

Today, so many people have taken their lives online and are reliant upon the internet to shop, entertain, and communicate with others. This means huge amounts of personal data are being entered and stored online, resulting in higher amounts of info being open to hackers. 

 

Data breaches and cyberattacks have risen so much over the last few years, so one of the only real ways to prepare for cybersecurity today is to automate it.

 

Especially because cyberattacks themselves have become automated. We have all received those generic spam emails telling us we have just won $1,000,000. They are automated phishing emails that hackers use to try and steal our details. So, to counteract cybercriminals, we need to fight fire with fire and use automation too. 

 

Whether looking to improve your security to make a stand-out inbound call center or simply to protect retail customer data, here are five ways to automate your cybersecurity efforts. 

 

Collect and Analyze Data

This is about looking at previous attacks and spotting connections between them to stop them from happening again. However, human intelligence alone isn’t enough. Using automation to collect and analyze data is a great way to prevent attacks, but for this to work efficiently, data needs to be correlated and analyzed. This means taking the cybersecurity process from each section of a company, then grouping and identifying threats. 

 

A firm could be taking info from data stored in cloud business phone systems. Or from within the security section of the infrastructure. Or even details from an outside source. The trick is to examine the data, spotting any patterns in attacks. This knowledge can be used to predict the hacker’s next move and prevent an attack from happening again. 

 

The more data collected, the more accurate the results will be. This means that firms won’t be playing guessing games and making random predictions. Collecting and investigating such huge amounts of data is impossible for humans to do well though, but using machines means the task can be done quickly and accurately. And the sooner the job is done, the sooner a business is protected.

 

Find Existing Threats

We all know that as soon as a bug enters the system, it’s only a matter of time before it wreaks havoc. Once there is a flaw within the network, it can be detrimental to a business. They can cause operational issues, stability problems, and can also lead to huge data leaks. 

 

What’s more, they tend to be caused by human negligence. A bug issue that isn’t dealt with can have serious negative outcomes. It can also result in an all-around bad reputation for a firm. 

 

Flaws in the system are easily preventable, however. Using automation to detect issues helps spot mistakes that humans haven’t. So, to protect against ransomware attacks and prevent breaches, one of the easiest things a firm can do is to track down existing threats. Again, this is about using automated processes to analyze data and look for suspicious behavior. This time, it focuses much more on the business’s personal network. 

 

Remember that just because we aren’t seeing the overt signs of a virus, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Maybe the new WFM workforce management system, the browser, and the hard drive are all seemingly working fine. But there could still be a bug in there somewhere, waiting to attack. Using automation to regularly assess systems will stop any potential suspicious behavior from turning into a bug that can ruin the whole business. 

 

Protect and Prevent 

The key to any type of attack is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Using automation as part of cybersecurity is a great way to locate where attacks are coming from and to stop them from happening again.

 

This isn’t just about considering previous or current data. It’s also about using automation to collect masses of data in general. It keeps a business one step ahead of the attackers. 

 

After all, online firms regularly collect information and evaluate eCommerce analytics. It helps them predict the future and keeps them prepared for the unexpected. So why not do this when it comes to safety and cybersecurity too? 

 

It could be that there is a trend in cyberattacks that a company may not have experienced. Or that is likely to hit a firm due to the nature of its business. It’s a bit like upgrading AI to make sure that it fits in with current trends and is prepared for what the future may hold. The point in using these types of machinery is to enhance human intelligence and to stay one step ahead of the digital world where humans are unable to. 

 

Making the most of automation also saves a lot of time. Sometimes, having the extra time machines provide over humans is crucial to preventing a huge attack. It's something that businesses may never have seen coming otherwise. 

 

Automate Repetitive Tasks

When a person does the same task over and over again, not only does it become boring but mistakes are made. And, in the modern world, making errors digitally can have a huge impact on security. All it takes is a small misstep in creating code, leaving a customer email exposed, or putting data into the wrong online file, and a hacker has easy access to that information. 

 

Implementing automation to deal with time-consuming tasks will dramatically decrease mistakes. Which, in turn, will mean less risk of a breach or cyberattack. Say there's a mistake in a code that looks worrying. Before searching for “alternatives to RingCentral -”, consider implementing cloud automation alongside a person instead. 

 

Unfortunately, there is also the reality that workers steal data to use maliciously. Though it’s important to trust staff, this is just a sad truth that exists for some firms. Jobs like data entry roles are rich with customer details. 

 

Allowing robots to do these jobs instead means that data won’t end up in the wrong hands. Because, unless programmed to, a machine can’t do anything malevolent with these documents. 

 

This is an excellent way to enhance retail cybersecurity in particular, as today, visitors are entering much more data when shopping than before. And, as e-commerce is one of the most vulnerable industries out there, it’s vital firms are doing what they can to protect customers. 

 

Figure Out The Right Solution

There is a minefield of automation tools out there and sadly, there isn’t a one size fits all solution. Whilst this might seem disappointing, there is an upside; investing in the right automation will provide a much more specific and tailored cybersecurity solution for your company. 

 

Let’s say eSecurity Planet wants to add automation to evaluate system data and look out for any anomalies in the area. There is no point in using machine automation because this kind of robotics is used for things like manual labor, such as building cars. So it would be a total waste of time and money. Instead, event processing automation would be better as this is designed to examine data and creates warnings should it suspect anything odd. 

 

When it comes to cybersecurity, there are automation processes that will be a better fit. Again, it depends on what the company’s focus is. The types of automation best suited to this tend to be workflow or business rules. However, event processing, decision algorithms, or artificial intelligence can also work.

 

To make a point of the importance of making the right decision when it comes to automation, these examples show how many options there are. 

 

Workflow and business rule automation is all about working alongside people to help them make better decisions. Say, for example, a person was figuring out the best way of reaching people on social media with a blog based on how to send fax from a computer. If they needed to input lots of customer emails, these types of automation would prevent mistakes from being made by people. 

On the other hand event processing, decision algorithms, and artificial intelligence all help look at data. They also create warnings over anomalies. For example, if a bank has a lot of personal information, these systems can take data from previous breaches. This will help them to spot where any problems may lie. 

 

Cybersecurity should never be taken lightly. We are now living in a truly digital world, and so threats are always changing which demands a total enterprise digital transformation for better protection. Automating cybersecurity processes brings in intelligent precision that humans could never help to rival. 

 

Jessica Day - Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad

Jessica Day is the Senior Director for Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern cloud business phone system provider that takes every kind of conversation to the next level—turning conversations into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts, for both company and client campaigns. Here is her LinkedIn.