Applications and use cases in security operations 

In security operations (SecOps), hyperautomation means letting systems think, act, and respond on their own. This makes the constant onslaught of alerts and cyber incidents manageable. The goal is to cover the full spectrum of detection, investigation, and response.

Specific applications include:

• Alert Triage and Incident Response (IR). Hyperautomation systems can automatically normalize, deduplicate, enrich, and triage alerts from sources like EDR and SIEM. This dramatically cuts the time needed to contain (MTTC) and respond (MTTR) to threats. 

• Phishing Detection. AI systems review emails using NLP to identify phishing attempts. Hyperautomation can then execute end-to-end workflows such as pulling suspicious attachments into a sandbox, running ML analysis, updating firewall rules, and notifying analysts.

• Threat Hunting. It automates tasks like searching for indicators of compromise (IOCs) and analyzes data from multiple sources to proactively search for anomalies and vulnerabilities.

• Configuration and Compliance. It can perform routine configuration checks in SaaS environments, continuously monitor for configuration drifts, and automate monitoring and enforcement of security policies to maintain regulatory compliance.

• Risk Assessment. It utilizes AI/ML to continuously assess the dynamic risk profile of an organization’s network and data.

Challenges of implementing hyperautomation in SecOps

Organizations frequently encounter difficulties when implementing and effectively utilizing security hyperautomation solutions. Challenges arise from integrating diverse tools, each with unique APIs, data formats, or protocols, leading to complex, time-consuming, and error-prone processes. 

The existing talent gap can be exacerbated by the need for specialized skills, such as scripting languages, which are often required for the implementation, configuration, and ongoing management of many hyperautomation solutions. In addition, the help of professional services might be required, posing another hidden cost.

Without well-defined standard operating procedures (SOPs), converting manual actions into automated playbooks becomes a significant hurdle. Attempting to automate a flawed or undefined process will only perpetuate the problem rather than offer a solution. 

Furthermore, a lack of cross-team collaboration often results in hyperautomation being applied reactively to individual tasks instead of comprehensive workflows, thereby hindering efficiency gains.

Benefits of hyperautomation in SecOps

Adopting hyperautomation for SecOps delivers measurable improvements across investigation, response, and operational efficiency.

• Increased Efficiency and Cost Reduction. Organizations that adopt hyperautomation help ensure efficient resource utilization and extract maximum value from existing tooling. 

• Faster Response Times. Hyperautomation drastically reduces response time by automating workflows and enabling real-time detection and remediation. This speed is crucial for dealing with rapidly evolving cyber threats.

• Unified Tools. It intelligently integrates and orchestrates a multitude of tools to work in harmony. Hyperautomation helps connect siloed security tools and provides unified visibility and monitoring across disparate technology platforms.

• Greater Scalability. It enables organizations to scale security operations without requiring extensive manual reconfiguration, essential for dealing with multicloud architectures, remote work, and a growing enterprise attack surface.

• Improved Accuracy. By minimizing human error in repetitive processes, hyperautomation ensures consistent execution of security workflows and improves accuracy in detecting anomalies. It also helps ensure a consistent security posture across all environments, including on-premises, hybrid, and multicloud.

• Reduced Analyst Burnout. By automating repetitive and time-consuming security operations center (SOC) tasks (such as log correlation and vulnerability prioritization), hyperautomation frees human analysts to focus on high-value, strategic work like proactive threat hunting and complex issues requiring human expertise.

• Fewer False Positives. Triaging security alerts, where many are often false positives, is exhausting and time-consuming for analysts. Hyperautomation helps reduce noise and false alarms.

• Enhanced Decision-making. Security teams are empowered to make more informed decisions rapidly by receiving real-time information and contextual data gathered and analyzed from multiple sources.

• Fewer Configuration Issues. It performs routine configuration checks and can check for more complex issues such as security creep, where users accumulate more access privileges than needed for their jobs.

• Streamlined Compliance. Hyperautomation helps organizations maintain compliance by automating the monitoring and enforcement of security policies.

Trellix Hyperautomation: Your SecOps superpower

Trellix Hyperautomation enables SecOps teams to build no-code automation using a drag-and-drop workflow builder, leveraging prebuilt or custom integrations. This allows all team members to create organization-wide automation, improving threat detection, response, and security operations. By connecting security and IT tools, it ties together processes, workflows, and dashboards, promoting an automate-first strategy.

Trellix Hyperautomation helps teams create automation faster, overcoming talent gaps and unifying SecOps, DevOps, and IT operations. It also:

• Maximizes current investments through prebuilt or custom integrations

• Avoids vendor lock-in with application-agnostic, one-click swaps

• Enhances efficiency while reducing costs by automating cybersecurity tasks like threat hunting and incident response