Right now, cybersecurity is at a consolidation and convergence stage. Businesses need to unify IT, OT, and security to maximize personnel and shore up gaps in visibility and productivity.

However, businesses often initiate activities before cybersecurity can properly react. Businesses may transfer data to and from public clouds. Application development happens without proper guardrails. Security teams are frequently isolated and have to catch up with new IT and networking conditions while trying to maintain the integrity of their own security postures.

Cybersecurity defenders must address several challenging realities:

• To maximize the efficacy of their digital estates, businesses need to have agility and safety in deploying applications. This means a widening security surface.
• Generative AI (GenAI) sounds great in theory, but this is a tool that can be as effective for the adversary as it is for the defender.
• The role of the cybersecurity analyst is harder than ever given an expanding security surface, an improving adversary, and less dwell time needed to launch an attack. Often, the security analyst will be the first and only line of defense before a breach happens. It is difficult to uplevel the skills of the analyst, and software must make up the difference.

Despite these challenges, the cybersecurity defender does have an important tool with which to respond: automation.

Download the Autonomizing” the SOC: The Virtues Accrued on the Journey Toward Security Automation research paper now.