Did you know that 60% of C-level professionals worldwide report that human-driven responses to cyberattacks are failing to keep up with automated attacks?
You don’t want to be part of the 4% of C-level professionals who say they’re doing nothing to prepare for the rise in AI-driven attacks. Join the ones increasing budgets, exploring automation, and investing in more security personnel.
These numbers show that automated incident response is a crucial investment for safeguarding critical data in today’s digital landscape.
Automated cyber incident response allows for realtime incident detection, handles multiple incidents simultaneously, and augments the abilities of first responders with the support of AI.
As IBM says, “AI-powered systems can accelerate threat detection and mitigation by monitoring enormous volumes of data to speed the search for suspicious traffic patterns or user behaviors,” meaning that CISOs and analysts can respond faster and with increased accuracy.
Not having the proper incident response plan in place could mean the loss of sensitive data. It could also mean extended downtime and a damaged reputation—which could lead to loss of employment for the CISO responsible for protecting that data.
This is not an area where you want to leave things up to chance as bad actors grow increasingly bold in their strategies, buoyed by AI technology.
Why you need automated cyber incident response
Having a battle plan for if—knock on wood—things go wrong could not only safeguard your company’s reputation and financial situation, it could also save your job.
You’ve already invested as much as you can in defense, automated cybersecurity, and compliance tools, but you need a plan for the worst-case scenario.
Enter: automated cyber incident response.
Speed is paramount as the window for response time continues to shrink. In Palo Alto’s 2024 Incident Response Report, they found that in almost 45% of cases, attackers exfiltrated data less than a day after compromise—a stark contrast to 2022, when the median time between compromise and exfiltration was nine days.
Defense systems can level up with advanced analytics and realtime monitoring, and the best way to achieve that today is with AI and machine learning. AI-driven automation can help filter out the noise and empower teams to detect and respond with lightning speed.
Palo Alto reports prevalent use of AI in their operations. “On average, we ingest 36 billion events daily. We use AI-driven data analysis to automatically reduce that number to just eight events requiring manual analysis,” they say.
Through that process, they reduced their Mean Time to Detect to just 10 seconds and Mean Time to Repair to only one minute for high-priority alerts. Every second matters in the wake of an attack, and the way you bounce back could be reinforced by automation.
Automated cyber incident response enables security operations to prioritize critical incidents, eliminate false positives, and optimize the functionality of security operations centers.
In other words, it can save your skin when the bad actors start knocking, or even if they come with a key.
The argument for why you need automated cyber incident response is simple. To have no response plan in place is to admit you’re comfortable gambling with the fate of your livelihood and the fate of your company’s data without the proper precautions and defenses.
That doesn’t sound like a recipe for professional success to us.
That said, there is more than one way to crack an egg. Or, in this case, more than one way to implement an automated incident response and improve cybersecurity automation.
Essential components of an automated incident response
There are a few components to consider when building your response plan. These include, but are not limited to:
- Intrusion detection systems (IDS)
- Intrusion prevention systems (IPS)
- Security operations centers (SOCs)
- AI-powered anomaly detection
An IDS is a network security technology originally built for detecting vulnerability exploits against a target application or computer, meaning it is a listen-only device that reports to an administrator. It can’t perform any actions to prevent an attack, only alert that there is one—which is why an IDS is not a sufficient response plan on its own.
That said, an IDS can be a beneficial addition to an automated cyber incident plan, playing a crucial role in detection. Two examples of well-made IDS technology are Alert Logic Managed Detection and Response from Fortra and TippingPoint from Trend Micro.
Next we have the IPS, which detects and prevents unauthorized—and potentially malicious—activities within a network. An IPS typically resides within a firewall and provides an in-depth layer of analysis that further inspects web traffic. It performs deep dives into IP packets and signatures to identify relevant anomalies.
Two examples of an IPS qualified to support automated cyber incident response are Palo Alto VM-Series and Check Point IPS.
SOCs are another essential component of an effective cyber incident response plan. The analysts in an SOC are increasingly overencumbered by the amount of data they need to analyze, and automating cyber incident responses can free them up to focus on real threats.
Whether you build your own team or purchase a solution with an SOC included—such as CloudFirst’s IBM i Security—they are an indisputable resource for developing a comprehensive automated cyber incident response plan that leads to stronger cybersecurity automation.
Automated incident response solutions help weed out false positives and highlight alerts that require manual attention. They also provide a path for faster repairs after a breach—including restoring a backup of your system and reducing downtime.
AI-powered anomaly detection adds another layer of defense to cybersecurity automation.
AI-powered anomaly detection uses machine learning to identify patterns in data that don’t conform to expected behavior, while regular anomaly detection depends on analysts and manual labor. The increased adoption of AI-driven automation isn’t slowing down and continues to enhance traditional workflows.
“The advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning has revolutionized traditional anomaly detection methods,” says Victoria Shutenko, a security engineer and web app penetration tester.
Dynatrace is a good example of a company leveraging AI-powered anomaly detection for realtime monitoring, designed for large enterprises, cloud-native applications, and multi-cloud environments.
“Generative AI is being used by bad guys for social engineering and to understand environments better. Organizations need to embrace AI to respond in real-time,” reports Tony Bradley, Senior Contributor for Forbes.
While human involvement still has a crucial part to play, AI is set to drive detection and initial response efforts more and more.
What CloudFirst services can help you build an automated cyber incident response?
Now that you understand the gravity of not having effective automated incident response technology in place, the only thing left to do is let you know that we can help you avoid falling into that 4% of leaders not adapting to the changing times.
Our IBM i Security solution offers a security risk assessment to help determine vulnerabilities before they become exploited. It thoroughly examines over a dozen categories of security values and reports on findings. From there we’ll provide you with recommendations for addressing those vulnerabilities and explain the next steps you should take.
ezAutomate is another layer of armor for your data, offering automation for securing and patching systems, applications, endpoints, and more.
Our management and reporting solutions provide automated updates for applications, servers, and endpoints, as well as protection against threats with integrated security scans, SIEM, and AI enhanced monitoring services.
CloudFirst’s IBM i disaster recovery solutions are also here to save the day if tragedy strikes. We offer disaster recovery services that:
- minimize the impact of unplanned downtime
- reduce the recovery time of your critical data to as little as eight hours
- include managed standby compute, storage, and network infrastructure resources
- allow you to quickly resume normal business operations
If you’re ready to join the 60% of C-level professionals reinforcing their systems, reach out to CloudFirst. We’ll prepare you for battle so you can be your company’s hero.
