SBN

Top 3 Benefits of Low-Code Security Automation Playbooks

When it comes to security, there’s no such thing as enough.

Today, cyber threats are live and active 24/7. They can be seen in every region of the digital and real world, and they can affect any business in a number of ways. Constantly growing threats mean there isn’t enough time for security teams to proactively address alerts one by one. Playing whack-a-mole by yourself is no way to scale up your security team.

Enter, security automation platforms. These platforms automate the repetitive tasks that take up most of a security professional’s day. They also orchestrate responses to help reduce much of the overwhelming day-to-day duties of a SOC team. Whether it’s a no-code, low-code, or high-code platform, automation is the solution for ‘not enough’.

When you start looking for security automation tools on the market, you may quickly notice that most of them offer playbooks. But, what is a playbook and why do you need one?

What are SOAR Playbooks?

Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platforms rely on user-built playbooks to automate actions in the security operations center (SOC). Security teams decide what rules, triggers, and events the SOAR platform will use to automate various repetitive tasks.

Think about corporate incident response playbooks. When a security breach occurs, it guides you through the process of what to do and who to call. Similarly, SOAR playbooks tell the automation platform what task to complete when it receives an alert.

OK – So, What’s Special About Low-Code Playbooks?

Low-code automation playbooks combine the best of people, processes, and technology to streamline the way SOC tasks are automated.

Before low-code playbooks, there were complicated high-code (think old-school SOAR) playbooks. Low-code automation playbooks offer a newer, easier way for SOC teams to achieve what their high-code playbooks were trying to do. They’re faster to create since they’re codeless and more intuitive for users, both in and outside of security.

Low-code security automation platforms, like Swimlane Turbine, are playing a key role in democratizing the art of security automation and empowering security teams. A major way is with Adaptable Playbooks: a low-code, high-impact upgrade to legacy SOAR playbooks.

Read more about the top three benefits of low-code playbooks below.

1. 

Democratized Automation for Scalable Security

Every security team needs automation, no matter what industry, size, or maturity level. Low-code automation playbooks open up automation to all companies, especially ones that feel the restrictions of rigid high-code SOAR platforms. This concept of democratized automation is key to establishing scalable security operations – it can adapt to changes in headcount and workload.

Low-code platforms also let you scale automation beyond the SOC to enable anyone to be an automator. It’s now easier to automate unconventional use cases like employee off-boarding, fraud, and domain squatting. A Fortune 100 financial services company even saves $900k/year by using low-code security automation to automate use cases in and beyond the SOC.

Turbine’s Adaptable playbooks are just one of the secrets to maximizing security ROI. Find out the other.

2.

The Ultimate User-Friendly Playbook Building Experience

Low-code Adaptable Playbooks can be built in a matter of minutes with no coding experience required. The drag and drop functionality makes it easy for anyone to quickly and effortlessly create a new playbook.. The intuitive user interface means that you won’t need to spend hours learning how to use the tool before you can get started building your first playbook.

But must you sacrifice power for convenience? Not with low-code automation. The beauty of low-code solutions, like Turbine, is that they organize business logic and best practices on the backend. This simplifies the frontend for a better user experience.

Adaptable Playbooks help improve productivity, efficiency, and accuracy. When a platform is user-friendly and powerful security professionals can get higher quality work done faster. You can save time and resources by quickly and easily building playbooks that can be used to detect and respond to threats, vulnerabilities, and incidents.

Automated playbooks also reduce human error from manual processes. With low-code security automation, you can create automated playbooks that can detect new threats faster, allowing you to respond sooner. That saved time can now be dedicated to building new use cases. Talk about an easy way to extend the reach of security even more.

3.

Keep Humans in the Automation Loop

The last major benefit of low-code security automation playbooks is how it keeps humans in the automation loop. Automation doesn’t remove the need for people – it makes their lives easier. By automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks with low-code playbooks, security professionals free up their time to focus on alerts that require more critical thinking. Essentially, it positions humans where they can make the biggest impact.

Humans still need to be a part of the playbook-building process to tie in human common sense and decision-making. Security tools like the Turbine playbook condition builder expand human logic even further by utilizing ‘if/then’ options into playbooks – with just a few clicks.

Watch how the human-readable Playbook Editor in Turbine works.

Low-code playbooks help you scale business logic and best practices across the entire company. You can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on strategic work. The savings on labor adds up quickly when you consider that security teams can create playbooks 50% faster with Turbine.

Adaptable Playbooks allow users, who may not have implemented automation before, to create playbooks without the need for extensive training. This is especially useful since playbooks can be created by a wide range of users—from non-technical managers to technical experts.

The flexibility of low-code security automation allows for easy updates and revisions to keep up with an ever-changing landscape of threats. No playbook will ever get stale. Because no one likes stale playbooks.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Swimlane (en-US) authored by Ashlyn Eperjesi. Read the original post at: https://swimlane.com/blog/low-code-security-automation-playbooks/