4.7 (Orchestration and Automation)

Orchestration

Manages automated tasks to form complete workflows. Focuses on enhancing overall security posture. Process-level, coordination and integration across tools

Automation

Involves mechanizing a single process or a few related tasks. Reducing manual effort and improving efficiency. Task-level, usually single tool, often simple scripts

Use cases for automation and scripting

• User provisioning

• Resource provisioning

• Guard rails

• Security groups

• Ticket creation

• Escalation

• Enabling/disabling services and access

• Continuous integration and testing

• Integrations and APIs

Automation and orchestration can deliver several benefits to security operations and the organization:

• Efficiency/time saving

• Enforcing baselines

• Standard configurations

• Scaling in a secure manner

• Employee retention

• Reaction time

• Workforce multiplier

Automation and orchestration can bring negative consequences if the org doesn’t avoid these pitfalls

• Complexity

• Cost

• Single point of failure

• Technical debt

• Ongoing supportability