Unlocking Investment Value Through Strategic Security Automation

Security automation has long been a topic of debate—what to automate, when, and how. Despite occasional setbacks, the consensus remains that automation is the path forward. Today’s reality confirms that automation is no longer optional; it’s essential.

While many organizations had already implemented basic automation for critical security and incident‑response (IR) tasks, the events of 2020 served as a catalyst, according to Noor Boulos of ThreatQuotient. The recent SANS report highlights how the global pandemic accelerated automation adoption, prompting firms to re‑evaluate priorities and future roadmaps. The survey covered companies of all sizes across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Africa.

Key takeaways include:

• Nearly one‑third of organizations reported that the COVID‑19 pandemic accelerated their automation plans.

• Over 80% now have at least partial automation of core security and IR processes—up from 47% in 2020.

• Incident‑response automation grew most sharply, with extensive automation rising 18 percentage points from 10.5% in 2020 to 28.3% in 2021.

• Security operations and alert‑processing remain the top focus, with 35.5% achieving extensive automation.

• Looking ahead, 85% plan to expand automation of key security and IR processes within the next 12 months.

These findings underscore the importance of timing automation within the security lifecycle to maximize business value. At ThreatQuotient, we emphasize that data is the cornerstone of effective detection and response automation. Let’s examine two primary use cases highlighted in the report: Alert Triage and Incident Response.

Alert Triage:

Security analysts face a deluge of alerts generated by noisy SIEM rules and default defense configurations. To manage volume and velocity, analysts often feed external threat data and intelligence feeds directly into the SIEM. However, two challenges persist:

First, the sheer volume of external threat data overwhelms the SIEM, producing many non‑contextual alerts that require intensive analyst research. Second, current tools lack robust decision‑support to provide context and relevance before integrating threat intelligence into the SIEM. Prioritization is therefore critical to focus analysts on actionable alerts.

With the ThreatQ Platform, you can eliminate useless alerts by feeding only relevant threat intelligence into the SIEM. The platform automatically applies context, relevance, and prioritization to threat data before it reaches the SIEM, enhancing both efficiency and effectiveness.

Custom threat intelligence scores—tailored to your environment—enable precise prioritization. By curating a focused subset of threat data, the SIEM produces fewer false positives and scales more gracefully.

Incident Response:

Traditional Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) solutions focus on process automation. However, when applied to detection and response, playbooks can become unwieldy because decision logic is hard‑coded and must be updated in every playbook. This complexity multiplies as playbooks grow, and automating noisy data can amplify the noise.

ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator adopts a simplified, data‑driven SOAR approach. Here, data itself triggers playbooks, and the insights gathered from automated actions feed back into analytics to improve future responses. By embedding intelligence into the platform rather than individual playbooks, configuration and maintenance become far simpler, leading to more efficient and effective automation outcomes. Users can pre‑curate and prioritize data, automate relevant actions, and streamline response procedures.

The author is Noor Boulos of ThreatQuotient