In a survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute and Domain Tools, 51% of respondents said they believe that automation will cut headcount in the security department (up from 30% in the previous survey). I had to read it twice before it sunk in, so go ahead and do that. Fifty. One. Percent.
Now, I cannot claim that this is wrong. After all, this is a sentiment-style poll question. What I can say is that the belief is misguided, and surely a holdover from the first industrial revolution.
If you are an executive or someone who is deciding to replace people in your security department with automation, please stop and reconsider. Is there really a shortage of work in the security department that replacing a handful of processes with automation would leave nothing for the humans to do? Even the most mature security programs have a backlog of work that can keep an employee busy for years.
If you are an individual contributor worried that automation is going to replace what you do, well, you’re right. Great security automation tools do everything they can to automate the mundane tasks they have to repeat 100 times a day. After all, the tools you use today once replaced some mundane task you had to perform.
I am having a hard time reconciling the results of the Ponemon report with the fact that our future in infosec depends on automation. What I do know is that I have 51% of you that I need to reach.
Why automate in the first place?
Automation solutions are vital because most of the outcomes we are trying to ..
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