The Mounting Pressure on Security Operations

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) today face mounting pressure on their most valuable asset: analysts’ time. Between SIEM monitoring, threat intelligence review, incident response, threat hunting, and detection engineering, manual processes quickly become untenable. Modern SOCs need solutions that increase efficiency and productivity.

Enter Datadog Workflow automation – a flexible, scalable method to answer that burning question: How do we free analysts of the mundane so they can grapple with critical issues?

Workflow Automation is for Everyone — New or Experienced

New to automation? Need to update firewall rules or detect and contain a compromised user? Pre-built actions and out-of-the-box solutions are ready to go. More experienced in automation and need something specific? Write custom code to answer your unique problem. You can also clone and tailor a Workflow — out-of-the-box or custom-written — for any situation with logic as complex as necessary. Trigger a Workflow from any of these methods: Dashboards, Monitors, Incidents, Cases, Security Signals, GitHub, API, and other Workflows.

The Business Impact of Automation

From a productivity standpoint, Workflows can solve problems without human intervention — simply generating a message to inform you after completion. From the efficiency side, Workflows can handle all the information gathering for an investigation and bring in an Analyst only when necessary. How much time is lost if SOC personnel must manually write and apply firewall rules? What about analysts performing that information-gathering step themselves? Perhaps better questions are, “What more can analysts do if they only need to check an automation’s outcome?” or “What is the business impact of getting an analyst good information faster?”

At a micro level, automation reduces stress, balances workloads, and frees up the most precious resource, time. This means that Security Operations become more productive and efficient. At a macro level, Workflow’s business impact comes in supporting business growth. Security is a business function and needs to enable business operations. A SOC that is productive and efficient can scale alongside a business while remaining effective.

At RapDev, we know you shouldn’t waste time on tedious tasks. We’ve helped clients across industries automate their operations so that they can focus on bigger problems that demand their attention. Whether you’re just setting up a SIEM, configuring your first Workflow, or refining existing automation, we can help. Contact us today and let’s work together to solve your security needs!