By leveraging automation, organizations can rapidly identify vulnerabilities, configuration problems, and policy issues. This allows them to enforce security measures more consistently, and reduce the risk of human oversight, resulting in a stronger and more resilient security posture. In previous posts, we’ve analyzed cloud security automation, IT/OT automation, and SOC automation, but what is network security automation? And why is automating network security important? From the benefits to the best tools to invest in, let’s find out all you need to know about network security automation. 

What is Network Security Automation?

Network security is an organization’s first line of defense, focusing on protecting against network-level cybersecurity attacks. And network security automation is the practice of using software and technology to manage, implement, and monitor security protocols and policies throughout an organization’s network infrastructure efficiently. This type of automation alleviates repetitive and labor-intensive tasks such as configuring block lists on traditional firewalls, SASEs, DLPs, CSPMs, switches, routers, and intrusion prevention devices, detecting and responding to threats, and maintaining compliance with regulatory standards.

Network security automation was initially just a form of detection technology. However, over time, network security automation has advanced significantly and developed the ability to leverage detected vulnerabilities, collect the IOCs or tactics and forensic evidence such as packet capture (PCAP), and orchestrate remediation. Enforcement is now engrained and it has also expanded from operating solely in the primary network to being useful in other devices like mobile and other cloud technologies.

Network Security vs Endpoint Security

As mentioned, network security is a set of measures and practices designed to protect a network infrastructure against attacks. Endpoint security is similar and refers to the practice of safeguarding the data and workflows associated with devices that connect to a network, preventing access or attacks from potentially malicious entities.

However, where these two forms of security differ most is in their coverage. Endpoint software only covers 95% of endpoints, whereas network security automation has 100% coverage in any corporate environment. While just having network automation in place means you have full coverage, the best scenario is to have network security automation tools learn from an installed endpoint software.

Types of Network Security Threats

Network security deals with a variety of threats on different applications and vulnerabilities aimed at compromising data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. Some common network security threats include:

• Malware: This encompasses viruses, file attachments worms, trojans, ransomware, and spyware, which can disrupt systems, steal data, or demand ransom.
• Phishing: When attackers use deceptive emails or websites to trick users into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial data.
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: These attacks flood a web server with traffic, overwhelming systems and causing service outages.
• SQL Injection: When attackers exploit application software vulnerabilities by injecting malicious SQL code to manipulate or steal data.
• Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks: A type of attack that involves intercepting and potentially altering communication between two parties without their knowledge.
• Insider Threats: Employees or insiders, whether intentional or accidental, can pose risks through actions like misuse of access privileges or mishandling sensitive data.

What is the Difference Between Network Security and SOC?

Since SOCs (Security Operations Centers) also deal with some of the above network security threats, people often can’t tell the difference between the two. Though network security and the SOC are both essential components in safeguarding an organization’s digital assets, they serve distinct functions. Network Security refers to the measures and tools implemented to protect the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of networking infrastructure and data. This includes firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion detection systems, and data encryption. 

On the other hand, the SOC’s role is to deal with security issues on an organizational level. It employs people, processes, and technology to continuously monitor and improve overall security posture while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to different types of cybersecurity attacks and threats.

However, while network security and SOCs have different responsibilities, they have one crucial thing in common: the need for security automation.

How Important is Network Automation? 

Network automation has always been essential. In a security capacity, automation can combine an endpoint with not a lot of fidelity with an endpoint that has a lot of fidelity, like phishing. This allows an automation platform to correlate that low-fidelity attack with any lateral movement across the network and any data exfiltration, making that very inconspicuous phishing attack a lot more interesting. 

Correlating alerts is important and network automation is crucial for getting ahead of the cyber kill chain. There are many steps an attacker has to go through, from reconnaissance to building the tailored attack and deployment; the process typically takes a few days. But if network security can respond quicker, like receiving the email and blocking the IP address within minutes, you can disrupt the kill chain and prevent the successful exploit of those hosts. 

So, getting a low-fidelity alert and taking action on the alerts you’re seeing quickly makes automation important, but there’s an even simpler reason network automation is paramount. Too often, alerts come into the system, no one acts and then there’s a successful exploit. Automation makes sure none of these thousands of alerts are missed, and the highest fidelity alerts are immediately brought to the security team’s attention. 

How Automation Impacts Network Management

Network security automation is vital for modern organizations looking to optimize their operations, enhance security, improve scalability, and remain competitive in a rapidly evolving digital world. But here’s the two main ways automation impacts network management:

1. Enhanced Efficiency: 

Automation enables the rapid deployment and configuration of network devices and services as well as enables the efficient response to millions of alerts, significantly saving time and resources. This streamlined process minimizes the need for extensive human intervention, allowing for a substantial reduction in the human resources required. The time and manpower saved can then be reallocated to other critical, more strategic tasks, optimizing overall productivity and efficiency.

2. Speed and Effectiveness: 

In today’s fast-paced environment, organizations need to rapidly adapt to changes. Threats need to be responded to within a small window of time, otherwise there could be a full network breach. Network automation provides the agility to quickly identify incidents and respond to new demands, such as configuring networks for new applications or adjusting to security alerts. 

In addition, many organizations are—and rightly so—overcautious about deploying applications or blocking threats immediately, as they may compromise or even break the network. Automation allows deployment and incident response to be rapid and without any threat of network disruption. 

Additionally, deceptive networking has also become more prevalent in network security. This form of networking, otherwise known as ‘Honey Pots’ or ‘Fake Networking’ is an advanced technique where a false network is set up to gain intel on the who, what, where, when and why of attackers. Automation is extremely effective in learning from incidents on these false networks and can apply the data gathered to their own, secure networks. 

What is the Lifecycle of Network Automation?

Now that we know network automation is a crucial asset to any organization, it’s helpful to know the network automation lifecycle. The lifecycle of network automation can typically be broken down into a few key phases:

1. Consolidating Alerts: Gathering and centralizing alerts from various network devices, systems and other organization security areas into a unified platform to reduce noise and provide a clearer overview of potential issues.
2. Enrichment of Alerts: Add threat intelligence to the alerts and different IOCs by integrating data from different sources, enhancing the relevance and actionable insights of each alert. What this means is taking low-fidelity alerts and turning them into higher-fidelity alerts so that network security analysts can make quick decisions on whether to take action or not, be it manual or automated.
3. Automated Response: Network Security Operations (SecOps) can then choose to trigger automated actions in response to certain alerts, such as blocking malicious IPs or rerouting traffic, based on predefined use cases.
4. Orchestration of Tasks: Coordinate and automate the execution of multiple tasks across various network components, ensuring they work together efficiently without manual intervention.
5. Lifecycle Management: Automate the management of the entire lifecycle of network devices and software, including upgrades, patches, and decommissioning, to maintain optimal performance and security.

What are Network Automation Tools?

This is an interesting question because there is actually a lack of network automation tools out there, even from the big portfolio companies. But looking at the tools on the market, they have largely been focused on the operations side of network security, so distributing updates across the network or logins for example. Very few network automation tools have been developed to deal with post-incident activity. Network automation tools should have dual functionality, being able to perform both operational and security tasks to ensure efficient network management and strengthen the network’s defense against evolving security threats.

What is the Best Network Automation Tool?

The best network automation tool is one that offers seamless integration across all security platforms and technologies vital for your organization. Legacy SOAR tools have been focused on incident response, so it’s been very difficult to create new use cases or applications that will meet the diverse needs of organizations because they all use different gear and operations groups. Organizations need a tool that will conform to their existing processes, not one that requires them to change their processes to meet the requirements of the tool. 

The best tool needs to be adaptable and your network automation tool should be scalable and able to evolve as new technologies emerge. This ensures your networks’ continuous protection and efficient management. 

Choose Swimlane Turbine for Your Network Security Automation 

At Swimlane, we understand that every organization is unique. This means every organization needs a tool with flexibility and customization to develop a use case according to the specific architecture and environment. Swimlane Turbine is built with your organization’s future  in mind. That’s why Turbine is the only AI-enhanced security automation platform that can adapt to your ever-evolving environment and exceed the pace of change that modern security operations know too well.