What is a Security Automation Copilot? How Do They Help You?

In the last year, Generative AI has revolutionized every aspect of the technology world. Security automation copilots have become the latest addition to the security world. 

But what is a security automation copilot anyway? 

Imagine having an AI-powered partner by your side, assisting you in automating operations one prompt at a time. That's precisely what a security automation copilot does. It leverages artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation features to scale the capacity and productivity of every professional in a given function.

What Does an Automation Copilot Do?

Security automation Copilots are fast becoming a crucial tool for security teams. They can assist in a variety of tasks by automating processes across tools, providing valuable insights, and enforcing policies across an organization – all by utilizing generative AI. 

The latest Forrester research divides generative AI  into three core use cases:

• Content Creation: generating new content into text, code, etc.
• Behavior Prediction: predicting the next step in patterned behavior 
• Knowledge Articulation (chatbot): communicating human-friendly information

A security automation copilot typically focuses on content creation to provide the most value for security practitioners. Common tasks a security automation copilot can help with include:

• Write the code to generate automation workflows 
• Select the appropriate triggers and steps in an automated workflow
• Automatically include any conditional logic if needed
• Write to data tables and analyze information from them
• Identify the correct API and commands 
• Integrate tools across security tech stacks

Security automation copilots can take on the mental burden that security teams face around workflow creation, incident response, and manual data gathering. This allows security teams to mitigate threats and minimize the impact of any cybersecurity breaches faster. As security operations become more complex daily, leveraging security automation copilots will be critical for security teams to stay ahead of the game and boost productivity.

How Can a Security Automation Copilot Help Me?

Security teams can benefit in a variety of ways by implementing a security automation copilot, including:

Improved Incident Response

Modern security teams are often overwhelmed by the volume of alerts they receive daily, and it is challenging to find critical alerts from the noise. Security automation copilots help security teams generate workflows that filter out false positives, prioritize the relevant alerts, and enrich them. This AI-assisted approach brings focus to the most important incidents, reduces remediation times, and accelerates the investigation process, leading to better incident response outcomes.

Automating Security Operations (and More)

Security teams perform several repeated tasks, such as applying patches, hunting down malware, and quarantining devices, which automation copilots can automate. These automated workflows reduce the time spent on tedious and repetitive tasks, allowing security teams to allocate more time to strategic tasks like developing security operations planning that address more advanced threats. Because traditional SOAR automation tools are much more labor-intensive, building new incident response workflows can take weeks instead of the seconds it takes with an AI copilot approach.

The accessibility that comes with a security automation copilot isn’t limited to the Security Operations Center (SOC). Other use cases can be easily automated, such as cloud security, IAM, GRC, IT, and more. 

Versatile and Scalable

One of the significant benefits of security automation copilots is their versatility, which can integrate with tools across domains to enhance various operations across all security domains. Costs of cybersecurity are high and rising, and the difficulty of finding qualified professionals can make the cost higher. Security automation copilots can be a solution to lower the cost by reducing the demand for more headcount – either internal or outsourced – but still increasing efficiency and quality of output.

While security automation copilots offer many benefits, it's important to emphasize that they should complement human expertise, not replace it. Human analysts provide the critical context and decision-making capabilities that AI may lack.

How to Incorporate Security Automation Copilots Into Your Security Strategy

1. Assess your current security infrastructure.

Begin by conducting a thorough assessment of your current security infrastructure. Identify the strengths, weaknesses, and which manual tasks can benefit from automation with a copilot. What tools do analysts switch between the most frequently? 

Common tasks to consider could be:

• Detecting and responding to potential phishing emails
• Identifying any password policy gaps
• Reporting on any MFA gaps

2. Define clear objectives:

Clearly define the objectives you aim to achieve with security automation copilots. Whether it's enhancing compliance, reducing response time, or another use case, having well-defined goals will guide the implementation process and measure the success of your strategy.

Need an idea of where to start? Here are the top security automation use cases where an AI copilot can help.

3. Integrate with your existing security tools.

Seamless integration with your current security systems is crucial. Ensure that the chosen AI copilot solution can easily integrate with your existing infrastructure, such as SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems, cloud security, and endpoint tools.

4. Generate a workflow – simply by typing a prompt.

Now it’s time to automate. With a copilot, like Blink Copilot, it is as simple as describing what you want to automate. For instance, to automatically isolate a device on an incoming SentinelOne alert, you could type:

“On a new SentinelOne alert, if the alert is critical:

1. Isolate the device with SentinelOne
2. Notify the device owner using Slack”

Then, the copilot will generate the appropriate trigger, steps, and outcomes, as well as pull the corresponding APIs and commands. All this is generated into a fully functional workflow. See how easy it is, below. 

5. Edit Workflows as Needed

An automation copilot allows for easy editing and adjustments as you build a workflow. Copilots can be prompted to edit individual steps within a workflow or to generate completely new workflows if needed. If you desire a more manual approach, security automation copilots also offer workflow editors for codeless editing via drag-and-drop actions. 

6. Track Cases and Metrics

Finally, a security automation copilot combines workflow automation with case management capabilities. This enables security analysts to triage individual cases in a single platform. It also makes it easier for CISOs and SOC managers to quickly view case metrics, such as mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) or dwell time, to improve security performance. 

Every Security Pro Deserves a Copilot

As security threats continue to become more complex and sophisticated, security teams need all the help they can get. Security AI Copilots offer a powerful new tool to boost productivity and security efficiency. By providing workflow automation across any security domain automation, AI copilots are helping security teams stay ahead of the curve.

If you're not already using a security automation copilot, now is the time to explore this exciting new technology, and see how it can benefit your organization. Schedule a demo of Blink today.