In this lesson,
we're going to explore the numerous benefits
of automation and orchestration.
Automation and orchestration are powerful tools
that can revolutionize the efficiency, security,
and overall effectiveness of your organization's operations.
There are seven main benefits of using automation
and orchestration, including increased efficiency
and time savings, enforcing baselines,
implementing standard infrastructure configurations,
scaling in a more secure manner,
increased employee retention, faster reaction times,
and being a workforce multiplier.
Let's take a look at each of these benefits.
First, we have increased efficiency and time savings.
Now, one of the most evident advantages
of using automation and orchestration
is a significant reduction in manual tasks.
And this in turn translates
into more time being saved by your employees.
Repetitive and time consuming processes
like system patching, software deployments,
and data backups can all be automated
to run seamlessly without any human interaction.
Now, by using automation and orchestration,
you're going to be able to free up valuable human resources
as well as reducing the risk of human errors.
This helps to ensure that we have a more reliable
and consistent outcome in our processes
by relying on automation and orchestration
instead of using our legacy manual processes.
Second, we have the enforcement of baselines.
Now, automation and orchestration can enable our organizations
to enforce security and compliance baselines consistently
across your entire enterprise network
and its infrastructure.
By defining standardized configurations and policies,
automation and orchestration tools can ensure
the systems are always aligned
with our industry's best practices
and any pertinent regulatory requirements we may have.
This proactive approach also minimizes vulnerabilities
and reduces the likelihood of a security breach occurring.
Third, we have the implementation
of standard infrastructure configurations.
By maintaining a standardized infrastructure configuration,
we're going to be able to increase our security
and operational stability.
Automation and orchestration helps to facilitate
the creation and enforcement
of standard configurations to ensure
that all of your systems are set up consistently.
If any deviations from the established standards
are detected, orchestrations can be utilized
to trigger automated corrective actions
to further enhance the security
and reliability of your infrastructure.
Fourth, we can utilize scaling in a more secure manner.
Now, as organizations grow and expand,
they often will encounter challenges
related to scaling their IT infrastructure securely.
Automation and orchestration does provide us
with the means to scale resources up or down dynamically
while adhering to security protocols.
Whether it's provisioning new virtual machines,
adding additional network resources,
or adjusting access controls,
these tools can ensure scalability is being achieved
without compromising your security.
For example, when using the cloud
and its scalability and elasticity,
we have to rely on automation and orchestration
to perform most of our scaling operations
in a more secure manner,
because a human simply cannot deploy new virtual servers
as quickly or as securely as an automation
or orchestration could.
Fifth, we have increased employee retention.
Now, this is a less obvious benefit
of automation orchestration
because most of us think of automation
and orchestration as something
that's going to replace our human employees,
and this is actually one of the reasons
some employees fight against automation and orchestration.
But let me tell you, automation and orchestration
actually have been proven to have a positive impact
on your employee's overall satisfaction
and their retention levels.
By automating repetitive and mundane tasks,
organizations are going to empower their employees
to focus more on strategic and creative aspects
of their roles, which then leads to more job fulfillment.
This makes the work more engaging
and also reduces the risk of burnout,
which is really a large factor that contributes
to higher employee retention rates over time.
Yes, automation and orchestration will replace
some of our workforce, but those people
who remain will be happier and healthier
because they're now doing work that matters
instead of just completing menial and boring tasks
that should have been automated away anyhow.
Sixth, another benefit is that we have increased
reaction times by using automation and orchestration.
In the ever evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats,
it's important that we can react to incidents rapidly.
Automation and orchestration do enable organizations
to respond more quickly to security incidents and anomalies
because these systems are never distracted,
they're never tired, and they never go on vacation.
Intrusion detection, threat analysis,
and incident response can all be automated
to provide real-time alerts
and to execute predefined response actions
using either a simple automation
or a more complex orchestration process.
When it comes to these faster reaction times,
they can really become the difference
between mitigating a threat
and suffering a significant data breach
because detection response times
are always considered to be a major factor
in how severe a security breach will become.
Seventh, we have the benefit
of being a workforce multiplier.
Automation and orchestration act as a workforce multiplier
by augmenting the capabilities of your existing staff.
With these tools in place,
a smaller team is able to manage
and secure a larger and more complex infrastructure.
This not only reduces the need for extensive staffing,
but it also optimizes resource allocation
that can lead to more cost savings.
In most organizations, the workforce and labor costs
are going to be your single largest expense.
So anytime our organizations can replace a human
with an automation or an orchestration
that can produce the same or higher levels of quality,
that's going to save us money in the long run.
Over time, the cost of using automation
usually does go down,
but over the same period of time,
the cost to conduct a manual process will increase
because labor rates tend to go up over time.
Now, I know this is something that worries a lot of people
because they're afraid that their job will be replaced
by an automation, an orchestration, or robotic process,
but these types of technological changes
to our everyday work have happened
repeatedly throughout history,
and they're going to continue to occur.
So instead of fighting automations and orchestrations,
you are better off embracing them
and learning how to become an automation, orchestration,
or robotic process engineer,
so you could take advantage of the strategic shift
in the ways that we work in our modern societies.
So now that we've covered some of the benefits,
let's go ahead and put this into work in an example.
Let's take a quick look at the benefits
of automation and orchestration
if we had an instant response
inside of a fictitious financial organization.
Let's pretend that this institution just detected
that a cybersecurity incident may have occurred
in which multiple accounts were compromised simultaneously.
Without automation and orchestration,
the incident response team would need
to manually investigate each compromised account,
identify the root cause, and then apply corrective measures.
However, by using automation and orchestration,
the incident response process
becomes much more streamlined.
Automated tools can continuously monitor
our network traffic and user activity,
and then flag any suspicious behavior it sees.
When an incident is detected,
orchestration will take over
in order to isolate the affected accounts,
collect forensic data from the victimized systems,
and initiate a predefined incident response playbook.
As a result, the organization's overall reaction time
is drastically going to be reduced.
Instead of hours or days
of manual investigation and response,
the organization can contain the incident
within just a few minutes.
This not only prevents further damage,
but it also minimizes the impact on affected customers
and the organization's reputation.
So remember, when it comes to the benefits
of automation and orchestration,
these are things that can bring about
both transformative advantages that go well beyond
just giving you increased levels of efficiency,
but also giving you more empowerment
in your organization so you can enforce standards,
scale securely, retain talent, react swiftly to threats,
and multiply the capabilities of your workforce.
As our threats continue to evolve,
automation and orchestration are going to continue
to play an increasingly vital role,
ensuring the resilience and success of our organizations
in the digital age by empowering those organizations
to thrive in this rapidly changing landscape
where speed, efficiency, and security have become paramount.