Automation and Orchestration

Scripting and Automation

Automate and orchestrate

  • You don’t have to be there
  • Solve problems in your sleep
  • Monitor and resolve problems before they happen

The need for speed

  • The script is as fast as the computer
  • No typing or delays
  • No human error

Automate mundane tasks

  • You can do something more creative

Automation Benefits

Save time

  • No typing required
  • Run multiple times, over and over

Enforce baselines

  • Missing an important security patch
  • Automatically install when identified

Standard infrastructure configurations

  • Use a script to build a default router config
  • Add firewall rules to a new security appliance
  • IP configurations, security rules, standard configuration options

Secure scaling

  • Orchestrate cloud resources
  • Quickly scale up and down
  • Automation ensures proper security also scales

Employee retention

  • Automate the boring stuff
  • Ease the workload
  • Minimize the mundane tasks
  • Employees work is rewarding instead of repetitive

Reaction time

  • The computer is much faster than you
  • An event can be addressed immediately
  • A script doesn’t need a wake-up call

Workforce multiplier

  • Scripting works 24/7
  • Allows the smart people to do smarter work somewhere else

Cases for automation

User and resource provisioning

  • On-boarding and off-boarding
  • Assign access to specific resources

Guard rails

  • A set of automated validations
  • Limit behaviors and responses
  • Constantly check to ensure proper implementation
  • Reduce errors

Security groups

  • Assign (or remove) group access
  • Constant audits without human intervention

Ticket creation

  • Automatically identify issues
  • Script email submissions into a ticket

Escalation

  • Correct issues before involving a human
  • If issue isn’t resolved, contact the on-call tech

Controlling services and access

  • Automatically enable and disable services
  • No set and forget

Continuous integration and testing

  • Constant development and code updates
  • Securely test and deploy

Integrations and application programming interfaces (APIs)

  • Interact with third-party devices and services
  • Cloud services, firewalls, OSes
  • Talk their language

Scripting considerations

Complexity

  • Many moving parts
  • All the parts have to reliably work together

Cost

  • It takes money to create the script
  • It takes money to implement the automation

Single point of failure

  • What happens if the script stops working?
  • This could be a significant deal-breaker

Technical debt

  • Patching problems may push the issue down the road
  • It’s going to be more expensive to fix later

Ongoing supportability

  • The script works great today
  • The script may not work great tomorrow
  • Plan for changes and updates