Certified: The Security+ Prepcast

In cybersecurity, time matters. The faster you can detect a threat, respond to an incident, or enforce a policy, the better your chances of staying ahead of attackers. But when teams are overwhelmed by manual tasks, spreadsheets, and ad hoc processes, even basic security actions can be delayed—or missed entirely. That’s where automation comes in. Automation transforms how organizations manage security by streamlining operations, improving accuracy, and enforcing standards at scale. In this episode, we begin our two-part series on the benefits of security automation by focusing on two of its most immediate payoffs: efficiency and time savings, and the enforcement of baseline configurations.
Let’s start with efficiency and time savings. One of the most visible benefits of automation is the ability to eliminate repetitive, manual tasks that eat up time and create room for human error. These tasks might include user provisioning, log analysis, patch deployment, policy enforcement, and incident response workflows.
By automating these activities, security teams can focus their attention on strategic tasks—like threat hunting, risk analysis, and improving defenses—rather than getting bogged down in routine operations. It’s about shifting effort from repetition to impact.
Let’s consider a practical example. An organization previously relied on manual processes to provision user accounts. Every time a new hire joined, someone had to create accounts in Active Directory, configure mailbox access, assign permissions, and send login credentials. This took between 30 and 60 minutes per user—and occasionally introduced errors, like missing group memberships or forgotten license assignments.
After deploying an identity automation solution, the company tied its H R system to the identity provider. Now, when a new hire is entered into H R, automation triggers the account creation, assigns the correct roles, and emails credentials to the user—all within seconds. What once took an hour per person now takes less than a minute, with near-zero errors.
Multiply that savings across hundreds of users per year, and the operational impact is huge—not just in terms of time saved, but in reduced helpdesk tickets, fewer access issues, and improved employee experience.
Automation also improves incident response. When a threat is detected, speed is everything. Manually reviewing logs, escalating to responders, and issuing containment actions can take hours—during which attackers may exfiltrate data or move laterally. Automated response systems can detect suspicious activity, block accounts, isolate endpoints, and generate alerts within seconds.
Here’s another real-world example. A financial services company integrates its Security Information and Event Management platform with its endpoint detection and response tool. When a high-severity alert is triggered—such as a known malware hash—the system automatically isolates the affected endpoint, opens a ticket, and sends a notification to the security team. The investigation can begin immediately, without waiting for human intervention. This automation cuts the average response time from over two hours to under five minutes.
And automation doesn’t just save time during emergencies. It also simplifies routine maintenance. Tasks like rotating passwords, applying patches, collecting audit logs, and deploying security updates can be scheduled and executed consistently—reducing the chance of mistakes or oversights. Fewer missed steps mean fewer vulnerabilities and fewer opportunities for attackers to exploit gaps in your defenses.
Now let’s move to the second benefit of security automation: enforcing baselines and standard configurations.
Security baselines define the minimum acceptable settings for systems, applications, and networks. They might include required software versions, disabled services, firewall rules, account lockout policies, or audit logging configurations. Applying these settings consistently across all assets is critical for maintaining a strong security posture—but without automation, it’s difficult to do reliably at scale.
Manual configuration is time-consuming, error-prone, and inconsistent. One server might have a logging policy applied correctly, while another is missing a crucial rule. One endpoint might be patched, while another is overlooked. Over time, this “configuration drift” introduces risk and weakens compliance.
Automation solves this by enforcing configuration baselines through policy and code. Tools like Group Policy, System Center Configuration Manager, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, and cloud-native policy engines can define and apply standard settings automatically—ensuring that every system starts in a secure state and stays there.
Let’s look at a real-world example. A healthcare provider deploys automation scripts that enforce Windows hardening baselines on all employee workstations. These scripts disable unnecessary services, configure firewall rules, apply encryption settings, and verify antivirus status. The scripts run weekly and log any changes or deviations. If a setting is modified manually or becomes noncompliant, the automation resets it to the approved standard. This keeps all endpoints aligned with policy and dramatically reduces audit findings.
Cloud environments also benefit from baseline enforcement. Many organizations use infrastructure-as-code templates to define virtual machine configurations, network settings, storage policies, and access controls. When a new resource is created, it is built according to the defined standard—no guesswork, no forgotten settings, and no ad hoc configurations.
For example, an e-commerce company uses AWS CloudFormation templates to deploy its servers. The templates specify security groups, operating system hardening scripts, and monitoring agents. If someone tries to spin up a resource outside of the template, it fails policy checks and is flagged. This approach ensures consistency across the environment and makes it easy to pass security reviews and compliance audits.
Another common use case is drift remediation. Automation tools can monitor system configurations in real time, detect changes from the baseline, and either notify administrators or automatically revert the change. This protects against unauthorized modifications, misconfigurations, and configuration errors caused by human oversight.
Automation also simplifies the rollout of new policies. Imagine needing to change the default password policy for all workstations—from an 8-character minimum to a 12-character minimum with complexity requirements. With automation, this policy change can be defined once and applied across every system, with logs to prove when and how it was enforced.
And of course, automation supports auditing and compliance. Whether you’re following NIST guidelines, the Center for Internet Security benchmarks, or industry-specific requirements like HIPAA or PCI DSS, automation provides evidence that baselines are applied and maintained. Reports can be generated automatically and shared with auditors to demonstrate continuous control.
To summarize, automation improves cybersecurity by reducing the time and effort required to maintain secure systems. It eliminates repetitive manual tasks, reduces human error, and accelerates incident response. At the same time, it enforces consistent security baselines and standard configurations—keeping systems aligned with policy, reducing risk, and simplifying audits. These benefits are not theoretical—they’re real, measurable improvements that every security team can achieve with the right tools and planning.
For the Security Plus exam, expect questions about the benefits of automation, how it supports security baselines, and how it reduces operational overhead. You may be asked to identify a task that should be automated or describe how drift detection and remediation support compliance. Review terms like configuration drift, policy enforcement, time-to-response, infrastructure-as-code, and baseline hardening—they’re all important for both the test and the field.
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