Security breaches aren’t something that occurs once a year. Recently, we can hear every day about some or other security breaches. Organizations are bound to take information security seriously, considering the amount of risk involved. An enterprise cannot put its entire business at risk by losing sensitive data to hackers. To tackle the cybersecurity challenges, enterprises have started investing in SecOps powered by the AIOps tools.

SecOps is a synergy between the IT operations and the security department of the organization. By merging the departments, it means the tools, resources, and technologies will be shared by both teams. Both teams will have a pre-defined workflow for boosting the service availability of software products. Some organizations have even taken a step ahead and started investing in DevSecOps (a synergy between developers, security, and operations experts).

With SecOps, organizations have embedded security into every step of software development. Software products will not be developed without the advice of security experts. On the other hand, security professionals will seek the advice of operations experts to remove vulnerabilities. Earlier, software developers used agile methodology to launch new products quickly. However, they ignored the security of products to meet the speed requirements. With SecOps, the speed of software deployment will not come at the cost of security.

SecOps sounds exciting and is the solution to achieve high service availability. However, not every enterprise succeeds in boosting service availability with SecOps processes. It is because the SecOps processes aren’t implemented the right way. One must be aware of the challenges faced during SecOps implementation. Let us discuss the common SecOps implementation challenges and how to overcome them.

Common SecOps implementation challenges and how to overcome them

Here are some of the common SecOps implementation challenges and ways to overcome them:

A large number of endpoints

In the past few years, the popularity of cloud-native environments has increased. Enterprises prefer the scalability and speed of cloud-native environments. The entire IT infrastructure can be hosted on a cloud platform. In 2023, employees are using smart devices to connect to cloud-native platforms. Earlier, security teams only had to manage the systems connected to the IT infrastructure. Now, they have to deal with IoT and other smart devices connected to cloud-native platforms. Since the number of endpoints has increased, security has become more complex.

Endpoint security is also affected due to the rising popularity of remote work culture. With the remote work culture, enterprises are promoting BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies. Security teams have a hard time offering service reliability on remote devices that have been connected to the company’s network for the first time. Every personal device connecting to the IT network creates a vulnerability. The private device might not be secure and create a blind spot in the organization’s security. The same happens when a private smart device is connected to the IT network of the enterprise.

If the endpoints aren’t secured even after SecOps implementation, there might be some problems. During SecOps implementation, enterprises fail to integrate the existing tools. For example, the enterprises might fail to integrate the EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) tools of the security and operations teams. As a result, teams cannot identify the endpoints connected to the main network and offer security. During SecOps implementation, enterprises must pay special attention to integrating existing security tools.

The issue with security analysis

The size of performance and monitoring data is continuously increasing in the IT sector. Companies have thousands of software systems, network devices, smart devices, and applications to monitor. Since every element of the IT infrastructure produces performance data, it is hard for the security teams to analyze it. Even when security and operations professionals come together, the manual security analysis is not feasible.

The main aim of SecOps implementation is to completely secure the IT network. However, SecOps teams do not know how to boost service reliability when security analysis is not up to the mark. Without security analysis, teams cannot separate the abnormal behavior of endpoints/systems from normal behavior. Not to forget, root cause analysis and event correlation will also suffer due to poor security analysis.

In large and complex environments, manual data analysis is not possible. While implementing SecOps, enterprises must focus on automated solutions for security analysis. Once the manual burden of security analysis is removed from the shoulders of SecOps teams, they can focus on the proactive security of the organization. AIOps based analysis platforms are the best when it comes to automated security analysis in large and complex IT environments.

Introducing a cultural shift

Most enterprises think that bringing security and operations teams together is everything about SecOps implementation. They forget that SecOps is a cultural shift for every employee. With SecOps, an enterprise is pledging to prioritize security in any situation. Most companies fail with SecOps implementation because they do not spread awareness. Let the employees know what the essential resources of the company are. Let them know that security will be the foremost priority in the future. Once employees embrace the cultural shift, SecOps implementation will be successful. Having a SecOps policy for the employees will also help.

Finding the right security talent

Since the number of endpoints and software systems has increased, the vulnerabilities have also increased. Security systems are generating alerts throughout the day. Unfortunately, security teams are already caught up with security analysis and cannot acknowledge the security alerts. In such a situation, the enterprise might think of hiring more security employees.

The need to increase the size of the SecOps team will occur continuously. As the enterprise scale, you might require a few more security employees. Since it is not feasible, SecOps implementation might fail badly. Luckily, organizations have automation solutions like an AIOps based analytics platform to do well with a limited SecOps team.

Conclusion

SecOps will enhance the organisation’s security only when it is implemented effectively. Enterprises must focus on bringing AIOps tools for security analysis and monitoring. It will reduce the pressure of manual labour from the SecOps employees. Also, enterprises must have a strict SecOps policy for employees. Implement SecOps now to become more secure!