A war on too many fronts
IT teams face challenges from every which way. Tides of new technology to vet and consider; increasingly complex and sophisticated security threats; an explosion of data volume; users connecting to systems from a mix of devices across the globe; and strict compliance regulations, standards, and certifications to indicate you can do it all.
Last year alone, Gartner indicated that 70% of large businesses had over 70 simultaneous intelligent automation projects either adhering to strict governance or suffering from significant instability. When “everyone wants some of that AI”, IT teams need their own arsenal of intelligent solutions to manage the deluge faster than the slop can be added to the heap. Specifically, what solutions exist for IT teams?
Agentic and RPA for Support and Service Desks
A predominantly remote workforce spurred on a 35% increase in IT ticket volume. While common tasks like password resets, account provisioning, software installation, and data access became more difficult, intelligent solutions like robotic process automation (RPA) software – and its smarter twin, agentic AI – exist to turn challenge into advantage.
Consider how bots and automation scripts might:
- Create or revoke accounts and permissions across systems, with proper logging for audit trail.
- Handle password reset tickets by interfacing with identity management systems.
- Remotely deploy software packages and patches, ensuring consistency and recording the changes.
- Watch for server or network alerts and proactively create incident tickets with relevant data.
- Read incoming helpdesk emails or tickets, determine the issue category and urgency, then assign it to the appropriate team or trigger an automated response for known issues.
Automating Infrastructure Management and Cloud
When networks and resources span on-premise data centers or multiple clouds with virtual machines, containers, network devices, and applications – manually coordinating changes, documenting configurations, and watching for suspicious connections becomes inefficient, and leaves room for error.
KeyMark Cloud utilizes several solutions like behavior ID, resource tracking, and real-time data visualization to help us monitor enterprise resources on your behalf.
In addition to cloud-managed services, simple RPA scripts and machine learning can make all the difference in doing the more mundane and routine activities, enabling IT teams to divert attention to continued resource vetting and investment.
Intelligent data automation can improve operations to:
- Detect anomalies in infrastructure logs
- Pinpoint root causes of incidents
- Remediate issues without human intervention
- Perform routine backups, maintenance, and monitoring for vulnerabilities
- Store and provide version control for important infrastructure documents
- Provide full audit histories on all documentation and changes
Incident Response and Threat Monitoring Automation
In a market guide to security orchestration, automation, and response by Gartner, staffing shortages, alertness fatigue, and rising threat sophistication have all been contributors to the rapid adoption of automation software that helps security teams manage and mitigate nefarious activities.
The ROI of said automation has been absolutely significant, with IBM reporting more than a 100% decrease in breach costs for organizations with automation investments in threat monitoring and response.
Intelligent data automation systems elevate access to data for IT professionals and can help teams automate some decision making based on rules-based or goal-based scripting for tasks. Here are some examples of where systems like RPA, Machine Learning, and AI can really shine.
- Round-up alerts from systems including firewalls, intrusion detection, endpoint security, and more.
- Rate the urgency of alerts or enrich alerts with additional data from across systems
- Execute predefined responses like disabling accounts, opening investigations, or isolating devices from the network.
- Automate alerts so that no critical need goes unseen or ignored.
Audit, Compliance, and Certification Support
Enterprises today must adhere to numerous frameworks and regulations to prove they mean business about security, including ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO/IEC 42001 — which enforces ethics, security, and privacy standards for AI systems. These certifications demand constant monitoring, documentation, and frequent audits.
One major complaint we often hear is that the time and resources required to achieve and maintain changing regulatory standards are too much, particularly for smaller-scale IT teams.
Compliance-as-Code is a current trend where compliance requirements can be codified into automation scripts and bots that continuously check internal systems against regulations. Gartner predicts that by next year, over 70% of enterprises will have integrated compliance-as-code automation to continuously enforce and validate compliance, improving risk management, and reducing audit preparation time.
Even where resource limitations might hinder full compliance-as-code capabilities, organizations can still wield a combination of solutions to achieve zero trust standards. Solutions that provide automated document management, access logs, and task management consistently enforce access controls, authenticate users, track user activity, and log actions — even across hybrid or cloud environments.
Further use-cases of today’s available automation software include enforcing data and document retention policies with auto-deletion, as well as, providing support for data processing in highly regulated industries like Healthcare and Financial Services by integrating regulatory requirements in intelligent capture technology.
