Enterprises today contend with an increasing array of security threats and system vulnerabilities in addition to the mounting pressure to prioritize the security of their data, especially when it involves external actors and concerns about data privacy. Smaller organizations in a large variety of sectors, too, have to defend themselves from data breaches, hacking attempts, and ransomware attacks, albeit on a different scale. All in all, the landscape of cybersecurity threats today is expanding rather than shrinking, necessitating an investment into security operations on a hitherto unseen scale.
With the proliferation of security frameworks, technology-first approaches to cybersecurity, and rapid advancements in AI and machine learning, the idea that security today is all about advanced tools and automation dominates certain decision-making circles. Do we need humans, with their error-prone ways, when AI can detect threats and do the job of cleaning up incidents? This is an attractive proposition to cling to, promising safety and protection if only the right tool or the most advanced AI-powered framework could be found. Yet, it is also a misconception: humans are indispensable parts of a robust security posture whose knowledge and problem-solving skills cannot be replaced by machines (at least not yet).
Human intuition, decision-making, and collaboration are just as crucial for the success of security initiatives as are sophisticated tools like SIEM and SecOps platforms. They complement each other rather than being at odds, so neither should be replaced by the other. Cybersecurity defenses are the strongest when they combine human talent and reasoning with advanced algorithms to do the brunt of the work.
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The Role of Humans in Cybersecurity
Human psychology is at the core of many cyber attack schemes. Many people have a Hollywood-inspired image in their heads of a hooded hacker breaking encryptions or brute-forcing passwords while whispering raspily, “I’m in.” Yet, the reality is usually far more mundane.
Security vulnerabilities that result in a data breach or a leak stem from humans who make mistakes, overshare sensitive information online, including on social media, trust the wrong people, or simply forget to log out on a public computer. Phishing attacks and social engineering all exploit the human tendency to trust coupled with the increasing difficulty of processing vast amounts of information directed at them from all sides, and discerning true from false.
What becomes key for organizations, then, is cybersecurity education and user awareness training that iterates and reiterates the principles of safeguarding data, recognizing appropriate contexts to share or not share, teaching good password hygiene, implementing multifactor authentication for devices, and so on. Putting guardrails in place in the form of access controls and user behavior analytics also helps identify additional avenues for education and exposes potential security gaps to be addressed.
Humans aren’t a problem to eliminate from the cybersecurity big picture but instead an indispensable element of it whose weaknesses need to be noted and whose many strengths need to be given the support to work to their full potential. Any enterprise’s IT department has stories of human oversight or merely a hunch, a twinge of intuition averting a breach. Many deal with a fallout of the opposite, where humans were powerless to stop one despite their best efforts, lacking the tools or supports to prevent a technologically savvy attack. Staying at the cutting edge of technology and systems sets an organization for success, with humans at the helm being their best bet to lead a robust security operations team.
Understanding SecOps
Security Operations, or SecOps, bring together the human talent across IT and security, pairing highly trained professionals with the tools to champion cybersecurity at an organizational level, taking into account the needs, requirements, and challenges of all divisions. SecOps emphasizes a collaborative approach that is most effective when allowed to be cross-functional, empowering the team to liaise with department heads across the organization, including those that do not deal with security directly.
An efficient and empowered SecOps team focuses on the continuous monitoring of security threats and the security posture of an organization. Not only do they respond to emerging threats, patch existing vulnerabilities, and work to prevent future ones, but they also actively participate in the ongoing development of new systems, applications, and endpoints to ensure the security principles are considered without hindering the speed or cost-effectiveness of operations. Cross-team collaboration is essential here, and fostering it becomes one of SecOps’ key mandates.
Humans powering a SecOps team are vital for its success. No matter how advanced the tools and the algorithms in the SecOps toolkit, they alone cannot as of yet emulate teamwork, knowledge sharing, and continuous upskilling of humans. The rapid decision-making when it’s time to put all hands on deck may mean the difference between a costly security incident or a mere blip on the SecOps dashboard dealt with quickly and confidently, albeit with the help of security frameworks and solutions such as SIEM.
The Role of SIEM in Cyber Defense
Security Information and Event Management, or SIEM, is an approach to collecting and correlating security data from multiple sources, making it available for analysis and action in a centralized hub in a Security Operations Center (SOC). SIEM platforms make extensive use of cutting-edge technology, including AI, machine learning, and complex correlation rules to detect potential and emergent threats, release alerts, and prioritize them in the order of severity.
In a collaboration between human and machine, SIEM is indispensable for a SOC operator looking to make sense of the vast ocean of data that’s available to them. In turn, the SOC operator is indispensable to SIEM since its powers are limited without human oversight. The rate of false positives, lack of context to security alerts, and emerging alert fatigue are all shortcomings of SIEM that can be remediated by human input. SIEM is an excellent case for human-centered cybersecurity system design: Analysts are key interpreters of SIEM outputs that are meaningless without human judgment about when and how to act on them appropriately.
Security Tools That Empower People
The current shift in cybersecurity tools moves towards emphasising the collaboration between humans and technology in their user-centric design. The recognition of distinctly human capabilities of reasoning, problem-solving, and creativity in response to cyber threats leads to the development of tools that use automation and AI to enhance, rather than replace, these capabilities.
Tools and approaches that support human-led investigations and decision-making as an integral part of their security algorithm have common components and principles:
- In-depth user behavior analytics survey the spectrum of user behavior within an organization’s networks and systems to discern patterns and flag potential deviations to human analysts.
- SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) tools automate the execution of security-related tasks and integrate threat intelligence to reduce the burden of lower-priority tasks on human teams, freeing them for more complex problem-solving.
- Education and training modules recognize the need for continuous knowledge refreshers to build security awareness and champion the organizational culture of putting cybersecurity principles first.
Conclusion
An exemplary relationship between people and technology in cybersecurity is that of collaboration and symbiosis. Imperfect humans make perfect pilots for cybersecurity tools—even the most state-of-the-art solutions cannot reach their full potential without talented human teams taking care of their integration, customization, output analysis, and iteration on best practices. Human-centered cybersecurity design plays to all of their strengths, enabling strong tools to empower strong teams and contribute to a robust and resilient security posture. The companies investing equitably in both today stand to benefit the most in the long term.
