Category Archives: Automation

In 2023, mechanical engineering education will take a new turn as automation and robotics combine

The field of mechanical engineering became more established as a means of creating, managing, and maintaining equipment throughout the first two industrial revolutions. In general, its core field of knowledge expanded to encompass manufacturing, materials, mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and machine design. It is both the forerunner and the recipient of other engineering forms. They will keep enriching it by coming up with, designing, constructing, and operating increasingly advanced gear with increased complexity, flexibility, connectedness, and automation.

In comparison to prior industrial revolutions, the fourth industrial revolution is currently significantly increasing the multidisciplinary nature of this corpus of knowledge. These revolutions core technologies include AI and ML, IoT, Robots and Cobots, Big Data, 5G, Augmented and Virtual Reality, and 3D and 4D printing, among others.

A portion of the boring, risky, and unclean activities are taken over by machines, which also assist in increasing productivity and service levels. They simplify or change our job, but they also develop new types of experiences, surroundings, enterprises, and even societal structures, which grow and change our culture. Machines have been a part of numerous civilisations from the beginning of time. Without the aid of various tools and equipment, their monuments, textiles, and handicrafts would not have been feasible. One of the sixty-four acknowledged art forms in prehistoric India was the understanding of tools and machines. China was undoubtedly the world leader in manufacturing machines up to the fourteenth century.

Since prehistoric times, machines have been equipped with automation systems. The first self-operating devices were possibly traps used to catch games. Some examples of early autonomous devices are the Chinese south-pointing chariot, Persian windmill, and Egyptian water clock. In Alexandria, active teaching and research projects focused on automatic devices from the third century BC. Heros Pneumatics, which had various inventive design descriptions, became a key source for the creation of automated machines.

During the Middle Ages, the Arab world produced several treatises on machine design, building on this basis. The Chinese and the Japanese created some fascinating self-operating devices more than a thousand years ago for entertainment and other uses. These machines were created to automatically carry out a sequence of actions.

In the fifteenth century, the machine renaissance began in Italy and quickly expanded throughout the rest of Europe. The printing press made several publications on machine design widely available. The evolution of hydraulics was amazing. Numerous inventive residential appliances, such as fountains and fanning mechanisms, as well as commercial appliances, including saws, wineries, fabric washing, and wheat mills, were also created. Steam energy, the machine tool industry, and mechanized industries defined the first industrial revolution, which began in the UK in the eighteenth century.

To specify the weaving of patterns and images, the Jacquard loom, developed in 1802, utilised punched cards. The internal combustion engine, electricity, gas, communication technologies, control systems, and factories with assembly lines driven by electricity were all part of the second industrial revolution that occurred in the next century. Innovative mechanisms, a variety of energy sources, and electromechanical devices for automation and industrial process control were used to create several new machines with increased capacity and power.

Microelectronics, digital computers, and automation based on programmable controllers were the catalysts for the third industrial revolution. Mechatronic systems have now begun to develop from machine systems. The machine systems improved in sophistication, efficiency, size, and weight, while the control mechanisms got quicker, more dependable, and more adaptable. Fusions between the physical, cyber, and biological worlds, as well as intelligent automation, are characteristics of the current fourth industrial revolution.

At Ford, the term automation was first used in 1953. Nowadays, the benefits of industrial automation go far beyond the reduction of labour costs and include several advantages like improved designs, simpler capacity expansion, decreased inventory, consistency in quality, improved downtime, decreased setup time and transition costs, improved preventive maintenance, extended equipment life, increased safety, simpler failure detection and rectification, flexible products, lower energy consumption, etc.

Automation engineers employ a variety of technologies to optimize, simplify, and automate manufacturing, mining, power generating, warehousing, and other activities. Robotics and industrial automation are anticipated to be embraced by more than 60% of businesses, according to the World Economic Forums 2020 study on the Future of Jobs.

According to a Global Survey from 2021, automation is being tested by organizations in 70% of the worlds respondents countries. It estimates that $37 trillion will be produced by smart manufacturing by 2025. The Global Warehouse Automation Market is expected to reach more than 64 billion USD by 2030, according to research from 2022 Acumen Research and Consulting.

Process automation and factory automation are two concepts that collectively make up industrial automation. Although the idea of a digital computer managing a production facility first surfaced in 1948, real applications didnt become accessible for another ten years. AI-based dynamic reasoning is mixed with static reasoning in automation software. According to an estimate by Maximize Industry Research, the automated process control market would likely reach or surpass 27 billion USD by 2027.

Tetsuro Mori first used the word mechatronics in 1969, in the early stages of the third industrial revolution. Robots and mechatronic systems have increasingly become necessary parts of automated manufacturing and logistical systems. The robot is a word that originated in Czech and was first used in a play in 1923. Industrial robots can be stationary or mobile. Unimate, the first industrial robot installed by a firm, was created by General Motors in 1961. In 1970, machine vision was also used for the first time in an industrial context. Numerous industrial robots were developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Robots are employed for greater accuracy and quality work as well as to aid or replace human operators in risky, unpleasant, and boring tasks. Construction, agriculture, defence, healthcare, infrastructure, retail, leisure and entertainment, law enforcement, and other industries are all impacted by the uses of robotics and mechatronics, which reach well beyond the industrial and logistical sectors. According to a forecast from Market Research Future from 2022, the entire robotics market will surpass 214 billion USD by 2030 as a result of the availability of affordable and energy-efficient robots.

The Business Research Company predicted that the market for machine vision will likely surpass 18 billion USD by 2026 in a research from 2022. A Reportlinker analysis from 2022 predicts that by 2028, the worldwide market for AI in manufacturing will exceed 21 billion USD.

The new manufacturing facility is evolving into an intelligent network of technologies that allows for the autonomous management of buildings, equipment, and logistical chains with a minimum of human involvement. The ability to track operations at all levels and collect pertinent data from equipment and assets in real-time, thanks to industrial IoT, makes activities completely transparent across the production chain. Effective insights on preventative maintenance, asset utilization, worker and asset safety, lowering energy and material requirements, lowering downtime, etc., may be produced by a strong data analytics environment.

According to Statista, the Industrial IoT market will reach more than USD 1.1 trillion by 2028. Digital twins are being developed and regularly examined throughout their life cycles using real-time data as well as other sources. By a survey by 2921 Verified Market Research, the digital twin market is anticipated to reach more than 108 billion USD by 2028. A recent report claims that the engineering services outsourcing (ESO) sector has experienced a paradigm shift from core engineering services to embedded engineering solutions that combine automation, robotics, AI, ML, analytics, IoT, etc. The global ESO market is anticipated to reach more than USD 9 trillion in 2030.

This exponential expansion has enormous potential for Indian businesses, which will open up several employment options for our engineering graduates with the necessary skills. Students should learn the concepts and methods of machine design, process control, mechatronics, cyber-physical systems, robotics, and artificial intelligence to be prepared to work in this field. They should also be able to design, implement, and manage automation systems. We cannot change our manufacturing facilities with automation and robots and achieve the goals of Make-in-India, Atma-Nirbhar Bharat, and Developed India.

Both in India and abroad, there will likely be a high need for positions in automation and robots. Numerous significant Indian industrial equipment, machinery, and car manufacturers should quickly take advantage of the rapidly growing worldwide demand for robotics and mechatronic systems to invest heavily in the development and manufacture of automation tools and robots. Interdisciplinarity and systems thinking, along with technical skills, lifelong learning, complex problem solving, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, and the capacity to work in multidisciplinary teams, are critical competencies for engineers, given that Industry 4.0 is about the fusion of various diverse technologies.

By including several such intriguing fusions in their engineering courses, certain Indian engineering institutes are successfully adapting to the situation.

Edited by Prakriti Arora

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In 2023, Mechanical Engineering Education Will Take A New Turn As Automation And Robotics Combine - Inventiva

MORRISON, Ill. When U.S. Congresswoman Cheri Bustos visited the Morrison Institute of Technology five years ago, she was impressed with its engineering technology and network administration programs.

So much so, that when it came time for her current, and what will be her final, Heartland Tour across northwest and central Illinois to present federally funded checks for local projects, Morrison Tech was on her list.

Bustos, a Democrat representing Illinois 17th District, on Wednesday presented school officials with $1.5 million that will help launch a new specialization in its engineering technology program focusing on automation and process control systems.

Providing a grant to Morrison Tech was a top-of-mind goal for Bustos, who during her visit related to school officials the impression the school made on her during her previous tour.

We were so impressed with what youre doing and that you partner with other businesses, she said. This rose to the top. And this is one of the bigger grants. Were really, really happy that we were able to help with this and really, really proud of everything youre doing for the next generation.

The skills learned by students in the automation and process control systems program will support manufacturers who rely on automation or intelligent systems for their operations and will help support companies looking to add this capability.

For manufacturers, obstacles to integrating automated processes include the initial cost of automation, locating the skilled workers needed to design, implement, and maintain automated systems, and the expertise and resources needed to support the transition, school officials said. Providing this workforce development will be key to maintaining and growing local, regional, and statewide manufacturing, they said.

The program will add topics in electricity, hydraulics, programmable logic controllers, and process automation to a core of general studies and engineering coursework. It also will add to the advanced capabilities of the Morrison Institute of Technologys Innovation Center and enhance manufacturing support through expansion of business services, school officials said.

The current economic uncertainty makes this the ideal time to strategically prepare for the future needs of industry, Morrison Tech President Chris Scott said. This is a great opportunity to invest in the future workforce of the region and embrace tomorrows future today.

Students can now enroll for the new specialization, which begins in fall 2023, by visiting the Morrison Tech website at https://www.morrisontech.edu/. The first class will graduate in May 2025.

Morrison Institute of Technologys history goes back to its founding nearly 50 years ago, when in 1973, it acquired the assets of the Institute of Drafting and Technology that had been located in downtown Morrison. Richard Parkinson, Arlinn Rambo, and Dr. Albert Odey were key to the colleges founding and organization.

Since that time, the Morrison Institute of Technology has offered various degrees in engineering technology. The college was first authorized by the state of Illinois to grant an associate in technology degree in 1973; it became a non-profit private college in 1977. In the 1980s, the school added an apartment-style dormitory.

Also at that time, computer-aided design revolutionized drafting and drafting instruction. That computer technology ultimately led to the addition of the network administration program in 2003. In 2007, the college added a new administration wing, an auditorium, and the networking lab space.

The growth of prototyping technologies also impacted instruction heavily in the 2000s and led to the construction of the Innovation Center in 2018.

Expanding lab and student opportunities, applied technical education, and assuming a role as a leader of engineering technology and regional development characterizes the modern Morrison Institute of Technology, said Scott Connelly, Morrison Techs vice president of academic affairs.

He explained that automation has been a watchword in manufacturing for decades, but recent years have seen rapid expansion in this area. The technology has become cost effective, and provides solutions to manufacturing problems in the production of delicate products, those that require a sterile production environment, and helps to maximize a companys labor resources. Over recent years several area manufacturers have expressed interest in a program that addresses automation and process controls, he said.

There is an increasing relevance of automation. Theyve talked about automation for decades, Connelly said. But really the technology has improved to the point, especially the IT technology, the networking technology type of technology, where it is cost effective to implement these things even for small and mid-sized companies.

The $1.5 million grant will go toward the new specializations capital costs.

The equipment and lab space is a big capital cost, he said. Thats one of the roadblocks to why we havent launched previously.

Black Hawk Hills Regional Council and Whiteside County Economic Development officials let the school know about grant funding available for local projects, so they wrote a grant proposal in spring 2021 for Bustos and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin. The money will come to the school through the Office of Housing and Urban Development.

He also said Morrison Tech will be adding staff members, and is going to be seeking to hire someone with an industry and/or academic background, as well as support staff members as they add to the Innovation Center.

The goal there is to bring the public onto the campus to use the Innovation Center and participate in the Made @ Morrison program, in which they can make a mallet, laser-cut signs or a clock, and other activities.

We have one director who manages and oversees it, and were going to have to add some support for him, he said.

Along with the grant award to Morrison Tech, Bustos also distributed $750,000 to the YMCA of Rock River Valley in Rockford, Illinois; $300,000 to Rosecrance Freeport; and $4.5 million to the Peoria Ag Lab, with funds secured through the Community Project Funding process. This year, The New York Times reported Bustos was the top House Democrat in bringing home federal community project funding for the first year of the process.

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PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE: Morrison Tech lands grant to launch automation, process control specialization - Clinton Herald

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Insights on the Sensing Cable Global Market to 2027 - Digitization and Automation of Oil and Gas Technology Presents Opportunities -...

Commentary

Proponents of a higher minimum wage believe it would reduce poverty, while economists believe it would reduce employment. Meanwhile, rising labor costs are driving automation to make workers redundant.

On Aug. 16, President Joe Biden signed the $700 billion-plusInflation Reduction Act. Some experts believe itwill not help curb inflation, whereas others believe it will actually worsen things. The inflation, which largely stems from government spending on the COVID-19 pandemic, cannot be constrained by additional spending or legislation related to wages. The job market is in flux. Companies are laying off workers, but Democrats in various parts of the country still call for an increase in the minimum wage.

In early 2021, the Raise the Wage Actwas introduced by Democrat congressional representatives. It called for a $15 minimum wage and to eliminate the separate, lower minimum wage for tipped workers. On April 27,2021, the White House issued an executive order raising the minimum wage for government contractors to $15 an hour, suggesting that a higher minimum wage would help the economy, reduce poverty, increase productivity and efficiency, generate higher quality work, and reduce turnover and absenteeism.

If it were true that raising the minimum wage would improve corporate profits through increased productivity and the other benefits outlined by the White House statement, companies would have raised the minimum wage long ago, irrespective of legislation.

As for tipped workers, studies have found that raising tipped workersminimum wage would put waiters and waitresses out of a job. Raising the tipped minimum wage from $2.13 an hour to the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 would nearly triple the cost of employment.To remain in business, restaurants would have to either pass this cost on to customers in the form of higher prices or reduce their costs by firing workers. Either way, raising the wage would reduce jobs because the higher prices would decrease the number of meals sold in restaurants.

Those who support a higher minimum wage cite a study by CNBC and MIT, which determined that some families could not live on a $15 minimum wage. And while this is most likely true, it would also have been true in 2019 when the minimum was lower.

Over 44 percent of those earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 are 16 to 24 years of age. This demographic is much less likely to be supporting a family. Studies have also determined that only 10 percent of minimum wage earners are in single-family households. About 67.1 percent are part-time workers, and the vast majority are second and third-wage earners in families that earn $50,000 per year.

Proponents of a higher minimum wage believe that raising the minimum wage would alleviate poverty. However, many economists claim that increasing the minimum wage would drive up costs and reduce profitability, forcing small employers out of the market or motivating companies to automate. A great deal of academic research, as well as economists at the Federal Reserve Board and the University of California-Irvine, conclude that increasing the minimum wage would reduce employment.

Automation has already replaced many jobs over the past two decades. Workers at Blockbuster were replaced by Redbox and Netflix. Parking lots and toll booths are increasingly unmanned. Grocery stores and retailers are shifting to self-service checkouts. Airports have self-service check-in kiosks as well.

Mcdonalds in most of Asia has eliminated staff by implementing a kiosk system, and U.S. national hamburger chain White Castle is trying out robotic fry cooks in some of its restaurants.

Customer service chatbots are also eliminating jobs in the service field. Sectors that are expected to lose a tremendous number of jobs to automation over the next few years include data entry, customer service, couriers and delivery services, market research, proofreading, and manufacturing.

In a 2015 report, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco stated that the overall body of recent evidence suggests that the most credible conclusion is a higher minimum wage results in some job loss for the least-skilled workers. The least skilled jobs are the ones most easily automated.

As companies face rising costs due to inflation and declining sales, a forced increase in the minimum wage may be the impetus that motivates them to lay off staff or invest in robotic technology. Either way, the lowest-paid workers in our economy will be the most affected.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Antonio Graceffo, Ph.D., has spent more than 20 years in Asia. He is a graduate of the Shanghai University of Sport and holds a China-MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Graceffo works as an economics professor and China economic analyst, writing for various international media. Some of his books on China include "Beyond the Belt and Road: Chinas Global Economic Expansion" and "A Short Course on the Chinese Economy."

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Raising the Minimum Wage Leads to Job Cuts, Accelerates Automation - The Epoch Times

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are trying to peer into a crystal ball and see if AI-enabled business automation will help or hurt the workforce. Through its search, the nonprofit institutions are learning about a range of outcomes from optimistic to pessimistic.

AI-enabled automation may create new jobs and industries, but it may also arrive too quickly for the workforce to adjust, leading to job losses and business disruptions.

The "incentives for businesses are to use automation to reduce the cost of labor, period," said Laura Tyson, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, during a National Academies' Automation and the U.S. Workforce Committee meeting this month.

Co-chairing the nine-member committee is Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and Tom Mitchell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he founded the machine learning department. The committee is aiming to complete the report by July 2023.

Tyson's critical point weighed against an optimistic outlook by one of the committee's invited speakers, Sebastian Thrun -- chairman and co-founder of learning provider Udacity Inc. -- who also appeared before the committee.

Some 200 years ago, about 80% of the population worked in farming; today it's less than 2%, Thrun said. That transition occurred due to advances in farming machinery, but it "didn't render all of us unemployed," he said. "Instead, we came up with new jobs like airline pilot or massage therapist or TV anchor."

"As we free humanity from repetitive work and give these tasks to machines, I envision that we become more creative and move faster as a society, and we will all be better off," Thurn said.

But Tyson said it's unclear what these new jobs will be. "Do we know what skills need to be taught?" she asked. "And how do we do that?"

Charles Isbell, dean of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that the changes caused by business automation might come too fast for workforces to adjust.

"In other words, our problems are exponential, and most of our solutions are linear," he said.

But Isbell also indicated that rapid changes in education are possible. Georgia Tech now has 12,000 students in its online degree program in computer sciences. The school will be responsible for around one-fifth to one-sixth of computer science graduates in the nation, something it has accomplished in about eight years, he said.

Our problems are exponential, and most of our solutions are linear. Charles IsbellDean of College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

James Manyika -- senior vice president of technology and society at Google and senior partner emeritus at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. -- whose job is to look at the impacts of technology on society, said automation would take some jobs. "At the same time, we will also see jobs gained" due to new occupations, he said.

But more significantly, Manyika said business automation could change jobs for about 60% of occupations. Those are jobs where about a third of the work done by a worker can now be automated.

"For the U.S., we think over time that there will actually be more jobs gained than lost," Manyika said, but getting there depends on continued economic growth and growth in labor demand.

However, Manyika also cautioned the wage effects of automation. In some cases where automation complements an occupation, he said productivity increases, "and good things happen" for the worker and employer. But for workers with commoditized skills, automation may put pressure on their wages, he added.

Patrick Thibodeau covers HCM and ERP technologies for TechTarget Editorial. He's worked for more than two decades as an enterprise IT reporter.

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Study to discover effects of business automation on jobs - TechTarget

In a bid to remain competitive among the growing number of workplace chat apps out there, Slack today announced the launch of new automation features designed to make workflows more shareable and discoverable. An expansion of the Workflow Builder tool Slack launched in 2019, the new capabilities allow users to send workflows to other Slack users and leverage if-then statements to create more sophisticated flows.

Slacks increased investment in automation comes as no-code development tools, which let users build apps and pipelines without having to learn programming, grow in popularity. Nearly 60% of all custom apps including automations are now built outside the IT department, according to a survey by 451 Research and FileMaker. Of those, 30% are built by employees with either limited or no technical development skills, the survey found.

The software-as-a-service model has completely changed the way people work, and now companies are running on so many tools and services that the average employee is left to make sense of it all, meaning their day-to-day isnt slowing down or becoming less noisy, Slack SVP of product management Steve Wood told me in an email interview. We believe that low-code and no-code automation is the key to changing that Thats why we completely rebuilt and re-engineered our platform last year so that everyone has the tools they need when they need them to make work simpler and more productive regardless of their technical experience or coding proficiency. In fact, 80% of those who use Workflow Builder are nontechnical, so its really exciting to see that were creating a movement of builders across all Slack users.

In the coming months, Slack users will be able to send workflows as links in channels and direct messages by copying and pasting the corresponding links and sharing them across Slack. Each workflow link will expand with a rich preview, allowing users to run the workflow with a click.

Image Credits: Slack

In more significant news, early next year, Workflow Builder will gain support for conditional logic, or if-then statements that send users down different paths based on how they respond to a workflow. For example, in a workflow designed for expense reporting, a Slack user could build in conditional logic to allow a manager to click approve or deny buttons that trigger messages to the reports submitter. Previously, this sort of action wouldve required creating multiple workflows.

Also early next year, Slack will expand its library of Workflow Builder steps with tasks like automatically creating channels and alerting users once they start a workflow and providing integrations for additional third-party apps and tools. More will be revealed at Salesforces Dreamforce conference in late September, Wood said.

Our goal is that Slack really begins to work for you and supercharges your productivity, and our platform is the transformative piece in doing that. Workflow Builder is at the center of it all, and these features are the next natural piece in how were drastically removing the friction to automate, so users can have more impact in Slack, Wood said. Looking more broadly, employees today are under more pressure than ever to get work done and businesses too are under pressure to control costs, so we have an exciting opportunity to apply automation in a way that improves efficiency and productivity while making work more pleasant and productive for everyone.

I took the opportunity with Wood to chat about Slacks general trajectory over a year into the acquisition. Revenue, he asserted, is strong Slack brought in $381 million in Q2 2022 as the number of customers spending more than $100,000 grew by over 40% year over year. And Salesforce remains committed to more closely aligning the platform with its broader portfolio, he said.

Were working to bring Slack even closer to every Salesforce cloud product. Workflow Builder is one of the key functionalities Slack offers to power integrations across Salesforces Customer 360. For example, anyone who uses Salesforce can use Workflow Builder to create and customize workflows that flag and distribute leads or generate proposals or contracts, Wood said. These features are bringing the power of Slack automation closer to the Salesforce ecosystem to create even more value for customers to thrive in todays work environment.

Certainly, its not difficult to imagine how Workflow Builder could expand across Salesforces cloud offerings in the future. In tandem with the recently launched Salesforce Platform for Slack, the low-code software development toolkit for Salesforce developers to build custom Slack apps, Salesforce indeed appears to be making inroads toward properly marrying Slack with its broader, sprawling product family.

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Slack gains new automation features, including conditional logic for workflows - TechCrunch

Youd be surprised to know that the average cost of a data breach starts from $3.92 million majorly acquired by small and medium-scale enterprises. As a matter of fact, small-scale enterprises are victims of more than 43% of data breaches yearly, primarily due to outdated software delivery holds.

As per a recent Gartner study, Automating security and compliance into the business pipeline is the primary step for tool modernization.

Therefore, if businesses are looking to digitally transform and modernize their software delivery, its crucial not to overlook security and compliance. The biggest drivers of software and app security include agile software development process, automated ecosystem, and integrated modern technologies running on the stable dataflow.

According to Googles DevOps report 2021, automated cloud technology is responsible for any businesss scalable operational and technological performance.

It has also been mentioned that businesses that integrate automated security practices throughout their developmental process are 1.5 times more likely to meet their organizational goals. This determines everything around security and compliance revolves around automation.

Thats what this article talks about; here we will address concerns around business security automation, security automation benefits and applications, and how businesses can leverage automated technologies to secure proof their processes.

So lets begin;

Security automation is the process of automating tasks including both incident detection and response and administrative duties. In simple terms, it is a machine-based execution of security actions that can detect, investigate, and counter cyber threats with and without human intervention.

Automation for security and compliance benefits industries of every scale and size, especially ground enterprises. Automation security is based on the concept of zero trust security to help manage enterprise cyber risk. Here, instead of implicitly trusting internal systems and users, zero trust security denies or approves any request on a case-by-case basis.

If we keep the security factor aside, the global automation market still stands strong and is expected to reach the market value of $265 billion by 2025.

This is why businesses are enhancing IT process security automation to modernize and validate compliance. If you put the automation business demand in numbers in terms of security and compliance, the SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response) market size is projected to grow from an estimated value of $1.1billion in 2022 to $2.3 billion in 2027 at a CAGR of 15.8% in the period of six years.

Now, what comes under security automation besides protection?

Business security automation has the potential to identify future potential threats and prioritize and triage alerts as they emerge. The primary goal of automation use in security is to enhance agility and increase incident response. In order to do so, following the significant activities performed under the automation security process:

This flowchart helps with robotic process automation security based on a sustainable zero trust strategy.

Lets see why your business needs security automation for cybersecurity alerts.

Also, check out how businesses can maintain cybersecurity in the age of IoT.

In todays digital ecosystem, security automation is the only firewall that eliminates the risks of a data breach, strengthens the overall compliance architecture, and automates standard security processes. Why else do you need security automation?

Security workflow automation automatically eliminates common security alerts so SecOps (Security Operations) can focus on the actual schedule. This way, the security policy compliance systems do not have to spend their time on every alert. Heres how businesses use automation security:

Often, developers struggle to comply with a challenging security system to run and authenticate. It also becomes difficult for other IT professionals to understand every incoming security alert that requires a quick response.

Security automation can help by automatically stopping the variance between systems and teams. It transforms and constructs every security alert based on different team priorities. The professionals just have to follow the instructions to drive the operation smoothly.

Network security automation makes business operations more efficient by prioritizing actions from incoming threats and managing common cyber attacks automatedly in a set timer.

Many such tasks are organized automatically by business security automation software systems that require no or less human intervention. With time, these systems get intelligent and become quick in identifying threats.

Automation used in security analyzes the n-number of incoming risks that can be eliminated automatically with a set course of action. The automation security process detects threats such as phishing attacks and malware faster and alerts its security operation in real-time without any manual interference.

Security alert fatigue is known to be a dangerous and potent threat to businesses for cybersecurity. This happens when the security system receives massive notifications, making it challenging to detect the real danger. It numbs the process of cyber alert, which is when automation security comes to use.

Security automation eliminates the most common notifications and attacks while only alerting the systems in case of critical errors.

Businesses frequently deploy software applications to make the process more effective. Here, security automation offers high-end security throughout the development process. It determines potential security threats that can be addressed and fixed during the process.

Speaking of software and app development, you would also want to read: Android vs. iOS: which platform is more secure in 2022.

The business security automation benefits also include centralized security management and ticket enrichment. The process consists of various algorithms and practices to incorporate remediation, ensuring security and compliance using automated systems, tools, and software.

Speaking of automation tools, here are the examples of the most commonly used automation security and compliance tools by businesses

With the use of APIs and automation tools, your business can link standalone security solutions together, allowing centralized monitoring and management and enhancing sharing of data threats across your entire security infrastructure. To help you with the process, the following are the three categories of security automation tools that automate your security architecture and strategy.

RPA technology is known to automate low-level processes that do not require intelligent analysis. RPA solutions are usually based on the concept of software robots that use keyboard and mouse commands to automate operations on virtualized computer systems and devices.

Here are a few examples of automation security tasks that businesses can perform using RPA:

The only downside of using RPA is that it performs only rudimentary tasks. It does not collaborate with security tools and cannot imply complex reasoning or analysis to guide its actions.

You can also check out the applications and benefits of RPA in the insurance sector, healthcare sector, and finance sector.

SOAR systems are typically a stack of solutions that allow businesses to collect data on security threats and respond to security incidents accordingly without any manual interference. As explained by Gartner, this SOAR category can be applied to any tool that defines, prioritizes, standardizes, and automates incident response functions.

SOAR platforms enable orchestration operations across multiple security processes and tools. Such platforms also support automated security workflows, report automation, and policy execution and can be easily used by any organization for automating vulnerability management and remediation.

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are known as the evolution of endpoint detection and response (EDR) and network detection and response (NDR). The purpose of XDR is to consolidate data from across the security environment consisting of endpoints, cloud systems, networks, and more. This way, the systems can identify invasive attacks that hide between data silos and security layers.

XDR can also automatically compile telemetry data within an attack story which helps analysts gain information on everything they need in order to investigate and respond. This automated tool system can also directly collaborate with security tools to execute automated responses, making it a comprehensive automation platform for response and incident investigation.

XDR automation capabilities include:

Improvement over time- XDR machine learning algorithms gradually become more effective at detecting a wider range of attacks over time.

Every security automation tool operates differently, which is probably why you would need DevOps consulting services to guide you through. However, to give you a basic idea, below is a generic process an automated security system follows to maintain security and compliance.

In many cases, an automated security system will perform only one or more of these steps, and the rest will require a human analyst:

This includes receiving alerts from security tools, integrating them with other data or threat intelligence, and analyzing if an alert is an actual security incident or not.

This includes determining what security incident is taking place and choosing the most appropriate security playbook or automated process.

Here the automation security systems perform automated activities using security tools or other IT systems to ensure the threat does not spread or cause more damage. Moreover, to eradicate threats from affected systems. For instance, in the first stage of automation, systems can isolate an infected system from the server network and mitigate it in the second stage.

Here, the automated systems use protocols to understand if automated actions successfully mitigate the threat or if further action is required. If so, the systems collaborate with on-call scheduling systems or paging to alert human analysts. These alerts contain specific information about the ongoing incident.

Automation can close the ticket if further action is not needed, providing a full report of the threats discovered and activities performed.

Security concerns and risks vary from business to business. However, there are various common concerns significantly associated with security automation. Lets take a detailed look at them:

Addressing these potential security concerns will help your business ensure the security of its automated processes. Meanwhile, you can also eliminate existing security threats.

In order to successfully fight against malicious threats, you must also be aware of security and automation practices for a compliant infrastructure. Here are the top four security automation practices you can follow as a beginner to get started:

It is super crucial to control who can view, edit and share information within your business systems and devices. You can do so by establishing administrative and user rights.

You can also particularize who has authorized the data: an individual, multiple people, or all recipients in your form. For instance, if you have a detailed report that can be accessible to one manager in your company, no other individual will be able to access it.

Data Encryption serves as an additional layer of protection for any payment authorization, private customer data, or user confidential data required in automated business processes. Needless to say, such data must only be transferred using secured channels.

You can follow the TLS encryption method, used to pass user credentials, authentication, and authorization data for any hosted web-based application or web-services deployment.

An Audit trail is a chronological record of all modifications made to a database or file. These audit trails are beneficial when identifying changes made to a document.

Any activity performed within a system can go unnoticed without an audit trail. Therefore, implementing audit trail practice is valuable to analyze and detect unusual activity and system errors.

The legal industries, banking, fintech, and healthcare sectors have strict regulatory protocols. Failure to comply results in fines. For example, incompatibility with HIPAA law in the healthcare industry may cost you from $100 to $50,000, along with some violations carrying a penalty of up to 10 years in jail.

The modern business world demands a company that sticks to the strict standards of security and compliance to regulate securely and sustainably for a long term. Fortunately, choosing the right product development process, automation tools, and DevOps services can help you achieve your security goals.

Appinventiv offers comprehensive DevOps consulting services that can be used for any application from consumer-facing systems to large enterprise-scale products. To kickstart your transition to DevOps, our DevOps consultants do a comprehensive analysis of your requirements and help you visualize the results.

Our consultants also guide you through the entire DevOps process through great collaboration, best practices, and state-of-the-art tools, thus helping your organization achieve increased frequency and reliability of software releases. Talk to our experts to get started.

Sudeep Srivastava

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Business security automation applications benefits and strategies - Appinventiv

SPONSORED CONTENT PRESENTED BY ENCOMPASS

By Howard Wimpory, KYC Transformation Director, Encompass

The expansion of anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) regulations has raised the bar for due diligence on businesses, increasing costs and putting pressure on operational teams to maintain a smooth corporate client onboarding experience.

Because falling short on AML obligations can lead to steep penalties and reputational damage, we explore the need for Know Your Customer (KYC) process improvement, the ways automation can improve efficiency and customer service, and how operational leaders can build a strong case for KYC transformation.

While digital transformation has been a continuous trend over the last decade, the less glamorousback office world has moved at a slower pace than customer-facing experiences. Investments made are yet to reduce reliance on manual processes. Recent research reveals that most AML compliance budgets still go to human resources, rather than technology and data. Given the rapid changes in the regulatory landscape and the complexity of operating in multiple jurisdictions, KYC teams often find themselves struggling to keep up.

This results in inefficiencies and friction within the corporate client onboarding process, damaging customer experience, growth and profitability of financial services, and exposure to regulatory censure and heavy fines for AML regulatory breaches.

Operational leaders have the opportunity to empower onboarding analysts with value-driving solutions that streamline the KYC workflow, shifting manual work onto software and freeing up analysts to focus on other priorities.

Improving the KYC process delivers a range of benefits across the customer journey for internal and external stakeholders.

Improved client relationshipsAverage corporate client onboarding can be as much as 60 days, and while this time is not just spent on KYC, transforming the process to make it speedier and more efficient can significantly reduce onboarding durations. Automation also gives compliance teams more time and resources to manage high-risk cases and focus on customer experience.

Managing risk more effectivelyKYC automation reduces the risk of human errors and missed steps, while also enabling banks to quantify risk more accurately by accessing a wider array of customer data points.

Productivity and efficiency gainsAutomation reduces the time spent on KYC data and document retrieval, collection, analysis, and management by up to 98 percent, by streamlining previously manual processes. This enables you to scale your onboarding and compliance functions without adding additional team members.

End to end financial improvementIncreasing levels of automation lower not only the costs of onboarding corporate customers, but also the long-term costs of KYC remediation and periodic or event-driven refresh. FIs also benefit from reduced risk of fines with improved compliance, while catching relevant cases faster and more reliably.

Given that KYC transformation touches every layer of an organization, it can be a very complex undertaking to manage. A successful KYC transformation project requires buy-in from multiple stakeholdersthis starts with a considered business case.

Your business case for KYC process improvement should outline the precise requirements to achieve your transformation goals and set realistic expectations for the rest of the business about what will be achieved, and when and how much it will cost. This includes:

KYC process improvement is a holistic processfor instance, changes in one area of your workflow may highlight deficiencies or opportunities in others. To prepare for this, operations teams should consider priorities across the KYC and compliance landscape, including:

Transforming your KYC processes is a journey based on incremental improvement, not immediate change. FIs should seek to adopt an approach that is gradual, deliberate and evolutionary. Your choice of a technology transformation partner will also have a significant impact on your pace of change.

Working with third-party vendors can provide valuable knowledge. Encompass has worked with leading global banks on complex KYC transformation projects, enabling us to bring firsthand experience that can accelerate the time-to-value for your project. We recommend customers identify lower-risk markets or customer segments that can be automated first, while also planning long-term KYC process improvements.

A well-conceived and well-executed KYC process improvement project combines short-term wins and long-term gains. Choosing the right transformation partner is key to achieving your goals, as well as evolving your project over time. Encompasss KYC automation platform helps leading FIs streamline KYC and AML compliance tasks to reduce costs and improve customer experience, with features including:

Read the full white paper Embracing KYC Transformation

If you would like more guidance on building a case for change and KYC process improvement, get in touch with Encompass and book a consultation with our experts or explore our KYC automation platform benefits to understand the impact and use cases of implementing digital KYC processes.

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Building a business case for KYC process improvement and automation | ABA Banking Journal - ABA Banking Journal

AMSTERDAMPebble will showcase its broadcast automation and cloud solutions at the IBC Show at the RAI Amsterdam, Sept, 9-13.

Pebble Automation is an enterprise-level solution delivering robust functionality at a scale that suits any operation, with the ability to flex and adapt as the customers channel count and workflows change. A powerful centralized ingest, content management and multi-channel system, it controls mission-critical operations at scores of broadcasters and service providers around the world and is scalable from one to hundreds of channels. Visitors to the show will see how Pebble is supporting the transition to IP, combining on-premises playout with channels running in the public cloud, all using the same control interface.

Pebbles software-defined, scalable, Integrated Channel solution with uniquely flexible channel pipeline design offers audio, video and graphics functionality in a compact, cost-effective format to meet the needs for ingest, channel branding and frame-accurate multi-channel playout requirements.

Pebble Remote, a tool for web-based monitoring and control in the cloud as well as on-premises, provides 24/7 secure remote access to mission-critical control of playlists, as well as consolidating control access across several playout sites. Designed to support systems that comprise multiple channels, Pebble Remote has helped many broadcasters easily navigate the challenges of working beyond the normal boundaries of a playout facility.

The company will also mark the first time Pebble Control has been shown at a major industry show in Europe. A self-contained, scalable, and easy-to-configure IP connection management tool, Pebble Control is designed to make IP connectivity as simple as SDI. It leverages open standards to interface with NMOS-enabled devices from multiple vendors and enables broadcasters to make the leap to an all-IP facility without the need to deploy a bespoke enterprise solution.

A freemium versionPebble Control Freewas launched earlier this year, providing entry-level access where users can download the software via a self-service portal. Pebble Control Free enables the broadcast and media community to try out the functionality, and upskill their teams whilst they contemplate their first steps into IP.

Pebble will be in Stand 8.B75.

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Pebble to Highlight Broadcast Automation, Cloud Solutions at 2022 IBC Show - TV Technology

by D3 Security Sep 1, 2022

In previous articles, weve explained how MSSPs can pick the low-hanging fruit of automation, and how SOAR can help improve analyst-to-customer ratios. These articles covered how there are major gains to be found in both profit and quality of services through different levels of automation. In this article, well illustrate the benefits of targeted automation particularly valuable for small or mid-sized MSSPs through a hypothetical case study.

In this case study, well show how a small MSSP could save as much as $1 million per year with a strategic approach to automation that minimizes overhead and time-to-value.

Lets say our imagined MSSP has seven analysts serving 30 clients, with plans to double their client base as soon as possible. They have an annual revenue of approximately $1.2 million USD.

They are experiencing stagnated growth because their analysts are struggling to keep up with an unending stream of low-fidelity alerts from their clients. Adding new clients wouldnt just mean hiring more analysts; it would also require more administrative work to track billable hours and SLAs.

They dont want to commit to deploying a full SOAR platform because they think it will cost too much and require too much time to implement and maintain. Theyre swamped enough as is.

A targeted use of automation is the solution we would prescribe this MSSP. Given their specific problems, they can focus on alert-handling and basic investigation, which are the processes that have been taking up so much of their time.

In addition, they need full multi-tenancy and automation that extends to administrative work, like SLA tracking and reporting. They cant double their capacity if thats going to double their paperwork and administrative time too.

With just two playbooks, they can automate exactly what they need, without getting bogged down in an overly complicated project. First, they need an alert-level playbook that integrates with the subset of tools that generate the most alerts in their clients environments e.g. EDR, network security, and identity management. This playbook will triage every incoming alert by extracting artifacts (e.g. usernames, IPs, and device IDs), checking them against global lists, and making the decisions to dismiss or escalate the alert.

The second playbook they need is an incident-level playbook to investigate escalated alerts. In this playbook, incidents are enriched with threat intelligence and related incidents are retrieved from the incident database. The results are summarized in an automated report for the analyst, so they can decide to dismiss the incident or notify the client with an automatically generated incident report.

Now lets do some back-of-the-napkin calculations on how much our hypothetical MSSP could save with this type of targeted automation.

We estimate that the alert-level playbook we described would turn a 15-minute process into one that takes just seven seconds. And the incident-level playbook cuts a 45-minute process down to 11 seconds. Even adding in five minutes for the analyst to review the results, thats still a time-savings of almost 90% for the second playbook alone.

So, based on these estimates, if the MSSP is ingesting 300 alerts per day, that means theyre saving around 75 hours of labor per day, from the alert-level playbook alone. At a conservative estimate of analyst salaries, thats an annual saving of $810,000.

Then, if 10% of those alerts are escalated to incidents, 30 incidents are going into the second playbook. Based on our estimate that includes five minutes of manual review on each incident, the MSSP is still saving around 20 hours per day. Thats $270,000 in salaries per year.

Between the two playbooks, thats over $1 million in annual savings, just from this targeted use of automation. For our hypothetical MSSP, that means theyll have the capacity to double their client base with minimal increase in headcount or budget.

Thats why we think its not an exaggeration to say that even a small MSSP can save $1 million per year by being strategic in how they use automation. This type of security automation is a game-changer for MSSPs who have previously written off SOAR because they think it will be too expensive or require too much time to get up and running.

D3 Security supports MSSPs in every corner of the globe and enables high-value services with our next-generation SOAR platform. D3 Securitys SOAR platform supports full multi-tenancy, so you can keep client sites, data, and playbooks completely segregated. Importantly, were vendor-neutral, so no matter what tools your clients use, our 500+ integrations will meet their needs. Our new offering for MSSPs, D3 Chronos, is a streamlined SOAR package that is designed to start paying for itself within two weeks while increasing your capacity 10x through automation.

Blog courtesy ofD3 Security. Read more D3 Security guest blogshere.Regularly contributedguest blogsare part of MSSP Alertssponsorship program.

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How to Save $1 Million with Targeted Security Automation - MSSP Alert