EMEA far behind other regions in willingness to adopt automation

Single-digit percentages of European firms are using process automation, versus almost half of Asian firms

Although companies are using more automation in their approach to cybersecurity, they are still limited by the evolving technology and their geographic location, shows a new study by Osterman Research on behalf of Skybox Security.

Osterman questioned 465 IT leaders from the USA, Europe (UK, France and Germany) and APAC (China, Japan and Singapore). It found that incident response takes up the highest proportion of security employees' time, but other issues (such as compliance management and changes to security infrastructure) also consume a large amount.

Despite that, the desire to cut costs - rather than directly save time - is the key driver for cybersecurity automation in the USA and Europe. APAC, on the other hand, mainly uses the technology to deal with the challenges of managing large, complex networks.

APAC leads other regions in automating workflows and processes involved in management, rules and policy. Almost half (47 per cent) of organisations do so, trailed by the USA (13 per cent) and Europe (seven per cent).

APAC is also ahead in use of AI and machine learning in production, with about 27 per cent of respondents using the technology in this way - compared to nine per cent in the USA and four per cent in Europe.

The processes that each region focus on for automation differ. APAC organisations focus on policy and compliance management; EMEA on data collection; and the USA on data collection and traffic flow/path analysis.

Desire to automate also varied amongst regions, with 51 per cent of APAC respondents assigning it a high or very high priority, compared to 36 per cent in the USA and 24 per cent in Europe.