Chris Steffen joins the EAE podcast to discuss how automation teams can collaborate with security teams to maintain a secure, resilient environment.

Enterprise automation is expected to orchestrate critical processes 24x7x365. Automation teams must address risks from infrastructure failures and security vulnerabilities in their tools and environments.

Key Ideas

- Automation systems carry high risk due to their critical role and extensive integrations across business, analytics, and operations.

- Cloud and SaaS foundations still require automation teams to understand configurations for reliability.

- Business-critical automation systems often demand 99.999% availability ("five nines").

- Risk assessment is the first step to address cybersecurity, examining implementation, integrations, operations, and access controls.

- Limiting access privileges and eliminating unused accounts reduces vulnerability.

- Changes to systems can impact availability and security, requiring careful change management proportional to risks.

- Security teams and automation teams share the goal of a reliable, resilient environment.

Takeaways for Automation Leaders

- Regularly assess risks from human error, software defects, and third-party failures. Test updates in non-production environments before rollout.

- Build relationships with security teams to prioritize risks and improve team knowledge.

- Audit access management to identify and limit unused or excessive privileges.

- Review change processes for automations, software, and infrastructure to identify mitigations for significant risks.

Show Links

- Chris Steffen - Cybersecurity Awesomeness podcast - Zero Trust Working Group for the Cloud Security Alliance - "Five Nines" High Availability (Wikipedia) - NIST Cybersecurity Framework - SANS Institute⁠

Building on the learnings from a recent EMA survey on mainframe modernization initiatives, we discuss where these initiatives fit into enterprise activities and what automation teams should consider when involved in these efforts.
Key Ideas
- Business transformation and technology portfolio modernization efforts are occurring in many organizations
- These initiatives have become a core part of how businesses evolve to meet customer expectations and grow into new markets
- In the past, many technology teams took an incremental "just enough modernization" approach to limit costs and risk, however, this can be insufficient where dramatic business process changes are needed
- Mainframes and other aging systems are commonly identified as bottlenecks to achieving the targeted customer experience and related business goals, requiring modernization or replacement to enable the initiative's objectives
- Enterprise automation is an integral part of these modernization efforts, maintaining existing process flows through the legacy system while establishing new workflows for the targeted process changes

Takeaways for Automation Leaders
- Automation teams are expected to maintain existing service levels on existing workflows while the business processes are evolving into their new form
- Consider modernization as an ongoing business activity that the automation team participates in rather than a one-time project
- Develop a playbook that can be applied to each modernization effort, and invest in building the skills of your team to become valuable contributors to these efforts.

In this episode, we explore BMC's recent decision to split into two companies, a strategic shift announced shortly before BMC Connect 2024. We break down what this means for the future of BMC and its customers, diving into the key updates from the conference, including exciting innovations from BMC's Innovation Labs, the latest on HelixGPT the Change Risk Advisor, and Helix Edge.
We also discuss what BMC's business changes mean for the automation ecosystem, and insights from automation users currently undertaking mainframe modernization efforts.
Tune in as we discuss how these developments will shape the future of AI, automation, and IT operations.