A Siri for network security: the benefits of AlgoBot and ChatOps

Want immediate answers about whether your business applications are secure? Here’s how AlgoBot can tell you what you need to know

Since the early 20th century, sci-fi novels and films have shown us a future of flying cars, video conferencing and sentient computers that we could interact with in everyday language. And over the past few years, part of that future has become a reality thanks to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and the widespread use of web-based instant messaging ‘chat’ platforms in the retail and customer services sectors.

According to a study by Capgemini, 62% of consumers said they were satisfied with the chatbots they found on company websites, and 74% said that conversational assistants were a key driver behind customer engagement strategies. The analyst Juniper estimated that in some business sectors, chatbots can deliver average time savings of around 4 minutes per enquiry.

So imagine how useful it would be if the benefits of chatbots could be applied to enterprise IT environments, to accelerate and automate information-sharing across areas of the business where data has traditionally been siloed and hard to get access to – such as between IT and security teams, and business application owners.

For example, getting an answer to the simple question “Is network traffic currently allowed from this specific server to this second server?” can be complicated if the enterprise does not have a Network Security Management (NSM) solution. It would involve asking several different stakeholders and having to use multiple firewall and device management consoles. Even if the organization uses a NSM solution, a user might not get an immediate answer: they would have to either access the NSM system and know how to use it themselves, or ask a member of the IT or security team – which may interrupt more important tasks.

Network and security ChatOps
Enter chatbots, which can give access to expert security and network knowledge – such as the status of a business application’s connectivity, which firewalls protect that application, or whether traffic is being allowed to certain servers – without demanding the user has security expertise or distracting busy networking or security staff.

AlgoBot is unique in enabling non-technical users the information they need about network security and connectivity. Staff can chat with AlgoBot using Slack or Skype for Business, and ask questions such as ‘is there a connectivity problem with our payments application?’, to quickly get to the heart of problems.

AlgoBot does this by using the AlgoSec suite APIs to perform traffic simulation queries and connectivity checks quickly and securely, without the need to interrupt the network security team. This makes for faster decision-making and problem solving and speeds up processes.

But don’t just take our word for it. The recent SC Magazine group test in which AlgoSec scooped the ‘Best Buy’ accolade specifically praised AlgoBot as “a highly intuitive, intelligent chatbot that understands plain English and can be leveraged to access virtually all the functionality of this platform.”

There’s just one thing we’d add to that. AlgoBot doesn’t just understand plain English: it’s fluent in French, German and Portuguese too. Why not find out how AlgoBot can help to accelerate your business?