How to Automate Yourself Out of a Job (and why you should)

How workplace automation can help create career opportunities.

Transcript

1. Nate Bitting & Steven Serrata Palo Alto Networks How to Automate Yourself Out of a Job (And Why You Should)
2. Agenda • What do we mean by automation? • Case Study: Steven Serrata • Case Study: Nate Bitting • Next steps and recommendations Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential 2
3. What we DO mean by automation 3 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
4. Examples of Automation Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential 4 • Automating a repetitive task: – Build application to automate a business process – Automate Palo Alto Networks NGFW deployment/configuration – Write a script to register IP addresses to Dynamic Address Groups – Build automated data pipeline for predictive modeling or machine learning (i.e. recommender system) – Leveraging CI/CD pipeline for automated builds and deployment (i.e. Jenkins, Travis) – Generated code leveraging Google Protocol Buffers or Swagger-code- gen
5. What we DON’T mean by automation 5 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
6. Case Study: Steven Serrata • Education – 2012: University of Texas at San Antonio, BA in Sociology – 2007: Del Mar College, AAS Computer Information Systems • Career – Developer Relations @ Palo Alto Networks, 2017 – Present – Professional Services @ Palo Alto Networks, 2014 - 2017 – InfoSec @ UTSA, 2012 – 2014 – … 6 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
7. Example 1: Automated Health Checks • Use-case: – Automate Professional Services 5-day health check engagement • Problems: – Manual process that included only sample of devices (<=5) – Inconsistent collection and reporting methodologies – Not performed often enough, if ever • Goals – Continuous health, audit and best practice assessment of entire Palo Alto Networks deployment delivered by a web application 7 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
8. Example 1: Automated Health Checks 8 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential - Develop library that automates each check via Panorama and NGFW API - Store results in database - Build a web application that supports workflows around running and scheduling health checks, setting thresholds, adding devices, reviewing past reports, visualizing results, exporting to Excel - Classify and organize suite of checks/features already included in 5-day PS Health Check Engagement - Continue developing and improving supported checks and performance - Scale to >1000+ devices
9. Example 1: Automated Health Checks 9 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
10. Example 2: Dynamic Address Group Replication • Use-case: – Automate redistribution of DAG registered-ip addresses across 2 or more Panoramas running in NSX • Problems – No built-in mechanism in Panorama or NSX for sharing DAG IPs between Panoramas – 1:1 limitation between NSX Manager and Panorama – Impossible to write policy that allows inter-availability zone traffic without ability to dynamically redistribute DAG Ips • Goals – Fully automated DAG synching between 2 or more Panoramas – Web application for visualizing/monitoring DAG synching and executing workflows specific to troubleshooting 10 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
11. Example 2: Dynamic Address Group Replication 11 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential - Develop scripts that periodically poll Panorama for DAG source of record and track deltas. - Store source or record in database - Develop mechanism for replicating the source of record in all permutations - Build a web app that supports troubleshooting and monitoring workflows and visualizations - Explore Panorama API to determine best manner to derive source of record for each Dynamic Address Group - Continue developing and improving solution such that it can scale to 12 or more Panoramas and beyond
12. Case Study: Nate Bitting • Education – 2016: Northwestern University, MSc in Predictive Analytics – 2010: San Jose State University, MBA – 2008: Arizona State University, BSc in Computer Information Systems • Career – Customer Success @ Palo Alto Networks, 2016 – Present – BizOps, Strategy, Finance, and BI @ Large “Antiquated” Networking Company, 2008 – 2016 12 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
13. Example 1: Business Intelligence • Environment: – Business Operations and Finance • Problem Statement: – Lack of visibility to business performance – Manual workflow – Infrequent updates to metrics • Goal – Automate metrics and reporting for increased visibility – Get more eyes on the data to find more opportunities to optimize the business 13 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
14. Example 1: Business Intelligence 14 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential - Weekly Reports - Manual - Prone to human error - Manual distribution - Weekly Reports - Semi-Automated - Still had to manually populate raw data - Prone to human error - Manual distribution - Weekly Reports - Semi-Automated - Tied directly to DB - Limited custom logic - Still in “Excel Hell” - Manual distribution - Hourly Reports - Fully-Automated - Tied directly to DB - Highly documented - Scalable - Deeper granularity - Live dashboards (automated distribution)
15. Example 2: Best Practice Assessment for NGFW and Panorama • Environment: – Customer Success Team – PS, Sales, Partners, and Customers • Problem Statement: – Lots of opinions about the definition of a best practice – No single source of truth – Manual workflow to measure adoption • Goals – Drive adoption of prevention best practices and educate customers 15 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
16. Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential Config Parser Adoption Heatmap in Excel Adoption Heatmap + BPA in HTML BPA Cloud API (in progress) Example 2: Best Practice Assessment for NGFW and Panorama 16
17. Use Cases to Consider as a Security Professional • Monitoring, alerting, and automated enforcement (i.e. playbooks) • Automated device configuration synchronization • Automated VM-series deployments in Public Cloud 17 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
18. Recommended Next Steps • Learn Python – Books (i.e. “Automate the Boring Stuff”, “Think Python”, etc.) – MOOCs (i.e. Udacity, Udemy, Coursera, etc.) – YouTube (i.e. Corey Schafer, Sentdex, etc.) • Short Term Goal: Find a task that could be automated in your current role via scripts • Stretch Goal: Learn Full Stack Development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) 18 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential
19. Q&A 19 Palo Alto Networks Proprietary and Confidential