Tanium introduces Tanium Automate

Tanium has introduced Tanium Automate giving organisations running Tanium in the cloud highly accurate, real-time automation for common IT operations and security tasks. Leveraging the Tanium platform’s breadth of endpoint management and security capabilities, real-time architecture, and ability to scale, Automate allows operators to automate complex tasks in real-time by replacing manual processes with easy to implement no and low code orchestration and automation across operations and security domains. Automate is a key component of Tanium’s autonomous endpoint management (AEM) offering, which leverages the real-time analysis of change on all global cloud endpoints to recommend and automate changes safely and reliably on endpoints to maintain operational health, lower risk of negative IT outcomes and improve the security of the IT environment.

“Automate radically simplifies complex automations through dynamic real-time endpoint targeting, allowing organisations to manage automations in even the most diverse, scaled IT environments,” said Matt Quinn, Chief Technology Officer at Tanium. “By bridging automations seamlessly between IT and security teams, it provides operational excellence and provides both resiliency and confidence to all our customers.”

Automate is already having a measurable impact at VF Corporation, a Global footwear and apparel company known for iconic brands as JanSport, Eastpak, Timberland, and The North Face. “When patching servers and remediating vulnerabilities, it’s critical that we stop all services and confirm they are off before proceeding,” explained VFC patch automation and vulnerability remediation lead David Anderson. “This is exceedingly difficult, especially because we only have a two- or three-hour maintenance window to complete updates. The process requires communicating across different teams and orchestrating our efforts to ensure all systems are ready for patching. Oftentimes, we don’t have the time to complete patching.”

For VF Corp, what was once a highly fragmented, multi-step process, now occurs seamlessly within a single platform at the click of a button. The team can now easily control specific services, verify they are no longer running, and deploy patches.

Traditionally, the complexity of automation solutions required highly skilled and difficult to retain experts to build, scale, and maintain automation libraries. To help alleviate these resource constraints and allow organisations take full advantage of the power of automation, Automate provides authors with varying levels of technical skills with an intuitive no to low code experience to create repeatable playbooks and automate even the most complex task sequences.

"With Automate, customers will eliminate cumbersome, manual, and time-consuming tasks accelerating productivity of your teams through automation of actions and streamlining workflows,” said Phil Harris, Research Director, Government, Risk and Compliance, IDC. "This makes the overall experience of manageability effective, repeatable, accurate, and streamlined with minimal disruption to IT environments with increased potential to save costs and reduce risks by automating routine tasks and workflows."

Tanium’s growing partner ecosystem, comprised of System Integrators, MSP’s, VAR’s and Technology alliance ISV’s, participated in the product launch to create solutions powered by Automate. With domain expertise across industry verticals to include financial services, healthcare and public sector, Tanium partners can deliver best practices and customer use cases as highly differentiated and reputable Tanium Automation playbooks. Example cybersecurity and IT operations playbooks include server cluster patching, vulnerability management and remediation, automated software license reclamation, workstation provisioning and maintenance, and more.

“The ROI and process automation our end customers have experienced to date is a true testament to the power of Tanium’s real-time visibility and control. With the introduction of AEM and debut of Tanium Automate, we can deliver added workflow automation, reduce cybersecurity and technical risk, and better serve even the most unique of customers,” said Mike Fluharty, President of True Zero Technologies. “As an MSP responsible for integrating a portfolio of industry-leading technologies for our commercial and public sector customers, we view Tanium’s XEM platform as a core technology to improve service delivery while simultaneously helping us scale our operations efficiently.”

Tanium AskTM

Tanium is also introducing Tanium AskTM , now in private preview. The AI-powered natural language interface will query data from millions of endpoints in seconds, enhancing the existing functionality to support even the most sophisticated queries. This eliminates the need to understand complex syntax, significantly reducing the time to action for even the most sophisticated query. For example, customers can use the new AI-powered question bar to request a list of machines that haven't been rebooted and patched in the last 30-days in seconds then deploy an Automate playbook to quickly bring the endpoints into compliance.

Autonomous Endpoint Management

Last month, Gartner gave AEM an ‘Emerging’ rating in their annual Hype Cycle report. In the report, Gartner explained AEM as combining the “capabilities of unified endpoint management and digital employee experience tools with AI and machine learning to accelerate endpoint patching, configuration and experience management. The AEM approach significantly accelerates patching and configuration management and reduces digital friction, resulting in improved compliance, employee experience, and productivity”

According to Gartner, organisations are increasingly turning to AEM solutions to give reprieve to IT teams grappling with endpoint devices, operating systems and applications. “Largely driven by increased AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities, technology vendors have accelerated development and release cadence, and IT cannot keep pace.” Furthermore, Gartner states that “the accelerated pace of software updates and increased level of vulnerabilities continue to overwhelm IT, undermine technology stability, increase cybersecurity risk and degrade digital employee experience (DEX).”