From 10 Hours to 30 Minutes – The Hidden Value of Automating One-Off Tasks

This blog series spotlights real-world moments in which network engineers use BackBox security-centric automation to save their organizations from costly downtime and surprises.

Synopsis

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) customer faced an urgent need to activate licenses across 92 Palo Alto firewalls. To make matters more challenging, this had to be accomplished within two days, during the end-of-year holiday season when they had limited staff available for such tasks.

Using the BackBox Network Cyber Resilience Platform, they completed this project in a fraction of the time it would have taken manually.

Problem

The SecOps team needed to run a single command on 92 firewalls:

request license fetch

Simple!

Not exactly…

Impact

The MSP told us that doing this manually would have taken about 10 hours—that’s 6.5 minutes per firewall! Executing this kind of work in a hurry, with just one or two people typing repetitively, introduces a significant risk of unplanned outages through human error.

The alternative would have been to find someone with the right Python or Ansible programming skills to write a script for this, but those individuals are hard to find even in the best of times. Even if you managed to locate someone with the availability, writing and testing a robust script that can catch errors and prevent problems takes time. This is why many teams often revert to manual effort.

Finally, failing to complete the license activations in the required time would result in a missed project deadline, which would have financial implications for the business.

Solution

Given the urgency, the MSP contacted the BackBox Automation Team for assistance in writing the automation task. Fortunately, the MSP already had BackBox installed, which they use to manage backups and compliance for the 92 firewalls. This meant that we had all relevant inventory information at hand to ID/confirm in-scope devices and already had access to these devices, thus avoiding the need for infrastructure change requests.

The value proposition of BackBox includes support for creating automations; there’s no additional professional services retainer or project-based fee required. Therefore, we were able to tackle the task immediately.

In collaboration with the MSP, the team took 20 minutes to create the automation necessary to execute this command safely and consistently. The NetSecOps team then spent an additional 10 minutes importing the task, setting up a job, and running it. Once the task was complete, it generated a report confirming successful execution across all 92 devices.

Outcomes

1. Acquiring new licenses decreased from 10 hours to 30 minutes.
2. BackBox demonstrated further ROI, saving the customer thousands of dollars in professional service fees often charged by other vendors.
3. Holiday plans were preserved.

Conclusion

Customers typically depend on BackBox for essential functions such as backup and restore, automated updates, auditing and compliance, and vulnerability management.

However, what is often overlooked is the platform’s remarkable power and simplicity, which enable an MSP or internal NetSecOps team to perform even the simplest tasks quickly across a vast installed base, including:

• Fetch new licenses
• Change passwords
• Update configurations (e.g., NTP servers)

The possibilities are endless, and the best aspect of the BackBox Network Cyber Resilience Platform is the empowerment of the team. The no- or low-code approach allows network engineers to create these automations independently, or they can contact the BackBox Automation Team for immediate assistance to bridge the talent gap when team members are unavailable.

Discover the advantages of BackBox today. Schedule a 30-minute demo for an interactive tour of the BackBox platform.