Cybersecurity professionals have many essential tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to human error. These often include drafting routine communications, scheduling security awareness sessions, and performing basic data entry to maintain compliance and inventory. While dedicated Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platforms are powerful, they are often cost-prohibitive for smaller teams or individual practitioners, this is where ai could really make a tangible difference. The rate of change in ai is impressive, so who knows in a few months this information could be outdated so bear that in mind.
This post outlines how to one can leverage readily available, free, or low-cost general-purpose AI tools to automate these common, repetitive tasks, freeing up security professionals to focus on high-value strategic work.
1. AI-Powered Communication: Email Drafting and Content Generation
Repetitive communication is a significant time sink while useful to reinforce learning and to deliver some required change, it’s still a time-consuming task. This includes drafting security awareness emails, internal policy updates, or initial incident response notifications. General-purpose AI writing assistants can be repurposed to handle this.
| Task | AI Tool Type | Practical Application |
| Security Awareness Emails | Free Large Language Models (LLMs) (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude free tiers) | Generate monthly security tips, phishing campaign summaries, or password policy reminders. |
| Incident Response Templates | AI Writing Assistants (e.g., QuillBot, Grammarly Premium) | Draft clear, professional, and non-technical initial communications for a security incident, ensuring the tone is authoritative and calm. |
| Policy Summarisation | LLMs with summarisation features | Condense lengthy security policies or compliance documents into digestible, bulleted summaries for internal distribution. |
Practical Tip: Prompt Engineering for Security Communications
When using an LLM, the quality of the output depends heavily on the prompt. For security-related communications, ensure your prompt specifies the desired tone and audience.
2. AI-Enhanced Outreach: Social Media Scheduling
Maintaining a consistent presence for security awareness on internal or external social platforms is crucial but can be a manual chore. Low-cost social media management tools with integrated AI features can automate content creation and scheduling.
| Task | AI Tool Type | Practical Application |
| Content Generation | Social Media Schedulers with AI (e.g., Buffer, Metricool, Postly – free/low-cost tiers) | Use the AI to generate a week’s worth of security tips (e.g., “Tip Tuesday,” “Phishing Friday”) based on a single topic (e.g., “MFA”). |
| Scheduling and Optimisation | Social Media Schedulers (Free/Low-Cost Plans) | Automatically schedule posts to go out at optimal times for maximum employee/public engagement, ensuring a steady stream of awareness content. |
| Hashtag/Caption Creation | Integrated AI Features | Generate relevant, trending hashtags and engaging captions to increase the visibility of security awareness posts. |
Practical Tip: Maintaining Brand Voice and Accuracy
Always review AI-generated content for technical accuracy before scheduling. While the AI is excellent at generating engaging copy, it may occasionally misstate a technical detail. Use the AI to generate the draft, but let a security professional perform the final technical review.
3. No-Code Data Automation: Basic Data Entry
Many cybersecurity workflows involve repetitive data transfer, such as logging vulnerability scan results into a ticketing system, updating an asset inventory spreadsheet, or filling out compliance forms. No-code browser automation tools can mimic human actions to perform these tasks.
| Task | AI Tool Type | Practical Application |
| Vulnerability Logging | No-Code Browser Automation (e.g., Bardeen, axiom.ai) | Create a “bot” to read a line from a CSV (e.g., a vulnerability report) and automatically navigate to a ticketing system (e.g., Jira, ServiceNow) to create a new ticket with the relevant details (CVE, severity, asset ID). |
| Asset Inventory Update | No-Code Automation Platforms (e.g., Zapier, Make – free/low-cost tiers) | Set up a workflow that triggers when a new asset is added to a cloud environment (via API) and automatically populates a row in a Google Sheet or database. |
| Compliance Form Filling | Browser Automation Extensions | Automate the repetitive process of filling out standard fields on web-based compliance or audit forms. |
Practical Tip: Security and Scope Limitation
When using browser automation tools, limit the scope of the “bot” to non-sensitive, repetitive data transfer. Never use these tools to handle highly sensitive data, credentials, or critical incident response actions. The primary benefit is automating the transfer of known, non-critical data points between systems.
Summary of Recommended Tools and Use Cases
| Tool Category | Example Free/Low-Cost Tools | Cybersecurity Use Case | Repetitive Task Automated |
| General LLMs | ChatGPT (Free), Gemini (Free), Claude (Free) | Drafting emails, summarising documents, creating training scripts. | Drafting emails, summarizing documents, creating training scripts. |
| AI Writing Assistants | QuillBot (Free), Grammarly (Free/Premium) | Professional Communication | Refining tone, checking grammar, ensuring clarity in incident reports. |
| Social Schedulers | Buffer (Free Plan), Metricool (Free/Low-Cost) | Security Awareness Outreach | Generating content ideas, scheduling posts, optimizing posting times. |
| No-Code Automation | Bardeen, axiom.ai (Free/Low-Cost Plans) | Data Entry, Workflow Integration | Logging vulnerabilities, updating asset inventory, form filling. |
By strategically applying free and low-cost AI tools, cybersecurity professionals can achieve significant gains in efficiency. The key is to identify the most repetitive, low-risk tasks and apply these general-purpose automation solutions. This approach allows security professionals to scale their efforts without incurring the high costs associated with enterprise-grade SOAR solutions. Always prioritise security and data sensitivity when choosing which tasks to automate.