4.6 Use automation wisely

Automate and scale tasks and infrastructure efficiently, run processes only when needed, and control unwanted traffic.

Task automation:
Automate recurring tasks such as deployment, testing, and compilation in alignment with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) best practices to reduce manual effort and improve consistency. Choose automation tools and platforms with lower environmental impact. Avoid complexity and duplication of automation systems.
Necessary tasks:
Run automated tasks only when they are needed to avoid unnecessary resource use. Regularly review automated tasks to ensure they remain necessary, efficient, secure, and beneficial.
Automated scaling:
Regularly review infrastructure utilization and reduce allocated capacity when resources are consistently underused. Manage workloads to ensure efficient resource use by isolating, limiting, and prioritizing processes where needed to prevent resource contention and unnecessary consumption. Use autoscaling, buffering, throttling and other techniques to scale resource utilization to avoid overprovisioning.
Suspicious activity management:
Restrict unwanted and unnecessary third-party crawlers, user agents, bots, and scrapers using security controls, while ensuring content remains accessible to legitimate users, search engines, and helpful or authorized crawlers. Regularly monitor activity logs to evaluate control effectiveness and identify unexpected traffic patterns. Take into account that some scrapers may be used for beneficial purposes, or to inform or train large language models.