SnykCon 2021 highlighted the importance of automation in DevSecOps, showcasing its benefits in increasing efficiency and streamlining workflows. Automation can automate tedious manual tasks, allowing developers to focus on creative solutions for tough problems. The presentations demonstrated how automation can strengthen a development workflow by integrating security into CI/CD pipelines, detecting open source licenses, and providing faster feedback loops. By leveraging Snyk's platform, Citrix engineers created an automated process that reduced their time to resolution and decreased manual review time, enabling security through the pipeline. The "pipeline as a service" model provides three pillars for automation: a working repository, custom action repository, and tool-specific automation, allowing for efficient changes and tracking in one place. This enables a faster feedback loop without asking developers to make changes in multiple places, creating a seamless human-focused workflow.