To automate security and compliance audits for your operational systems, certain steps and best practices need to be followed. First, you must define your security and compliance goals and requirements, such as the standards and regulations that need to be complied with, the security controls and policies that need to be implemented, and the metrics and indicators that need to be measured and reported. Next, you must select the tools and platforms that can help you automate security and compliance audits. For example, configuration management tools such as Ansible, Chef, or Puppet can be used to automate the deployment and maintenance of security settings and patches, while security scanning tools such as Nmap, Nessus, or Qualys can be used to detect and remediate vulnerabilities. Compliance management tools such as AWS Config, Azure Policy, or Google Cloud Security Command Center can also be used to enforce and verify compliance rules and standards. Additionally, automation workflows should be designed and implemented in order to run periodically or on-demand depending on your needs. Finally, the results of your security and compliance automation workflows should be monitored and reviewed using dashboards, alerts, logs, analytics, audits, reviews, and feedback in order to ensure they are working as expected and achieving your goals.