How to Maximize AI Execution in Cybersecurity – without Losing the Human Factor

Source Domain: aijourn.com

By now, cyber defense teams have deployed artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for at least several years – to the point where usage of the tools is approaching near ubiquity: Seventy-seven percent of organizations have adopted AI for cybersecurity.

Top AI-assistance needs include phishing/email threat detection (as cited by 52 percent of cybersecurity leaders and C-suite executives), intrusion/anomaly response (46 percent) and security operations automation (43 percent). Beyond that, however, a clear shift has taken hold: One in which autonomous AI agents segue from merely assisting in these and additional tasks to actually helping execute them.

The shift proves essential. Security operations center (SOC) teams face pressures in the form of a lack of time and adequate context. AI agents reduce manual work while creating feedback loops to boost defenses in real-time as threats evolve.

It’s not that agents “know more.” But they can do repeatable work more reliably. They’re good at conducting consistent investigative steps while documenting what they did along the way, to inform SOC professionals about methodologies and outcomes. They avoid the need for manual rebuilds of timelines. Their feedback loops continuously improve detections and lower the risk of systems moving away from their intended protected state, i.e. drift.

Multi-purpose tools

At its best, AI enhances SOC efficiencies in a wide-ranging and often profound manner, for purposes such as these:

Alert enrichment and context-building. Agents gather investigative context across identity, endpoint, email, cloud and security information and event management (SIEM) telemetry, allowing analysts to start with evidence-based narratives instead of a blank page.

Triage and investigation execution. Agents do more than simply recommend next steps – they run investigation workflows end-to-end (with guardrails, of course) such as the building of timelines…

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