In an era where cyber threats are constantly evolving and security teams are overwhelmed by an ever-expanding flood of alerts, tech sprawl, and an ongoing talent shortage, the modernization of the SOC is no longer optional — it’s imperative. 

According to Gartner, automation and artificial intelligence are the keys to unlocking new levels of efficiency, accuracy, and resilience in the fight against cyber threats. Learn how SecOps automation has evolved way (way) past SOAR and how SOC teams are putting AI into action to elevate their teams and achieve machine-speed response times.

The Security Operations Automation Journey

1. Legacy SOAR came – and went. The security operations automation journey started with Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) as the primary automation and orchestration option for SecOps teams. However, as the cybersecurity landscape grew more complex and the volume of threats increased, SOAR’s limitations became glaringly evident. Gartner even went as far as to say “SOAR is Obsolete” in their latest ITSM Hype Cycle (2024), placing SOAR at the bottom of their “Trough of Disillusionment”. 

2. Hyperautomation unleashed limitless potential. Unlike SOAR, Hyperautomation offered unlimited security integrations, simple automations, and cloud-native scalability. The incorporation of Case Management into a Hyperautomation engine helped mitigate alert fatigue by enabling automated remediation of false positives and other low-risk threats, while more intelligently prioritizing comprehensive security cases in a meaningful way. 

3. AI sped up the SOC. The next evolution of security automation involved leveraging Artificial Intelligence to augment human expertise, enabling analysts to achieve machine-speed detection and response.

The modern SOC has arrived. As Gartner highlighted, to overcome the existential challenges that continue to plague SOC teams, security operations must continue to adapt. This brings us to the future of SecOps, where the gold standard for the modern SOC is a purpose-built combination of Hyperautomation and AI to achieve the autonomous SOC.

Benefits of Adopting Automation and AI for Security Operations 

Adopting automation and AI for security operations is not about eliminating the need for SOC analysts — it’s about alleviating the pressure on SOC teams, helping to avoid burnout and reduce the 4 million+ talent shortage gap that exists in the cybersecurity industry today. 

“By 2028, AI in threat detection and IR will rise from 5% to 70%, to primarily augment, not replace staff.” 

Source: Gartner

As Gartner highlights, while the growth of AI continues to expand, its primary aim should be to augment the existing staff operating the SOC, not replace them entirely. This is good to keep in mind, as many organizations are hesitant to fully entrust AI with their security operations. However, with the rise of AI used in targeted attack campaigns, most organizations do recognize that it is near impossible for humans alone to keep pace with today’s quantity and complexity of threats.

When implementing AI for security operations, the most successful benchmarks to strive for are: 

• Eliminating alert fatigue
• Improving SOC analyst morale
• Getting time back to focus on critical threats
• Mitigating threats more quickly and efficiently
• Increasing the accuracy of results

The benefits of automation and AI for security operations are not in removing human decision making altogether, but rather to uplevel the skills of the most junior SOC analysts, while preventing the most experienced analysts from burning out of their role. And that is exactly what Torq Socrates was built for. 

The AI SOC Analyst

Torq Socrates is an AI SOC Analyst for autonomous contextual alert triage, incident investigation, and response. Socrates elevates the performance of tier-1 analysts and augments end-to-end investigations of alerts. Socrates is only able to leverage the tools and access given to it through building automated workflows, so SOC teams always remain in control of what is possible with AI while significantly improving their operational efficiency.

There are 2 ways SOC teams use Socrates: 

1. Assigning cases for auto-remediation
2. Remediating cases faster with AI augmentation 

First, SOC teams can assign specific cases to Socrates for auto-remediation without requiring any human intervention. 

In traditional analyst remediation, when a case is assigned, the analyst typically consults a runbook to guide them through the response required to contain the specific event (or events) that appear within the case. From start to finish — the triage, investigation, and remediation of a single case can take a human analyst 30 minutes or more, depending on the experience level of the analyst.

Socrates follows the same process, but at machine speed. Socrates analyzes SOC-defined runbooks written in natural language and follows explicit instructions, resulting in complete auto-remediation of 95% of cases in mere minutes. 

For cases that increase in severity based on Socrates’ investigation, or as new case data is added raising the threat to a critical level, SOC teams can build off-ramps into each runbook that tell Socrates when to escalate cases to a human analyst for intervention.

Which brings us to the second use case, leveraging Socrates to remediate cases that do require human decision making — faster. Analysts who are assigned critical cases for human-in-the-loop remediation can use natural language to chat with Socrates, asking it to: 

• Summarize case observables, attachments, historical findings, associated indicators of compromise (IOCs), or current case status.
• Enrich cases by requesting further triage, investigation, and additional threat intelligence.
• Trigger complex remediation workflows through Torq’s Hyperautomation platform.  

With Socrates, even a brand new analyst who hasn’t been trained on how to leverage the full functionality of every security solution in their stack can easily ask Socrates to quarantine devices, isolate hosts, or kick off a password reset — without the risk of human error. Socrates’ capabilities are as limitless as the Hyperautomation engine it’s built on, but bounded by the automation workflows that SOC teams opt to build into Socrates’ toolbox. 

In its simplest form, Socrates was built to do what Torq has set out to do from the very beginning: Hyperautomate SecOps. Socrates automates repetitive tasks and reduces Tier-1 triage and investigation by 90% — helping humans respond to threats faster.

Embracing Hyperautomation and AI for Security Operations 

In an era where cyber threats are constantly evolving, the modernization of the SOC is no longer optional — it’s imperative. The inclusion of AI for security operations — like Torq Socrates — marks a pivotal shift in how SOC teams can combat alert fatigue, tech sprawl, and talent shortage. 

By integrating Hyperautomation and AI, organizations regain significant amounts of time, allowing SOC analysts to focus on more strategic tasks while maintaining control over critical security operations. The future of security operations lies in this harmonious blend of human expertise and intelligent automation, setting a new standard for operational efficiency in security operations.

Ready to embrace Hyperautomation and AI for security operations? Get a demo today.