What’s different – and why it matters
It’s not just that attacks are increasing – it’s how they’re being executed. Bad actors are now using AI to scale phishing campaigns, mimic user behaviour and evade detection faster than human analysts can keep up. That means the traditional SOC, reliant on manual triage and static rule sets, is falling behind.
Enter the AI-powered SOC. Not just a nice-to-have, instead a necessary evolution in how we approach cyber defence.
Legacy SOCs are notoriously noisy. Thousands of alerts flood in daily, many of them false positives. Analysts are forced into reactive triage, chasing anomalies without clear context. The result? Burnout, missed threats, and slow time-to-response.
An AI-enabled SOC flips that model.
In short, AI shrinks the time between threat and response. This isn’t just automation for efficiency – it’s intelligence for impact that means security teams spend less time sorting signals and more time neutralising threats.
The cybercriminal playbook has changed and AI is now a core weapon for attackers
According to Gartner, by 2026, 90% of successful cyberattacks will leverage AI in some form. This is no longer about keeping up with known threats. It’s about anticipating unknown ones.
So let’s take a look at what this means in practice.
Consider a global financial services firm targeted in a phishing campaign. In the past, the phishing emails were generic – easily flagged by filters and spotted by staff. But now, each message is tailored: correct names, recent meeting references, even language aligned to the target’s role.
Traditional SOCs miss it. Filters don’t catch it. Alerts are logged, but analysts are already swamped by false positives.
In an AI-enabled SOC, behavioural anomalies are flagged instantly: logins from unexpected locations, unusual download volumes, time-of-day patterns. AI cross-references identity data, flags high-risk accounts and auto-triggers containment steps, isolating the risk before the damage is done.
Time saved: hours.
Impact avoided: potentially millions.
AI in the SOC isn’t just a tech upgrade – it’s a mindset shift. Where traditional SOCs are built for detection, AI-powered SOCs are built for anticipation. They don’t just spot what’s already happened, they spot what’s likely to happen next. This means:
In fact, according to MIT Technology Review Insights, 2023, AI-enabled investigation workflows have shown to cut incident response times by up to 85%.
The AI-powered SOC is not a vision of the future. It’s what smart security teams are building now. In a threat landscape where minutes matter, that advantage is critical.
Head of Security Services
The modern enterprise has shifted beyond recognition.
Hybrid working is embedded, cloud adoption continues at pace, and data now moves across a range of devices, locations, and applications. As this digital footprint expands, the traditional network perimeter has dissolved.
AI has altered the physics of cybersecurity. Threats now move faster than policies can adapt, and defences evolve in real time. The traditional idea of resilience – static controls, periodic reviews, and defined perimeters – no longer fits.
In an era where many students invest over £60,000 in a university education, the question of value for money has become a defining factor in university choice. But “value” is not universal.
Enterprise networks have reached an inflection point. Hybrid working is now embedded, cloud applications proliferate, and data moves continuously between users, devices and locations. UK organisations now manage more cloud identities than traditional endpoints, and more than half of enterprise traffic originates outside the office. As a result, network reliability, security and performance have shifted from operational concerns to board-level priorities.
AI is now woven into every part of cybersecurity operations. It analyses behaviour, identifies anomalies, and increasingly, takes action on its own. It’s faster, tireless, and in many cases more consistent than any analyst could be. But with that progress comes a harder question: how much decision-making are we prepared to give away?
There’s no escaping the squeeze. Demand is rising, budgets are flat, and no one’s in the mood for another “game-changing” announcement. People have heard so many promises of ‘once in a generation’ transformation that hype doesn’t hold much weight anymore.
There’s a moment every organization faces when it has to stop pretending the cracks aren’t there. The systems that don’t quite talk to each other. The processes everyone works around. The decisions that were right once — but no longer are.
In the context of limited investment, socio-economic disruption, and accelerated demands, the CIO mandate is clear: do more, deliver faster, spend less. Clear. But impossible.
AI has become the defining force in cybersecurity, not because it’s new, but because it’s everywhere. It’s now threaded through every layer of the threat landscape: attackers use it to accelerate their operations, while defenders rely on it to hold the line.