It is Not Yet Another Tool: Creating and Deploying an Agentic AI Companion in a Security Operations Center

Abstract

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) process large amounts of tickets, most of which are low-interest events not worthy of further investigation. The repetitive nature of this task and similarity of the vast amounts of tickets make it a prime candidate for generative AI-based automation. We created and deployed an agentic AI companion utilizing large language models through fieldwork within a SOC for over one year. The design of the SOC AI companion was driven by researchers' participation and interactions within the SOC's daily work. SOC analysts were invited to use it during the last four months of the fieldwork. We analyzed the analysts' usage of the companion and found that in more than 90% of the cases the companion's outputs were reused by analysts in the ticket's closing report. Our results showed that when designed "in the trenches" with the intended users, a SOC AI companion can go beyond being yet another tool, but rather a system that co-evolves with its human users as it traverses through the various types of workloads. Analysts naturally started to shape the AI companion's behaviors to fit their particular needs. Our data show that the more human analysts shape the AI companion's behaviors, the more they become comfortable trusting the output from the AI system, resulting in improved productivity.