SOC teams are the tip of the spear in cyber defense. They are critical to the functioning of key infrastructures, i.e. finance, medical, energy and manufacturing – operations that keep society working. Even the very best of security teams can be overwhelmed by a surge of alerts. And when they could not respond to threats fast enough, more problems pile on like a never ending game of whack-a-mole. And if SOC teams are overwhelmed and stretched beyond their limits, as they often are, we could face an immense disruption like we’ve never seen before.
As we enter a new era of cyber threats, including an ongoing state-sponsored cyber warfare, we look to AI and Machine Learning to increase the capacity of Security Operations Center (SOC) teams.
Powerful Force Multiplier
ML (Machine Learning) analyzes patterns, identifies anomalies from those patterns, then AI (Artificial Intelligence) addresses security incidents correlated with each other into a single alert to prompt a response.
To illustrate how ML and AI work in tandem – ML uses many sources of data to discern that a threat is present, then AI takes action to respond to that threat without the need for human intervention. Rinse, repeat and now you have an automated incident response mechanism working non-stop. This autonomous set up is a force multiplier in SOC’s capacity for monitoring, detecting and responding to malicious activities in the infrastructure.
Wide-Ranging Visibility
AI’s visibility into your business’ data transcends the limitations of organizational roles and department functions. It can aid the SOC team in identifying, for example, whether a potential problem is ransomware, which infiltrates computer systems and shuts down access to critical data. It can single out threats with longer-term effects, such as leaking customer data, warning business leaders of a potential damage to the reputation before it happens.
Your AI-enabled security will have eyes on everything, wherever your data, assets or activity may be. It will be everywhere, on-premises, on-the-cloud, at all endpoints all the time.
AI’s analytics allows SOC teams to perform critical thinking in anticipating harmful behavior in an organization’s system. Once they have that “baseline state,” the platforms do continual reassessments of all endpoints communicating on the network and then zero in on any outlier activity. If they’re found to be anomalous or exceeding a threshold defined by AI, an alert is sent to IT security staffers detailing the threat, the impact on business continuity, and the actions to be taken.
Pro-active Mitigation and Response
Sure, your AI-expanded cyber security technology is an all-seeing and all-knowing tool. But what it can’t do, at least for now, is defend organizations from outside and inside threats without human intervention.
At its best, threat mitigation and response is a powerful combination of the best of human intuition and machine technology. Its ultimate purpose is to proactively hunt for threats to reduce time-to-detection, dwell time and ultimately, protect the enterprise.
For SOC teams to harness AI and ML technology to its fullest advantage, it needs to lead a culture of resilience and hyper vigilance. By demonstrating the best codes of practice and continuously improving and upgrading manual processes in order to stay ahead of threats, they can successfully win the war on cybercrime.
Security Automation with UDT Secure
Businesses will still need administrators and IT security pros on staff to analyze system threats, carry out the appropriate action and program AI set up to automate a response. Today’s cybersecurity landscape is too complex for technology alone to navigate, much less solve.
UDTSecure brings expertise in security infrastructure consulting and assessments, supported by some of the most advanced IT security technology available. We help your organization map out critical security flaws and show you how to invest wisely to build a robust infrastructure that drives value.
