Agentic AI is becoming a hot topic in the security community. This emerging technology has already taken other industries by storm, such as customer service, healthcare, and financial services. Many security teams are intrigued by the concept of AI-powered agents that can learn, adapt, make decisions, and take action. Agentic AI can be an absolute game changer for lean, resource-strapped security teams and mid-market organizations to combat the onslaught of never-ending cyberattacks.
Defining Agentic AI
Don’t confuse the “agent” in Agentic AI with legacy endpoint agents, which are software components installed on connected devices to collect telemetry, enforce security policies, and enable remote administration. Agentic AI is not the same. Instead of being a passive collector of data or an execution mechanism for predefined rules, Agentic AI has the ability to adapt and make decisions in real-time.
Self-guided decision-making is what sets Agentic AI apart. Unlike traditional IT agents that must wait for commands to take the next step, Agentic AI, in the context of a security environment, autonomously detects, investigates, and mitigates threats without human intervention. It also has context-aware adaptability. This means agents don’t just follow narrow scripts or pre-programmed logic. Instead, they learn from their environments, attack patterns, and past responses. AI-powered agents are constantly refining their actions through feedback loops driven by continuous improvement. And, while traditional automation handles repetitive tasks, Agentic AI can chain multiple security actions together, thinking strategically about the broader security picture and reaching goals faster than manual procedures allow.
In short, Agentic AI functions like a security analyst, only faster and without burnout.
Building a Better SOC
With Agentic AI, transforming a Security Operations Center (SOC) into a more autonomous model is more achievable. Transitioning to an autonomous SOC model has many benefits for an organization’s overall security posture. An Autonomous SOC utilizes Agentic AI, generative AI, machine learning, and workflow automation to carry out security operations tasks with minimal human involvement.
Here are four ways Agentic AI helps lean security teams create a supercharged SOC that can defend against threats:
1. Automated Threat Detection and Response: Unlike SIEMs and other automated security systems that rely on rule-based detection, Agentic AI ingests alerts from a wide variety of sources across the network, including cloud, network, endpoint, and identity systems. AI-powered agents can automatically analyze the data from all of these ingestion points, identify abnormal behavior patterns, and surface potential threats quickly via machine learning. And Agentic AI doesn’t just detect—it acts, correlating related events pulled from these various sources with the rich context that human analysts need to neutralize and contain threats.
2.Automated Decision-Making: Instead of expecting security analysts to manually triage alerts, Agentic AI can prioritize incidents. It can also investigate anomalies and escalate threats intelligently for the analyst, lightening the workload and allowing them to work on more critical threats. Think of it as having a virtual Tier 1 security analyst who handles the heavy lifting. For lean security teams, this is paramount.
3.Dynamic Playbooks: Agentic AI dynamically executes multi-step response actions, such as blocking malicious traffic, isolating compromised endpoints, and initiating forensic data collection, based on real-time risk assessment. There is no waiting for analysts to hit “approve” on every alert.
4.Feedback Loops and Continuous Learning: Unlike static security tools, Agentic AI is designed to improve over time, learning from attack attempts, remediation steps, and analyst feedback to fine-tune detection and response mechanisms.
Leveling the Playing Field
SentinelOne introduced a maturity model for the Autonomous SOC toward the end of 2024. This programmatic concept, powered and influenced largely by AI, assists organizations in achieving the scalability and autonomy of their security operations.
However, many midmarket companies may find the pursuit of an Autonomous SOC program to be unattainable. While this model is a valuable resource, it is more easily achievable for larger, enterprise-sized organizations. These organizations typically have the benefit of larger budgets, more resources, and 24/7 security staff. Midmarket companies often lack the funding, infrastructure, and personnel of their enterprise-sized counterparts.
This is why Agentic AI changes the game for smaller, strapped security teams seeking more automation in their security operations. Agentic AI helps bridge a necessary gap in detection and response by automating manual efforts, acting as a helpful companion to the human security analysts worried about burning out.
For midmarket enterprises with smaller security teams, Agentic AI is the ingredient that powers an automated SOC that runs itself, saving them the overhead of hiring dozens of analysts.
Here are the key benefits of Agentic AI for lean security teams:
● Faster Detection and Response: AI-powered agents can significantly reduce the time it takes to identify, detect, and respond to real-time attacks by replacing manual correlation with automated triaging, saving small teams thousands of hours a year.
● Less Burnou for Security Analystst: Small security teams get overwhelmed with security alerts, spending hours sifting through false positives which leads to burnout.
Agentic AI can significantly eliminate unnecessary alerts, helping teams focus on what matters most without burning through their bandwidth.
● Extracting More Value From Existing Tools: Most Agentic AI capabilities include open integration and interoperability of your security stack, adding tremendous firepower and ultimately ROI for your existing technology investments.
● Levels the Playing Field Against Cybercriminals: Mid-market organizations no longer have to play catch-up with their enterprise peers, as Agentic AI unlocks enterprise-grade security capabilities at scale without the hefty price tag.
Autonomy is the Goal
As cyber threats become more sophisticated, mid-market enterprises can’t afford to rely on traditional security models that require massive headcounts and budgets. They need to work smarter and faster. AI enables them to do just that.
With Agentic AI, the dream of an Autonomous SOC is now a reality for organizations of all sizes. Lean security teams can do more with less, stay ahead of threats, and defend with confidence.
For mid-market security leaders, the future isn’t just automation—it’s autonomy. Agentic AI is here to make it happen.
About the author
Subo Guha is Senior Vice President of Product Management at Stellar Cyber, where he spearheads the development of their award-winning, AI-driven Open XDR solutions. With more than 25 years of experience, Subo has held senior leadership roles at industry-leading companies like SolarWinds, Dell, N-able, and CA Technologies.
