Why is AI SOC such a hot topic for CISOs right now?

AI SOC has become a priority for security leaders for three reasons.

First, the measurable nature of SOC operations makes AI a natural fit. Alert volume, response times, and coverage rates are already tracked—so demonstrating ROI on AI investments is straightforward compared to other areas of the business.

Second, boards and executives are actively requesting AI utilization across the organization. Security leaders are being asked how they’re using AI to speed up operations and reduce risk.

Third, the threat landscape has shifted. The recent Anthropic incident—where a Chinese state-sponsored group used agentic AI to execute a large-scale espionage campaign against tech companies, financial institutions, and government agencies with minimal human intervention—demonstrates that attackers are already using AI at scale. As Anthropic noted, the AI performed 80-90% of the campaign, making thousands of requests at speeds impossible for human hackers to match. When adversaries are using AI SOC capabilities offensively, defenders need AI SOC capabilities to keep pace.

How should CISOs think about the risk of using AI in the SOC versus not using it?

The risk calculus has flipped. Previously, CISOs weighed the unknowns of adopting AI—data privacy, accuracy, vendor lock-in—against the status quo. Now the question is: what’s the risk of not using AI when adversaries already are?

SOC teams that rely solely on human analysts face a coverage problem. There aren’t enough skilled practitioners to investigate every alert, and hiring alone won’t close the gap. The result is implicit risk acceptance—every skipped alert is a decision to trust that nothing malicious is hiding there. AI SOC solutions shift that equation by enabling 100% alert triage. The risk isn’t eliminated, but it moves from “we couldn’t look at this” to “we looked and here’s what we found.”

There are so many AI SOC vendors—what should CISOs look for when evaluating solutions?

Three things matter most:

1. Depth of analysis, not just speed. Many AI SOC tools summarize alerts or suggest next steps. Fewer actually investigate. CISOs should ask: does this solution run forensic analysis? Does it examine live memory, scheduled tasks, and loaded modules? Or does it just repackage what the EDR already said?

2. Handling of “mitigated” alerts. Most SOCs skip alerts that the EDR marks as handled—there’s no time to verify. But malware often persists after initial remediation. An AI SOC that re-investigates these alerts catches threats that would otherwise stay active on endpoints.

3. Integration without disruption. Adding another agent to endpoints creates friction. AI SOC solutions that work through existing EDR tools—CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne—deploy faster and avoid the overhead of managing additional software.

What is Forensic AI, and how is it different from other AI SOC solutions?

Forensic AI refers to AI that performs actual investigation, not just triage or summarization.

The distinction matters. Many AI SOC tools take an alert, pull some context, and present a recommendation. Forensic AI goes deeper: it analyzes live memory from the endpoint, examines scheduled tasks where malware hides, reviews loaded modules, and correlates artifacts across the environment.

This is the difference between an AI that says “this alert looks suspicious” and one that says “this threat was marked mitigated, but there’s still a malicious process running in a scheduled task—here’s the evidence.”

Intezer’s approach uses genetic code analysis (a patented capability) to break down files to the assembly level and determine whether something is malicious, trusted, or unknown. That forensic depth is what allows the platform to catch infections that persist after EDR remediation.

Where does Intezer Forensic AI fit in the SOC?

Intezer works alongside the existing security stack—not as a replacement, but as a forensic layer that investigates what other tools surface.

Alerts flow in from EDRs (CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne), SIEMs, email security tools (Proofpoint, Mimecast, Abnormal), identity providers (Okta), and other sources. Intezer triages every alert, runs forensic analysis, and delivers a verdict with recommended actions.

For SOC teams, this means analysts receive investigated alerts with context and evidence—not raw alerts requiring manual research. For organizations using SOAR platforms, Intezer integrates to trigger automated playbooks based on its findings.

The pricing model is based on endpoint count with unlimited alert ingest, so SOC teams can connect every source without worrying about volume-based costs.

Intezer is the AI SOC of choice for over 150 large enterprises and MSSPs. Schedule a demo to see Intezer’s Forensic AI in action.