Security Automation | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

If you work in security operations, the concept of the AI SOC agent is likely familiar. Early narratives promised total autonomy. Vendors seized on the idea of the "Autonomous SOC" and suggested a future where algorithms replaced analysts. That future has not arrived. We have not seen mass layoffs or empty security operations centers. We have instead seen the emergence of a practical reality. The deployment of AI in the SOC has not removed the human element. It has instead redefined how they are spending their time.  We now understand that the value of AI is not in replacing the operator. It is in solving the math problem of defense. Infrastructure complexity scales exponentially while headcount scales linearly. This mismatch previously forced teams to make statistical compromises and sample alerts rather than solving them. Agentic AI corrects this imbalance. It decouples investigation capacity from human availability and fundamentally alters the daily workflow of the sec...

Every managed security provider is chasing the same problem in 2026 — too many alerts, too few analysts, and clients demanding "CISO-level protection" at SMB budgets. The truth? Most MSSPs are running harder, not smarter. And it's breaking their margins. That's where the quiet revolution is happening: AI isn't just writing reports or surfacing risks — it's rebuilding how security services are delivered . The Shift Until now, MSSPs scaled by adding people. Each new client meant another analyst, another spreadsheet, another late-night ticket queue. AI automation flips that model. It handles assessments, benchmarking, and reporting in minutes — freeing your team to focus on strategy, not data entry. Early adopters are already seeing double-digit margin gains and faster onboarding cycles — without increasing headcount. Real Proof — Not Theory When Chad Robinson , CISO at Secure Cyber Defense, applied Cynomi's AI platform, his team stopped drowning in manual checklists. He didn't ju...

Zero Trust helps organizations shrink their attack surface and respond to threats faster, but many still struggle to implement it because their security tools don't share signals reliably. 88% of organizations admit they've suffered significant challenges in trying to implement such approaches, according to Accenture . When products can't communicate, real-time access decisions break down. The Shared Signals Framework (SSF) aims to fix this with a standardized way to exchange security events. Yet adoption is uneven. For example, Kolide Device Trust doesn't currently support SSF.  Scott Bean, Senior IAM and Security Engineer at MongoDB, proposed a way to solve the problem, giving teams an easy and intuitive way to operationalize SSF across their environment. In this guide, we'll share an overview of the workflow , plus step-by-step instructions for getting it up and running. The problem – IAM tools don't support SSF A core requirement of Zero Trust is continuous, reliable sig...

Enterprises today are expected to have at least 6-8 detection tools, as detection is considered a standard investment and the first line of defense. Yet security leaders struggle to justify dedicating resources further down the alert lifecycle to their superiors. As a result, most organizations' security investments are asymmetrical, robust detection tools paired with an under-resourced SOC, their last line of defense. A recent case study demonstrates how companies with a standardized SOC prevented a sophisticated phishing attack that bypassed leading email security tools. In this case study, a cross-company phishing campaign targeted C-suite executives at multiple enterprises. Eight different email security tools across these organizations failed to detect the attack, and phishing emails reached executive inboxes. However, each organization's SOC team detected the attack immediately after employees reported the suspicious emails. Why did all eight detection tools identica...

2026 will mark a pivotal shift in cybersecurity. Threat actors are moving from experimenting with AI to making it their primary weapon, using it to scale attacks, automate reconnaissance, and craft hyper-realistic social engineering campaigns. The Storm on the Horizon Global world instability, coupled with rapid technological advancement, will force security teams to adapt not just their defensive technologies but their entire workforce approach. The average SOC already processes about 11,000 alerts daily, but the volume and sophistication of threats are accelerating. For business leaders, this translates to direct impacts on operational continuity, regulatory compliance, and bottom-line financials. SOCs that can't keep pace won't just struggle; they'll fail spectacularly. Solve these three core issues now, or pay dearly later. 1. Evasive Threats Are Slipping Through—And Getting Smarter Fast Attackers have mastered evasion. ClickFix campaigns trick employees into pas...

Security Operations Centers (SOC) today are overwhelmed. Analysts handle thousands of alerts every day, spending much time chasing false positives and adjusting detection rules reactively. SOCs often lack the environmental context and relevant threat intelligence needed to quickly verify which alerts are truly malicious. As a result, analysts spend excessive time manually triaging alerts, the majority of which are classified as benign. Addressing the root cause of these blind spots and alert fatigue isn't as simple as implementing more accurate tools. Many of these traditional tools are very accurate, but their fatal flaw is a lack of context and a narrow focus - missing the forest for the trees. Meanwhile, sophisticated attackers exploit exposures invisible to traditional reactive tools, often evading detection using widely-available bypass kits .  While all of these tools are effective in their own right, they often fail because of the reality that attackers don't employ just ...

Running a SOC often feels like drowning in alerts. Every morning, dashboards light up with thousands of signals; some urgent, many irrelevant. The job is to find the real threats fast enough to keep cases from piling up, prevent analyst burnout, and maintain client or leadership confidence. The toughest challenges, however, aren't the alerts that can be dismissed quickly, but the ones that hide in plain sight. These tricky threats drag out investigations, create unnecessary escalations, and quietly drain resources over time. Why Detection Gaps Keep Opening What slows SOCs down isn't the flood of alerts alone but the way investigations get split across disconnected tools. Intel in one platform, detonation in another, enrichment in a third; every switch wastes time. Across hundreds of cases, those minutes add up to stalled investigations, unnecessary escalations, and threats that linger longer than they should. Action Plan That Delivers 3× SOC Efficiency in Threat Detection SOC tea...

Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled the expansion of its Sentinel Security Incidents and Event Management solution (SIEM) as a unified agentic platform with the general availability of the Sentinel data lake. In addition, the tech giant said it's also releasing a public preview of Sentinel Graph and Sentinel Model Context Protocol ( MCP ) server to turn telemetry into a security graph and allow AI agents access an organization's security context in a standardized manner. "With graph-based context, semantic access, and agentic orchestration, Sentinel gives defenders a single platform to ingest signals, correlate across domains, and empower AI agents built in Security Copilot, VS Code using GitHub Copilot, or other developer platforms," Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president at Microsoft Security, said in a post shared with The Hacker News. Microsoft released Sentinel data lake in public preview earlier this July as a purpose-built, cloud-native tool to ingest, manage...

Why do SOC teams still drown in alerts even after spending big on security tools? False positives pile up, stealthy threats slip through, and critical incidents get buried in the noise. Top CISOs have realized the solution isn't adding more and more tools to SOC workflows but giving analysts the speed and visibility they need to catch real attacks before they cause damage.  Here's how they're breaking the cycle and turning their SOCs into true threat-stopping machines. Starting with Live, Interactive Threat Analysis The first step to staying ahead of attackers is seeing threats as they happen. Static scans and delayed reports just can't keep up with modern, evasive malware. Interactive sandboxes like ANY.RUN let analysts detonate suspicious files, URLs, and QR codes in a fully isolated, safe environment and actually interact with the sample in real time . Why CISOs give access to interactive sandboxes: Analysts can click links, open files, and mimic real user actions to trig...

By 2025, Zero Trust has evolved from a conceptual framework into an essential pillar of modern security. No longer merely theoretical, it's now a requirement that organizations must adopt. A robust, defensible architecture built on Zero Trust principles does more than satisfy baseline regulatory mandates. It underpins cyber resilience, secures third-party partnerships, and ensures uninterrupted business operations. In turn, more than 80% of organizations plan to implement Zero Trust strategies by 2026, according to a recent Zscaler report .  In the context of Zero Trust, artificial intelligence (AI) can assist greatly as a tool for implementing automation around adaptive trust and continuous risk evaluation. In a Zero Trust architecture, access decisions must adapt continuously to changing factors such as device posture, user behavior, location, workload sensitivity, and more. This constant evaluation generates massive volumes of data, far beyond what human teams can process alo...

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) today face unprecedented alert volumes and increasingly sophisticated threats. Triaging and investigating these alerts are costly, cumbersome, and increases analyst fatigue, burnout, and attrition. While artificial intelligence has emerged as a go-to solution, the term "AI" often blurs crucial distinctions. Not all AI is built equal, especially in the SOC. Many existing solutions are assistant-based, requiring constant human input, while a new wave of autonomous, Agentic AI has the potential to fundamentally transform security operations. This article examines Agentic AI (sometimes also known as Agentic Security ), contrasts it with traditional assistant-based AI (commonly known as Copilots), and explains its operational and economic impacts on modern SOCs. We'll also explore practical considerations for security leaders evaluating Agentic AI solutions. Agentic AI vs. Assistant AI (aka Copilots): Clarifying the Difference Agentic AI is defined by ...

The Need For Unified Security Google Workspace is where teams collaborate, share ideas, and get work done. But while it makes work easier, it also creates new security challenges. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving, finding ways to exploit misconfigurations, steal sensitive data, and hijack user accounts. Many organizations try to secure their environment by piecing together different security tools, hoping that multiple layers of protection will keep them safe.  But in reality, this patchwork approach often creates blind spots, making it harder—not easier—to defend against threats. To truly secure Google Workspace, businesses need a unified security strategy that offers complete protection without unnecessary complexity. The problem with most security solutions is that they only solve part of the puzzle. Point solutions, like tools that block malware or phishing attacks, might work well for a specific type of threat but fail to recognize suspicious user behavior, unauthori...

What do identity risks, data security risks and third-party risks all have in common? They are all made much worse by SaaS sprawl. Every new SaaS account adds a new identity to secure, a new place where sensitive data can end up, and a new source of third party risk. Learn how you can protect this sprawling attack surface in 2025. What do identity risks, data security risks and third-party risks all have in common? They are all made much worse by SaaS sprawl. Every new SaaS account adds a new identity to secure, a new place where sensitive data can end up, and a new source of third-party risk. And, this growing attack surface, much of which is unknown or unmanaged in most orgs, has become an attractive target for attackers. So, why should you prioritize securing your SaaS attack surface in 2025? Here are 4 reasons. ‍ 1. Modern work runs on SaaS. When's the last time you used something other than a cloud-based app to do your work? Can't remember? You're not alone.  Outside of ...