How Agencies Can Build an AI-Augmented SOC to Strengthen Cyber Resilience

What Is an AI-Augmented SOC and How Does It Work?

AI-augmented SOCs use automation to streamline repetitive tasks such as log analysis and alert triage, freeing analysts to concentrate on high-stakes investigations and reducing man-hours. These SOCs also introduce advancements in machine learning (ML) that enhance the capacity and capabilities of traditional SOCs.

SOC tooling environments have long included AI, but an augmented SOC blends the strengths of human expertise with the scale, speed and consistency of AI-driven security.

“Instead of replacing analysts, augmentation empowers them — automating repetitive tasks such as log analysis, triage and enrichment while surfacing the most relevant insights for human decision-making,” says Lisa Tetrault, senior vice president of security services at Arctic Wolf. “Think of it as a force multiplier.”

Analysts focus on response actions while AI takes care of the noise, helping agencies move faster and with greater precision. The AI also surfaces threats traditional monitoring might miss.

“Compromised credentials are still one of the top risks,” says Mary Lou Prevost, group vice president of state and local government and higher education at Splunk.

Attackers linger in systems for longer stretches of time if anomalies go undetected. AI cuts dwell time by automating the identification of unusual behavior and pushing high-priority alerts to the forefront.

“You don’t need a human intervening on the mundane, so teams can focus on what really matters,” Prevost says.

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Why Agencies Are Turning to AI-Enhanced Security

Agencies face some of the most persistent and sophisticated adversaries in the world, and the scale of the threat landscape has outpaced what traditional approaches can manage, Tetrault says.

AI-enhanced security allows agencies to analyze massive volumes of telemetry in real time, spot subtle anomalies and anticipate attacker behavior before it turns into an incident.

“It’s about resiliency, and AI brings efficiency,” Tetrault says. “But human judgment ensures context and accountability, which is crucial in a government environment.”

AI-powered threat detection represents a colossal leap forward for the cybersecurity community and for the enterprise, says Fakir, who points to an ever-evolving landscape where adversaries have access to these same technologies and are using them to build their attack capacity.

“Our government must not wait,” Fakir says. “We can’t afford to delay.”

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Early Government Use Cases of SOC Augmentation

The Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, established in 2018, marked a shift toward AI-enhanced security operations promising faster detection, more accurate triage and stronger resilience against sophisticated threats.

There has also been SOC augmentation in areas like insider threat detection, zero-trust monitoring and continuous compliance reporting. For example, AI can correlate behavioral signals across endpoints, cloud workloads and identity systems to identify insider risk in ways that would be almost impossible for humans alone.

“We’re also seeing AI play a role in accelerating incident triage, reducing mean time to respond by automating the early stages of analysis and escalation,” Tetrault says.

Another agency putting the augmented SOC into practice is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is using AI to fuse massive data sets, detect anomalies and flag potential threats for analysts through interactive dashboards that pair ML with traditional, rule-based alerts.

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How to Launch an Augmented SOC With Industry Support

Agencies don’t need to reinvent the wheel and can instead leverage frameworks like Arctic Wolf’s Security Operations Cloud, which integrates AI, automation and 24/7 expert coverage into a single platform.

“Partnering with a provider allows agencies to scale quickly without the heavy lift of building new infrastructure or hiring dozens of specialized staff,” Tetrault says.

A phased approach often works best: Start with AI-augmented detection and response, and expand into risk management, vulnerability prioritization and threat hunting.

“It takes a coalition,” Tetrault says. “CIOs and CISOs provide vision and governance, SOC analysts and engineers bring operational reality, and mission leaders ensure alignment with agency objectives.”

LEARN MORE: What is agentic AI?

Industry has the innovation and capabilities to enable an augmented SOC without having to do a rip-and-replace of existing tooling.

“The beauty of agentic AI is that it can be overlayed and integrated across existing enterprise infrastructure,” Fakir says.

Industry also knows how and where efficiencies can be gained, whether by reducing labor hours or optimizing existing tools to be more effective at cyberdefense.

“I’m a huge fan of pilot programs, where government and industry can collaborate on designing the most advantageous solution built for the purpose of the enterprise,” Fakir says. “It doesn’t have to be expensive.”

UP NEXT: Agencies must be proactive in securing data from AI threats.

Evolution of the Augmented SOC

In the future, augmented SOCs will move from reactive defense to predictive operations, where AI models forecast potential attack paths and help agencies preempt incidents.

Still, keeping a human in the loop for context, ethics and accountability will remain essential, Tetrault says.

“We’ll also see greater integration between security, IT and mission operations, making the SOC less of a silo and more of a real-time command center for resilience,” Tetrault says. “We’re at the beginning of a major shift.”