Brought to you by DXC Technology
In today’s landscape, the constant influx of complex threats has far surpassed attacks from just a few months ago, let alone a couple of years back, as adversaries have upped their game with the use of AI technology.
As a result, security operations and analysts are under immense pressure, dealing with increasing alert volumes and false positives, while organizations struggle to provide adequate support amidst a growing talent shortage and an outdated model that is no longer effective, according to Chris Drumgoole, the president of global infrastructure services at DXC Technology.
“The traditional linear approach of Security Operations Centers (SOC) was designed much like other IT service management processes – create a ticket, investigate the threat – but the sheer volume of alerts makes this method impractical,” Drumgoole explains. “To handle all incoming tickets, you would need a SOC larger than your customer call center. This, combined with the growing complexity of tools and attacks, has rendered the old model obsolete.”
To address alert fatigue and slow investigation processes, organizations are turning to agentic security, utilizing intelligent AI agents capable of autonomously triaging, investigating, and responding to incidents at scale. DXC has teamed up with 7AI to introduce DXC Agentic Security Operations Center (SOC), integrating fully autonomous AI agents into its managed security operations.
Prior to rolling out this solution globally, DXC extensively tested the technology, utilizing 7AI’s agentic platform to enhance its internal SOC capabilities. The results were impressive, with an 80% reduction in tier-1 SOC analyst time and a 95% decrease in the number of tickets requiring human analysis, leading to a 67% reduction in mean time to respond in tier-1 and tier-2 SOC.
A Revolutionary Shift, Not Just an Incremental Update
This move represents more than just an upgrade in automation – it signifies a significant shift in threat response, comparable to the transition from static defense to dynamic response. Agentic security is not rule-based; it is adaptive, contextual, and end-to-end. While humans will remain involved in the process, agentic AI has the potential to evolve from reactive triage to proactive, self-directed defense.
“The key difference lies in the fact that the AI model approaches each alert uniquely and learns from past instances, unlike automation which responds the same way every time,” Drumgoole points out. “Our new Agentic SOC is expected to handle a significantly higher volume of alerts at a much faster pace going forward.”
DXC Agentic SOC eliminates the bottlenecks associated with manual alert processing, aiming to save customers valuable time by reducing false positives that consume analyst resources. The average response time has been reduced from 74 minutes to 24 minutes, a 70% improvement over traditional human capabilities.
“The results speak for themselves. In the initial 40 days of running our Agentic SOC, we saved 165 human days of analyst work time. And this is just the beginning,” Drumgoole asserts.
An Adapting-or-Dying Moment
Despite the evident benefits in terms of accuracy, many organizations remain hesitant about AI and the transformation it entails. Most workflows are human-centric, and integrating AI disrupts these processes, adding costs and emotional strain.
“It’s a significant adjustment for people,” Drumgoole acknowledges. “The challenge lies more in emotional, operational, and process barriers, underpinned by a ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ mindset.”
However, Drumgoole emphasizes that it’s crucial for organizations to embrace this evolution. Executive-level support and a clear mission are essential to drive this change. The beauty of this solution lies in its simplicity of implementation and scalability, as it can be viewed as adding a team of tier-1 security analysts rather than a technology overhaul.
“Those who embrace it will see their business thrive,” he concludes. “Investing in training and deploying these agents will only lead to further improvements. Otherwise, you risk becoming obsolete in no time.”
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