Automating Incident Response: How AI Can Help Your SOC

The Alert Fatigue Problem

Here's a typical day for a SOC analyst: 500 alerts, 8 hours, 2 actual incidents buried somewhere in the noise. The rest? False positives, low-priority events, and alerts that could have been auto-resolved.

This isn't sustainable. Analysts burn out, real threats get missed, and security suffers.

Automation isn't about replacing analysts. It's about handling the tedious stuff so humans can focus on what requires human judgment.

What Can (and Should) Be Automated

Tier 1: Full Automation

These should happen without human involvement:

• Known false positives
• Automatic enrichment (adding context to alerts)
• Standard responses (password resets after phishing, blocking known-bad IPs)
• Compliance logging

Tier 2: Automation with Verification

Automation does the work, human confirms before execution:

• Account lockouts
• Quarantining endpoints
• Blocking domains/IPs

Tier 3: Human-Led, AI-Assisted

Complex incidents where AI provides analysis:

• Advanced malware investigation
• Insider threat cases
• Incident scoping

Building Your Automation Stack

SOAR Platforms

Popular options: Microsoft Sentinel + Logic Apps, Splunk SOAR, Palo Alto XSOAR, Tines.

Basic Automation Playbook: Phishing Response

1. Extract indicators (sender, URLs, attachment hashes)
2. Enrich (check threat intel, scan URLs, analyze attachments)
3. Auto-classify based on findings
4. Execute response actions
5. Document everything

AI-Enhanced Triage

AI can help prioritize alerts by analyzing context, recent activity, threat intelligence, and asset criticality.

Measuring Success

Common Pitfalls

1. Automating Too Much Too Fast

Start small. Pick one alert type, automate it well, measure results, then expand.

2. No Human Override

Always have a way to disable automation.

3. Poor Documentation

Every automated action should be logged.

4. Set and Forget

Automation needs maintenance. Threats evolve.

Getting Started This Week

Day 1-2: Pick one high-volume, low-complexity alert type
Day 3-4: Build enrichment automation
Day 5: Add auto-classification
Week 2: Add response actions for clear-cut cases
Week 3+: Expand to other alert types

Automation is a force multiplier, not a replacement. The goal is a team of 5 operating like a team of 20, not a team of 0.