Addressing SOC analysts’ top 5 challenges

At Infosecurity Europe 2024, the keynote held by Ahmed, CEO of Qevlar AI, on the top 5 challenges faced by SOC analysts drew a full house, leaving standing room only for defensive cybersecurity experts. The insights shared not only resonated with the daily struggles of SOC teams but also highlighted the role played by AI in this area.

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So, what are they, these challenges?

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1. The good old "alert fatigue" is still around. Expanding attack surfaces and a growing number of attacks result in an increasing number of alerts analysts have to treat. This alert overload affects 83% of teams, making it hard to identify and respond promptly to genuine threats.

2. The turnover rate in SOC environments is high, often leaving teams understaffed. Analysts join understaffed teams without proper onboarding, leading to workplace distress. This perpetuates a vicious circle where 60% of analysts experience some kind of burnout, prompting more people to quit their jobs.

3. While automation was expected to ease SOC workloads, playbook-based solutions have not lived up to expectations. These tools are inflexible and struggle to keep up with evolving threats, especially in handling unique and complex scenarios.

4. SOC teams feel like they have too many tools to deal with and not enough time and resources to properly leverage them.

5. Documentation is crucial for SOC teams to comply with regulations, ensure accountability, and transfer knowledge. However, analysts struggle to maintain comprehensive documentation due to time constraints and heavy workloads.

Qevlar AI exists because of these challenges faced by SOC analysts. The explainable AI models we developed autonomously investigate alerts, eliminating the need for playbooks and optimising existing tools and technical environments, thereby simplifying life for SOC teams.

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About Infosecurity Europe

Infosecurity Europe is a leading event for the information security community in Europe. The yearly event brings together over 13,000 visitors and 380 exhibitors at ExCel London, to discuss the latest security threats and strategies.

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About Qevlar AI

Qevlar AI augments SOC teams with its autonomous, explainable AI-powered alert investigations. Seamlessly integrating into any environment, it leverages existing resources to conduct comprehensive analyses, providing analysts with actionable insights. Serving both enterprises and MSSPs, Qevlar AI delivers a proven 30% productivity boost for clients, including CAC40 companies and top 200 global MSSPs.