We’re living in a time when the creativity of cyber-attacks are increasing, and now the use of Artificial Intelligence means that we never know what to expect next, or how attackers could strike.
A tool intended to orchestrate and automate response – SOAR – is not able to keep up. Technology analyst Chris Tozzi agrees that “SOARs increasingly no longer cut it as a standalone security solution.
AI SOC analyst platforms are replacing them. These end-to-end security tools use predictive reasoning to anticipate and chase down threats we’ve never even seen; no playbooks required.
What SOARs and Agentic AI Have in Common
First, let’s look at the similarities – and where they diverge.
As leading AI SOC provider Prophet Security states, while SOARs can speed up individual steps, gather context, query data, and correlate IOCs (even put things into motion), “the analytical work of connecting that context into a coherent judgment still falls to a human, which means it still only happens at human speed and human volume.”
This is where SOARs fall short; speed, scale, and (because they can’t reason) prediction.
A side-by-side comparison of the two would reveal:
They BOTH
- Manage incident response
- Integrate with other tools
- Leverage threat intelligence
- Automate risk management
- And market themselves as “ultimate” security platforms
However, SOARs DO NOT
- Hunt down anything outside of their playbooks (only as good as their analysts)
- Play well with non-technical personnel (experts only)
- Perform well across the board out of the box (configuration required)
- Assess potential security posture flaws (runtime errors only)
- Remediate threats autonomously or get better as they go
Again, the key differences are prediction, autonomy, non-technical accessibility, and out-of-the-box value (or lack thereof). SOARs work great if you’ve got the time, technical expertise, human resources, and a crystal ball to consult before creating every playbook.
But most organizations don’t. And that’s where agentic AI fills in the gaps.
Why We Need Agentic AI SOCs Now
SOARs only got us so far, but their contributions are not insignificant. They solved a lot of the problems SIEMs put on our plate, but now they need to evolve further.
That evolution is agentic AI SOCs, and industry experts know it.
- Agentic AI is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in service management, enabling businesses to operate with unprecedented efficiency. ” – Forrester
- “[A]gentic AI…can act on its own to plan, execute, and achieve a goal—it becomes “agentic”. The goals are set by humans, but the agents determine how to fulfill those goals.” – Deloitte
- “AI agents can safely take repetitive tasks off analysts’ plates…” – SANS Institute
That’s why doing your homework and choosing the best AI SOC platform is key to getting ahead of the curve and realizing value now.
AI doesn’t evolve at the same speed as SIEMs or SOARs, and agentic AI only gets better over time. Investing now will give companies the advantage of maturity, perspective, and customization at a time when others are just waking up: not to mention unmatched speed and scale against today’s current AI-driven attacks…
And everything in between.
What Only Agentic AI SOCs Can Do
There is a lot of overlap, but quickly we see where AI SOCs pull ahead and show their prowess over SOARs.
Only (truly) agentic AI SOC platforms can:
- Think and reason at scale (not tied to playbook logic or limitations)
- Find misconfigurations and latent threats before they become a problem
- Make high-level security accessible to non-technical employees (NLQs, generative AI, drag-and-drop security controls)
- Automate end-to-end remediation without human intervention at each step
- Speed up investigation times by an order of magnitude not attainable by humans + SOARs alone
As noted in a recent Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) study on AI Agents in the SOC, “Analysts assisted by AI not only completed escalated alert investigations from 45–61% faster but were also 22-29% more accurate than their manual counterparts.”
Stated Hillary Baron, Associate Vice President, CSA, “These patterns suggest that AI-driven investigation platforms can improve human accuracy and speed while sustaining investigative quality across repeated or complex tasks.”
And to beat modern threats at scale, an “improvement” on human accuracy and speed is needed, whether in manual threat hunts or in crafting SOAR playbooks. In whatever capacity, agentic AI SOC platforms are uniquely – and solely – poised to do it.
Is It Time to Rip-and-Replace? No Need.
Again, a disclaimer: companies that have already invested heavily in SOAR tools do not need to start from scratch.
They can keep their SOAR investments and even benefit from doing so. That’s because SOAR will always do as it does; it just needs “all-knowing, ever-learning, never-tiring” agentic AI at the head calling the shots (instead of fallible, limited human analysts).
Currently, SOARs are directed by very capable experts – who are in short supply and increasingly outwitted by emerging AI tactics. No one can keep up with everything.
With AI SOCs at the helm, SOAR tools can do what they do best while being fed information from agentic AI agents that can chase AI-powered attacks at scale, see what’s coming, decide best actions just like a SOC analyst, and still be subject to human oversight: the best of both worlds.
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About the Author: An ardent believer in personal data privacy and the technology behind it, Katrina Thompson is a freelance writer leaning into encryption, data privacy legislation, and the intersection of information technology and human rights. She has written for Bora, Venafi, Tripwire, and many other sites.
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