What an Autonomous SOC Looks Like

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer or any other entities with which I am affiliated.

In my previous posts, I talked about AI Agents for cybersecurity, Autonomous Investigations (AI SOC), and even compared Copilot with Autonomous Investigations.

In this edition of the security automation blog, let’s talk about something that’s been on the minds of many in security operations:

If we automate most or all of security triage and investigation, what do we do with the time and people?

Does that mean SOC is obsolete? Is the junior SOC analyst role really disappearing? Or are we just shifting responsibilities?

The Reality of an AI-Driven SOC

As I’ve said before, no CISO is confidently saying, “Let’s fire the entire SOC team and replace them with an AI SOC.”

Sure, some early adopters are playing around with AI-driven SOC models for Tier 1 work, but let’s be real ,we’re nowhere near fully autonomous security operations.

Even with the most advanced automation today, there are too many edge cases, too much context required, and too much unpredictability for AI to completely replace human security teams. But let’s assume for a second that we actually achieve a highly automated SOC where triage and basic investigations are handled autonomously ,what does that mean for the security team?

Would the modern SOC still need analysts? Would security teams shrink? What happens to the roles we’ve always had?

Where We Are Today: SOC Is a Burnout Machine

If you’ve done SOC triage, you know the grind:

• You see the same alerts every day, repeatedly handling the same false positives.

• You spend hours gathering context because logs are scattered across different tools, and no single pane of glass actually exists.

• You chase down other teams just to determine if an event is expected or an actual threat.

And when security teams turn on too many detections without fine-tuning them, they create two massive operational problems:

1. A never-ending backlog of detections that detection engineers never have time to refine.

2. A flood of automation requests that don’t solve the root problem, just apply band-aids.

Many companies don’t have large, well-structured SOCs with dedicated detection engineering, threat hunting, and automation teams. Instead, a handful of people juggle triage, investigation, detection engineering, and automation all at once.

This is where the burnout cycle starts.

This edition is sponsored by Qevlar

The Core Problems of a Traditional SOC

Problem #1: Broken Alert Generation

When SOC teams don’t have time to tune detections properly, two bad things happen:

• They start making exceptions and suppressions that weaken security.

• They focus only on high-severity alerts, leaving huge piles of low-severity alerts completely untouched.

This means that over time, SOC teams either let real threats slip through or drown in noise.

Problem #2: Automation Overload Without Strategy

To deal with alert fatigue, security teams rush to automate ,but without a structured approach, it becomes a mess.

• Some teams build multiple overlapping automations that do the same thing because there’s no central ownership.

• Others create partial automations that still require manual steps, meaning they never see the full ROI of SOAR.

Here’s what usually happens in response:

• Someone in the SOC starts an automation project.

• They create a few playbooks, which work well but only solve a fraction of the problem.

• They realize true automation needs deeper integration with detection engineering.

• But because they’re already buried in triage work, they never have time to go back and optimize.

This cycle continues, and instead of making the SOC more efficient, it just makes things more fragmented.

What ASOC Actually Enables

If you’ve followed my blogs on SADLC (Security Automation Development Lifecycle) or my thoughts on integrating Detection Engineering and Automation, you’ll recognise that automation isn’t just about reducing workload.

It’s about freeing teams to focus on what actually matters:

• Building better detections that trigger fewer false positives.

• Optimizing automation playbooks for real-world response.

• Spending more time investigating actual threats.

So what happens when we fully implement an Autonomous SOC (ASOC)?

The SOC of the Future Is an Engineering-First Team

Instead of having teams constantly buried in triage, ASOC shifts security teams toward proactive engineering work.

The goal is simple: get rid of repetitive work and let analysts focus on building better security.

The bigger impact is how ASOC improves actual SOC performance and defense posture. When triage and basic investigations are automated, the team stops wasting time on repetitive tasks. You’re not buried in noise anymore. Alerts come with context, signals are correlated, and you don’t spend half your day figuring out if something matters.

And it’s not just about response. The team can also use that freed-up time to work on better coverage, onboarding new log sources, improving visibility, and making sure you’re not flying blind in parts of your environment. That directly reduces the risk of missing detections or running rules on incomplete data.

So, Is the Junior SOC Analyst Role Disappearing?

Yes. And it should.

Let’s be honest—the Tier 1 SOC analyst role was broken from the start.

• It had the worst retention rates.

• It had the highest burnout.

• It was never a real career—it was always a stepping stone.

But that doesn’t mean entry-level roles are disappearing. They’re evolving.

Instead of a Tier 1 role that’s just button-clicking and alert triage, the new entry-level security roles will focus on:

• Detection Engineering – Learning how detections are written, optimized, and tested.

• Security Automation – Learning how to design playbooks and integrate security workflows.

This shift doesn’t eliminate entry-level opportunities—it creates better ones.

The New SOC Model: Fewer Investigation, More Engineering

So, what does a modern SOC look like in an ASOC-driven world?

New SOC Engineer/Analyst Responsibilities

• SIEM Engineering – Fine-tuning detections, optimizing log sources, improving visibility.

• Detection Engineering – Writing rules that detect real threats and not just generate noise.

• Incident Response – Handling actual incidents that need real investigation (what we currently call Tier 3).

• Security Automation Engineering – Developing and maintaining automation playbooks for detection and response.

This is the shift from reactive SOC work to engineering-driven security operations.

Autonomous SOC Is More Than Just Technology

Here’s the catch: ASOC isn’t just a tool, it’s a framework.

For ASOC to work, you need:

• The right people – Detection engineers, automation specialists, and incident responders who understand security at scale.

• The right processes – A structured approach like SADLC that aligns detection engineering, response, and automation.

• The right technology – AI and automation that don’t just generate more alerts, but actively reduce them.

Final Thoughts: The SOC of the Future Isn’t a SOC at All

So, what happens when we really implement ASOC?

We stop fighting fires and start engineering better security.

The Tier 1 SOC analyst role disappears ,but not because AI took over. It disappears because we have a way to fix the broken SOC model and turned SOC into an engineering discipline.

SOC teams of the future won’t just be responding to alerts. They’ll be designing the systems that eliminate them.

And that’s a SOC worth working in.