For years, cybersecurity incident response was a bit like listening for smoke alarms in a mansion–if you heard a beep, you knew something was on fire. Signature-based detection did the job, but only after the damage started smouldering. Enter AI, which doesn’t just wait for smoke–it sniffs out strange cooking, checks the blueprints, and figures out if the fire is real, accidental, or part of an elaborate heist.
As threats get faster, sneakier, and more tailored, the response game is levelling up. AI is helping teams ditch the reactive whack-a-mole and step into a world of real-time context-aware defense. Think less panic button, more predictive detective with a knack for pattern recognition.
AI is particularly helpful with two key capacities, points out David Gruber, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). “First, the ability to more effectively apply threat intelligence in the detection, investigation, and response process,” he said. “This has long been a challenge for many security teams, and the recent application of AI is now threading helpful threat intel throughout the SecOps process. The second area is automation. AI is helping automate many of the more manual tasks previously associated with threat investigation, reducing the manual steps required to complete an investigation.”
Moving past signature-based detection
Learning and adapting from the emerging threats is an ability marketed with AI, promising a significant reduction in incident response time.
