An agentic SOC is a security operations center where AI agents do part of the triage and investigation work themselves: they gather evidence, plan checks and propose or take actions, within rules and approval limits the team sets. For analysts, the job moves from repeating first-pass checks on every alert to reviewing reasoning, approving actions and continuing the cases that still need a person.
- An agentic SOC changes who does the first pass on an alert, not who is accountable for the outcome.
- Analysts spend more time reviewing an agent's evidence, verdict and proposed actions, and correcting it when it is wrong.
- Response stays under human control when execution modes and approval lists are set up for it, which is a configuration decision the team makes before expanding automation.
We wrote this for SOC analysts and the people who lead them, because most writing on agentic AI in cybersecurity describes the technology and skips the day-to-day work. Below we compare the agentic SOC with a traditional, queue-driven SOC, walk through what changes at each stage of an alert's life, and spell out what stays with the analyst.
What is an agentic SOC?
An agentic SOC is a SOC in which AI agents pursue a defined task, such as deciding what to do with an alert or scoping a suspected compromise, through several steps: they read the alert, call tools, evaluate the results and decide what to check next. The difference from earlier automation is that the agent chooses its next step from the evidence instead of following one fixed sequence.
"Agentic" is used for more than one thing in security. In this article, agentic AI in cybersecurity means AI agents that do security operations work. It does not mean securing the AI agents your organization deploys, which is a separate topic often called AI agent security.
Agentic SOC vs SOC: what is the difference?
The main difference between an agentic SOC and a traditional SOC is where the first pass of investigation happens. In a traditional SOC, an analyst picks an alert from a queue and collects context by hand. In an agentic SOC, an agent does that collection first and hands the analyst a verdict, its reasons and a next step.
- Alert intake. Traditional: alerts land in a shared queue and wait for an analyst. Agentic: rules route each alert either to an agent for triage or straight into a case.
- First-pass checks. Traditional: the analyst looks up the host, user and indicators in several tools. Agentic: the agent extracts the entities, enriches them and applies policy checks before anyone looks.
- Disposition. Traditional: the analyst closes or escalates and writes a short note. Agentic: the agent records a verdict with its reasons; eligible noise can close, uncertain alerts go to an analyst queue and threats become cases.
- Investigation. Traditional: the analyst builds the plan and runs each query. Agentic: an agent builds a plan, tests it with the connected tools and produces a report with findings and recommendations.
- Response. Traditional: fixed playbook steps run, or the analyst acts manually. Agentic: the agent proposes actions, and execution follows the configured approval policy.
- Record. Traditional: context is spread across tickets, consoles and chat. Agentic: the case carries the evidence, the findings and the status of each action.
An agentic SOC is not a SOC without analysts. The queue is still there, but it should hold fewer items, and each one should arrive with the evidence already gathered.
What changes in an analyst's day?
In an agentic SOC, the analyst's day moves from doing every check to checking the work. The changes show up at four points in an alert's life.
Triage: from first pass to review
Most first-pass work is the same few lookups repeated: who is the user, what is the host, has this indicator been seen before. An agent can run those lookups for every alert. The analyst's job becomes reading the verdict and the reasons behind it, and overriding the verdict when the agent got it wrong. Those overrides matter: they are the signal that tells the team whether to trust the agent with more.
Investigation: from building the plan to judging it
For an escalated alert, an investigation agent can enrich the alert, build a plan and run the checks the connected tools allow, then report what it found. The analyst picks up a case that already holds a plan, its results and recommendations. The skill that matters more is judging whether the plan was the right one and what it missed, rather than typing the queries.
Response: from running actions to approving them
In a traditional SOC, containment is a manual step or a fixed playbook. In an agentic SOC, the agent proposes actions, such as isolating an endpoint, and an approval policy decides what happens next. Analysts spend more of their response time approving or rejecting proposed actions, and SOC leads spend time deciding which actions may ever run without a person.
Questions: from writing queries to asking them
Analysts still follow their own hunches. An assistant that answers natural-language questions about a host, user, alert or case, and shows the records behind each answer, shortens the step from question to evidence. Being able to open the source matters more than the answer itself, because the analyst decides what to believe.
What stays with the analyst?
In an agentic SOC, the analyst keeps the decisions that carry risk and the cases the agent cannot settle. That includes:
- Uncertain alerts. When evidence is missing or ambiguous, a well-configured agent sends the alert to a person instead of guessing.
- High-impact actions. Isolation, blocking and similar actions should wait for approval until the team has reviewed enough outcomes to decide otherwise.
- Open cases. An open case is still work to do, even when an agent has written a thorough report.
- Corrections. Analysts review verdicts and override wrong ones; without that review, nobody knows how well the agent performs.
- Scope and policy. Which alerts an agent may handle, and which actions it may take, is a decision for the team, not the agent.
How Imperum runs an agentic SOC
Imperum Autonomous SOC brings alert intake, AI analysis, case investigation and controlled response into one operating flow. It resolves eligible noise, builds evidence for threats and keeps unresolved work with the team. Rules decide which alerts enter triage and which create or join a case directly; agents and analysts examine the evidence; cases carry findings and actions through to resolution.
- Virtus Triage (Virtus Alert Triage Agent in the product) gives each alert an initial disposition. It extracts the host, user and indicators, enriches the evidence, applies policy gates and retrieves relevant knowledge, and records the verdict and its reasons. It can close eligible false positives, escalate into a case or send uncertain alerts to the Virtus Triage Queue, and analysts can inspect the reasoning and correct the verdict.
- Virtus Pilot (Virtus Pilot Agent in the product) investigates cases that need more depth. It builds an investigation plan, tests it with configured connector tools and produces a report with findings, recommendations and action status.
- AI Assistant (Virtus Assistant in the platform) is the analyst-led entry point: ask about a host, user, alert or case in natural language and inspect the source citations behind the answer.
- The Virtus Email Phishing Agent investigates reported emails: headers, sender, links and attachments, brought into one verdict with evidence.
Response stays under explicit control through Virtus Pilot's execution modes. Audit skips execution so the team can review the plan. Guided requires human approval for every planned action, regardless of risk level. Auto runs actions allowed by the risk threshold, while higher-risk actions and actions on the approval list wait for review. The built-in mode is Auto with a low-risk threshold, isolation and blocking require review by default, and tenant configuration can override these defaults.
The agents do not always run as a sequence. Escalation from Virtus Triage can start Virtus Pilot, subject to configured routing, run limits and licensing, and the checks and actions available depend on the connected data sources, AI services and permissions in each deployment. Across the platform, Imperum has seven native agents and two autonomous AI pipelines (Virtus Pilot and Virtus Triage).
How should a SOC team start?
Start an agentic SOC with one workflow your analysts already know well, and widen it only after reviewing outcomes. This is the order we recommend on the Autonomous SOC page:
- Choose the input: one alert source or reported-email route, and verify the records and tools the investigation can use.
- Define the handoff: set triage routing and decide when Virtus Pilot or an analyst takes over.
- Review before expanding: use Audit or Guided mode to assess the plans and proposed actions.
- Extend deliberately: adjust boundaries based on reviewed outcomes and your team's operating policy.
During the first weeks, track verdict counts, analyst overrides and open versus closed cases. These describe what actually happened, and they give analysts a concrete basis for deciding where the agent can be trusted with more.
Questions analysts ask about the agentic SOC
Will AI replace the SOC analyst?
An agentic SOC changes what analysts spend their time on rather than removing them. Agents take over repeated first-pass checks and evidence collection, while analysts review verdicts, approve actions, handle uncertain alerts and continue open cases. Accountability for decisions with real impact stays with people, and the approval policy is how a team makes that explicit.
Does every alert trigger an AI investigation?
No. In Imperum Autonomous SOC, triage can close an alert, escalate it or queue it for review, and rules can create cases directly. Escalation can launch an investigation by Virtus Pilot, subject to configured routing, run limits and licensing. Not every alert needs a deep investigation, and the routing rules decide which ones get one.
How is an agentic SOC different from SOAR playbooks?
A SOAR playbook runs a predefined sequence of steps for a known situation. An agentic SOC uses AI agents that build an investigation plan from the alert, evaluate the results and decide what to check next, with actions governed by an approval policy. Many teams use both: playbooks for known, repeatable procedures and agents for work that needs judgment about the next step.
What to do next
If you are an analyst, pick one recurring alert type you know well and write down the first-pass checks you repeat for it; that list is the scope of your first agent workflow. If you lead a SOC, decide which actions must always wait for approval before you switch anything to automatic. To see how alerts move through triage, investigation and controlled response in Imperum, read the Autonomous SOC overview, then the Virtus Pilot page for the execution modes.
