Introducing Modern SecOps, a more realistic alternative to the “autonomous SOC” 

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Introducing Modern SecOps, a more realistic alternative to the “autonomous SOC” 

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with traditional SOC. Many SOC teams do great work within this structure. But there are also serious issues with the three-tier model - it’s rigid, costly, and unsustainable for any company that isn’t a large enterprise.

In the push to address these limitations, the concept of an “autonomous SOC” has emerged, with some vendors already claiming to offer fully autonomous solutions. While it’s an exciting vision, it’s important to approach it with a dose of realism.

AI is already delivering meaningful benefits in the SOC - from automating repetitive tasks to accelerating investigations and reducing alert fatigue. But a fully autonomous SOC isn’t a near-term reality.

Even as AI continues to evolve, it will serve primarily to augment human expertise, not replace it.

Security remains, at its core, a human-versus-human challenge. Even in a future where AI handles more tasks independently, human oversight will still be essential - because wherever automation exists, adversaries will look for ways to exploit it.

The problem with the traditional SOC 

In my days working as a security practitioner, I once encountered a vendor that offered a “mobile” SOC. If you had an incident, you could call them, and they’d arrive at your workplace in a huge semi-truck outfitted with pew-pew maps and all sorts of bells and whistles. It looked impressive - but like the traditional SOC, it wasn’t built for the realities of modern security.

Just like that truck in the parking lot, the three-tier SOC model is outdated. It can’t keep up with today’s fast-moving, increasingly sophisticated attacks. As well as being inefficient, the traditional model takes a real toll on the people behind it.

Analysts in L1 roles often spend their days triaging repetitive alerts and false positives. They rarely get to see an incident through from start to finish, missing out on the deeper context and the satisfaction of resolving the issue themselves.

This creates a trio of persistent problems for security teams:

• High levels of burnout

• High employee turnover

• Low potential for career progression

Some vendors position autonomous SOC and agentic AI as a silver bullet.

Papering over the cracks with AI or layering in new tools isn’t enough. We need a fundamentally different approach to how security operations are structured.

Introducing a better approach: Modern SecOps 

As a practitioner, I was a jack of all trades in security, but a master of none. I could tell you a bit about cloud, endpoints, and phishing - but I never had the chance to go deep in any one area.
This kind of over-centralized model puts organizations at a disadvantage. With the diversity of today’s threats, specialization matters more than ever. It also mirrors how adversaries operate - many focus on a single attack vector and become highly effective at it.

Built around this reality, the Modern SecOps model focuses on:

• Evolving security operations from a collection of ad hoc processes into structured, scalable approaches

• Collapsing the three-tier model and enabling analysts to work end-to-end on incidents

• Focusing on understanding and remediating threats at scale, not just resolving individual tickets

• Prioritizing investigation and research into adversary behavior

• Improving detection and response workflows, rather than spending time processing tickets

In my experience, this type of model is changing the game. Customers who adopt it are seeing major gains in execution, efficiency, and analyst satisfaction.

We’ve unpacked the limitations of autonomous SOC as it exists today. So what's the role of AI in this model?

How AI and automation enable the shift from traditional to Modern SecOps 

Our view is simple: AI and automation are here to support analysts, not replace them. AI won’t fully automate SecOps anytime soon - and likely not in our lifetimes.

Rather, workflow orchestration and AI will:

• Automate repetitive tasks

• Accelerate investigations

• Free up analysts to focus on deeper security investigations

• Enable junior analysts to focus on proactive threat-hunting

• Optimize existing workflows

• Help teams evolve, rather than eliminate roles

The long-term vision: AI as a force multiplier 

The organizations that move from a traditional SOC to Modern SecOps - powered by the right mix of people, process, and technology - will see a double win:

• Happier, more skilled analysts who are less likely to leave and more likely to progress in their careers

• More impactful, proactive security work focused on real threats

The “autonomous SOC” might sound like the answer to all our problems, but like so many vendor buzzwords, it overpromises and underdelivers. Companies that adopt AI thoughtfully, balancing automation with human oversight, will make the greatest strides in overcoming the limitations of the traditional SOC.

Eoin Hinchy is Co-founder & CEO at Tines

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