Artificial intelligence is now embedded in nearly every security product roadmap. From alert triage to investigation summaries, vendors are racing to position AI as the solution to entrenched problems like alert fatigue, staffing shortages, and SOC burnout. Only time will tell how AI ultimately reshapes the SOC, but Gartner research provides the industry with a near-term lens into what security teams can realistically expect from AI in the immediate future.
Gartner places both AI Assistants and AI SOC Agents at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the 2025 Gartner Hype Cycle for Security Operations. The technologies offer unique benefits to evaluate as generative AI reshapes the role humans play in securing modern environments.
Cybersecurity AI Assistants: Augmenting the Human Analyst
Cybersecurity AI assistants entered the Hype Cycle in 2024 and are now seeing broader experimentation across enterprises. Gartner defines these tools as GenAI-powered assistants embedded in existing security platforms that help analysts discover information, summarize data, generate content, and accelerate common tasks.
Where Organizations See Value
Gartner suggests that cybersecurity AI assistants are primarily designed to assist human operators.
Their most practical benefits include:
• Knowledge discovery across logs, alerts, and threat intelligence
• Summarization of incidents, alerts, and investigations
• Guided remediation suggestions for cloud, endpoint, and application issues
• Lowering the learning curve for junior analysts and teams with high turnover
According to the 2025 survey data from Gartner, adoption momentum is real: 42% of organizations are piloting or already using cybersecurity AI assistants, and another 46% plan to enable them within the next year.
Where To Exercise Caution
Despite growing adoption, Gartner is clear about the limitations:
• AI assistants often inherit the blind spots of the tools they sit on top of
• False positives and hallucinations remain a real operational risk
• Trust, privacy, and data-handling concerns slow broader deployment
• Initial adoption frequently adds work before it reduces it
Productivity may see a boost from AI Assistants, but only when outputs are reviewed, validated, and governed by humans.
AI SOC Agents: Automating SOC Workflows
AI SOC agents are newer and sit earlier on the Hype Cycle. Gartner places them near the Peak of Inflated Expectations, describing them as promising technologies aimed at automating SOC activities. Unlike assistants, AI SOC agents go beyond providing guidance and play active roles in detection, research, response and remediation activities.
What AI SOC Agents Should Do
Gartner outlines AI SOC agents as tools that can automate or augment:
• Alert triage and false-positive reduction
• Natural language investigation queries
• Alert enrichment and attack path context
• Timeline creation and reporting summaries
• Next-step recommendations for analysts
The primary goal is to alleviate resource constraints by offloading repetitive SOC tasks, allowing human analysts to focus on higher-value work such as threat hunting and incident response .
Why Gartner Calls the Market “Unproven”
Gartner is notably more cautious with AI SOC agents than with assistants:
• Claims outpace evidence of sustained, measurable improvement
• Cost models often limit broad deployment across SOC roles
• Over-automation introduces risk if agents act on flawed assumptions
• Most use cases are narrow and task-specific—not end-to-end
As Gartner notes, teams should evaluate AI SOC agents as workflow augmentation tools, not autonomous SOC replacements.
How Gartner Recommends Security Leaders Proceed
Across both categories, we see consistent guidance:
- Keep humans in the loop: Treat AI-generated output as draft, not authority.
- Baseline your SOC operations first: You can’t measure AI improvement without understanding your current workflows and bottlenecks.
- Start with narrow, high-volume tasks: Alert triage and false-positive reduction are the safest entry points.
- Validate outcomes independently: Do not rely on vendor claims. Test accuracy, time savings, and error rates.
- Avoid “GenAI washing”: Many features labeled as “AI” are simply rule engines with new branding.
AI is already shaping moderns SOCs, as both defenders and malicious actors embrace the rapidly evolving technology. But discipline and human direction (not hype) will determine its value over the long term. Learn more about which technologies are reaching the Peak of Inflated Expectations, and which will shape the future of the SOC in the Gartner 2025 Hype Cycle for Security Operations.
Source: Gartner, Hype Cycle for Security Operations, 2025, By Jonathan Nunez, Darren Livingstone, 23 June 2025
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