Next-Generation Security Operations Center (SOC) Resilience: Autonomous Detection and Adaptive Incident Response Using Cognitive AI Agents

Authors

  • R. Sugumar Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SIMATS Engineering, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS), Chennai, India Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21590/

Keywords:

Intelligent SOC, Cognitive AI Agents, Adaptive Incident Response, Autonomous Detection, Security Operations Center, Cognitive AI Agents.

Abstract

The increasing scale, sophistication, and velocity of cyber attacks has shown that there are fundamental flaws in the current Security Operations Centers (SOCs) that are founded upon manual analysis and hardened rules and ad-hoc procedures. The current paper aims to address these issues with the help of Next-Generation SOC resilience framework, which is built upon autonomous detection and adaptation to incidences or accidents with the help of Cognitive Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents. The proposed system will introduce multi-agent AI structures, where deep learning-based anomaly detection is used, the optimization of responses can be achieved with the reinforcement learning process, and the contextual reasoning is supported with the help of knowledge graphs. Some of the ways include unsupervised and semi-supervised model of learning unknown threats, cognitive agents to correlate the alert messages using heterogeneous data sources, and adaptive playbooks based on feedback to develop. Experimental evaluation is conducted with a simulated environment of SOC on the enterprise, where real-world data, including network traffic and endpoint telemetry and security logs are taken into account. The results indicate that the accuracy of the detection (as much as 18 per cent higher than the base SIEM systems) is much higher, the mean time to detect (MTTD) by 35 per cent, the mean time to respond (MTTR) by 42 per cent. These findings affirm that cognitive AI agents enhance the resilience of SOC by leading to independent decisions, enhancing fatigue of analysts, and boosting the efficiency and scale of incident response efforts.

References

1. A. Arora, ―Improving cybersecurity resilience through proactive threat hunting and incident response,‖ J. Sci. Technol. Dev., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 270–282, 2023, doi: 10.18001/STD.2023.V12I03.23.37334.

2. A. Applebaum, C. Dennler, P. Dwyer, M. Moskowitz, H. Nguyen, N. Nichols, N.

Park, P. Rachwalski, F. Rau, A. Webster, et al., ―Bridging automated to autonomous cyber defense,‖ in Proc. 15th ACM Workshop on Artif. Intell. Secur., 2022, pp. 149–159.

3. P. Hamadanian, B. Arzani, S. Fouladi, S.K.R. Kakarla, R. Fonseca, D. Billor, A. Cheema, E. Nkposong, and R. Chandra, ―A holistic view of AI-driven network incident management,‖ in HotNets ’23, 2023, pp. 1–9.

4. N. Kshetri and J. Voas, ―Agentic artificial intelligence for cyber threat management,‖ Computer, vol. 56, pp. 86–90, 2023.

5. H. Zhang, J. Huang, K. Mei, Y. Yao, Z. Wang, C. Zhan, H. Wang, and Y. Zhang,

―Agent Security Bench (ASB): Formalizing and benchmarking attacks and

defenses in LLM-based agents,‖ arXiv, 2023, arXiv:2410.02644v4.

6. F. Jalalvand, M.B. Chhetri, S. Nepal, and C. Paris, ―Alert prioritisation in security operations centres: A systematic survey on criteria and methods,‖ ACM Comput. Surv., vol. 57, pp. 1–36, 2024.

7. M.B. Chhetri, S. Tariq, R. Singh, F. Jalalvand, C. Paris, and S. Nepal, ―Towards human-AI teaming to mitigate alert fatigue in security operations centres,‖ ACM Trans. Internet Technol., vol. 24, p. 22, 2024.

8. Z. Liu, ―AutoBnB: Multi-agent incident response with large language models,‖ in

ISDFS 2025, pp. 1–6.

9. D. Goel, F. Husain, A. Singh, S. Ghosh, A. Parayil, C. Bansal, X. Zhang, and S. Rajmohan, ―X-lifecycle learning for cloud incident management using LLMs,‖ arXiv, 2024.

10. M. Kim, J. Wang, K. Moore, D. Goel, D. Wang, A. Mohsin, A. Ibrahim, R. Doss,

S. Camtepe, and H. Janicke, ―CyberAlly: Leveraging LLMs and knowledge graphs to empower cyber defenders,‖ in ACM Web Conf. 2025 Companion, pp. 2851–2854.

11. S. Freitas, J. Kalajdjieski, A. Gharib, and R. McCann, ―AI-driven guided response for security operation centers with Microsoft Copilot for Security,‖ in ACM Web Conf. 2025 Companion, pp. 1–10.

12. Satish Kumar Nalluri, Venkata Krishna Bharadwaj Parasaram, Varun Teja Bathini. (2020). Secure Automation Frameworks for Smart Manufacturing Using Blockchain-Assisted Traceability. International Journal of Research & Technology, 8(2), 47–53. Retrieved from https://ijrt.org/j/article/view/879 13. A. Shukla, P.A. Gandhi, Y. Elovici, and A. Shabtai, ―RuleGenie: SIEM detection rule set optimization,‖ arXiv, 2025.

14. P. Hamadanian, B. Arzani, S. Fouladi, S.K.R. Kakarla, R. Fonseca, D. Billor, A. Cheema, E. Nkposong, and R. Chandra, ―AI-driven incident detection and management for enterprise SOCs,‖ IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 55000–55015, 2023.

15. J. Bono, J. Grana, and A. Xu, ―Generative AI and security operations center productivity: Evidence from live operations,‖ arXiv, 2024.

16. S.R. Castro, R. Campbell, N. Lau, O. Villalobos, J. Duan, and A.A. Cardenas,

―Large language models are autonomous cyber defenders,‖ arXiv, 2025.

17. S. Massengale and P. Huff, ―Linking threat agents to targeted organizations: A

pipeline for enhanced cybersecurity risk metrics,‖ in ICSC 2024, pp. 132–141.

18. P. Bountakas, K. Fysarakis, T. Kyriakakis, P. Karafotis, S. Aristeidis, M. Tasouli,

C. Alcaraz, G. Alexandris, V. Andronikou, T. Koutsouri, et al., ―SYNAPSE—An integrated cyber security risk & resilience management platform,‖ in ARES 2024, pp. 1–10.

19. A. Ding, G. Li, X. Yi, X. Lin, J. Li, and C. Zhang, ―Generative AI for software security analysis: Fundamentals, applications, and challenges,‖ IEEE Software, vol. 41, pp. 46–55, 2024.

Downloads

Published

2024-06-22

How to Cite

Sugumar, R. (2024). Next-Generation Security Operations Center (SOC) Resilience: Autonomous Detection and Adaptive Incident Response Using Cognitive AI Agents. International Journal of Technology, Management and Humanities, 10(02), 62-76. https://doi.org/10.21590/

Similar Articles

1-10 of 192

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.