How do you establish trust in an AI SOC, especially in a regulated environment? Grant Oviatt, Head of SOC at Prophet Security and a former SOC leader at Mandiant and Red Canary, tackles this head-on as a self-proclaimed "AI skeptic". Grant shared that after 15 years of being "scared to death" by high-false-positive AI, modern LLMs have changed the game .
The key to trust lies in two pillars: explainability (is the decision reasonable?) and traceability (can you audit the entire data trail, including all 40-50 queries?) . Grant talks about yje critical architectural components for regulated industries, including single-tenancy , bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) for data sovereignty , and model portability.
In this episode we will be comparing AI SOC to traditional MDRs and talking about real-world "bake-off" results where an AI SOC had 99.3% agreement with a human team on 12,000 alerts but was 11x faster, with an average investigation time of just four minutes .
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(00:00) Introduction(02:00) Who is Grant Oviatt?(02:30) How to Establish Trust in an AI SOC for Regulated Environments(03:45) Explainability vs. Traceability: The Two Pillars of Trust(06:00) The "Hard SOC Life": Pre-AI vs. AI SOC(09:00) From AI Skeptic to AI SOC Founder: What Changed? (10:50) The "Aha!" Moment: Breaking Problems into Bite-Sized Pieces(12:30) What Regulated Bodies Expect from an AI SOC(13:30) Data Management: The Key for Regulated Industries (PII/PHI) (14:40) Why Point-in-Time Queries are Safer than a SIEM (15:10) Bring-Your-Own-Cloud (BYOC) for Financial Services (16:20) Single-Tenant Architecture & No Training on Customer Data (17:40) Bring-Your-Own-Model: The Rise of Model Portability (19:20) AI SOC vs. MDR: Can it Replace Your Provider? (19:50) The 4-Minute Investigation: Speed & Custom Detections (21:20) The Reality of Building Your Own AI SOC (Build vs. Buy)(23:10) Managing Model Drift & Updates(24:30) Why Prophet Avoids MCPs: The Lack of Auditability (26:10) How Far Can AI SOC Go? (Analysis vs. Threat Hunting)(27:40) The Future: From "Human in the Loop" to "Manager in the Loop" (28:20) Do We Still Need a Human in the Loop? (95% Auto-Closed) (29:20) The Red Lines: What AI Shouldn't Automate (Yet) (30:20) The Problem with "Creative" AI Remediation(33:10) What AI SOC is Not Ready For (Risk Appetite)(35:00) Gaining Confidence: The 12,000 Alert Bake-Off (99.3% Agreement) (37:40) Fun Questions: Iron Mans, Texas BBQ & Seafood
Thank you to Prophet Security for sponsoring this episode.