AI In The SOC: Why Explainability Is The New Security Control
Security Boulevard, Friday, March 13th, 2026
Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of everyday life inside the Security Operations Center (SOC). According to Prophet's State of AI in Security Operations 2025 Report, AI is expected to handle 60% of SOC workloads within the next three years. Most security leaders now see AI as a core part of the future SOC.
SOC teams are dealing with more alerts, more attack surface, more APIs, and more pressure from auditors, regulators and executives. AI promises relief from these challenges. It can discover anomalies faster than humans and correlate events across systems in seconds, helping reduce noise and prioritize what matters. But adoption does not automatically create trust. The challenge is that too often, AI produces answers without showing its work.
When an alert appears without a clear reasoning behind it, analysts are left in a difficult position. Do they trust the system and move forward? Or do they jump back into the logs to validate the alert themselves? Either choice creates friction. Blind trust introduces risk and manual re-validation defeats the purpose of automation. In today's threat landscape, decisions must be fast and justifiable. That's why transparency matters more than automation alone.