By Diwakar Dayal, Managing Director & Area Vice President – India & SAARC, SentinelOne
Cyber defence is entering a new era of complexity. As India races ahead in its digital transformation, threat actors are racing just as fast, using artificial intelligence (AI) to launch attacks that are smarter and stealthier. From hyper-realistic deepfakes to malware that mutates to evade detection, the game has changed. Every business and government agency now finds itself under growing pressure to keep up with the speed and sophistication of AI-powered cyber threats.
The Security Operations Centre (SOC), the hub of any organisation’s defence, is feeling the strain. Analysts are drowning in data, juggling rising alert volumes and complex attack surfaces. Legacy tools and manual workflows simply can’t keep pace, often missing as much as 38% of emerging threats.
When attackers can remain undetected within systems for months, a fundamental shift is needed in how organisations detect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats. The answer lies in AI-powered SOCs – security environments infused with intelligence and hyperautomation. These systems bring speed, scale, and foresight to the fight, helping teams stay ahead of adversaries.
The Operational Drag of Legacy Systems
For years, SOCs relied on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems and heavily manual workflows. While once state-of-the-art, they’ve now become barriers to efficiency. Legacy SIEMs are infamous for alert fatigue, producing vast amounts of noise that force analysts to spend hours sorting through irrelevant data, while critical threats slip through the cracks.
This dependence on manual work, often called “swivel-chair management”, means analysts constantly jump between non-integrated tools. This slows investigations and constrains threat hunting. Adversaries thrive in this lag. The longer it takes to connect the dots, the longer threats go unnoticed. This operational drag not only exposes valuable assets but also undermines a Chief Information Security Officer’s (CISO) ability to maintain compliance and operational agility.
The AI Revolution in Security Operations
The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI is fundamentally changing how security teams work. AI-powered SOCs can process mountains of data in seconds, identify patterns that evade human eyes, and even automate responses before an incident spirals out of control.
AI-powered tools today simplify complex security work by offering no-code interfaces and unified data access. An analyst can, for example, type a natural-language query like, “Show all high-risk activity in the last 48 hours involving unpatched systems in the finance department.” The system understands, analyses, and delivers results almost instantly, even across multiple languages. What once took hours of manual investigation can now happen in seconds.
This means junior analysts can perform advanced threat hunting and analysis without waiting on senior experts. AI handles the tedious parts, such as sorting alerts, summarising context, and correlating data, freeing security teams to focus on strategic, impactful incident response.
Measurable Impact and Value
Switching to an AI-driven SOC delivers concrete, measurable advantages:
Speed and Accuracy: Organisations can identify threats 63% faster and reduce remediation time by 55%. This rapid response is what stops an incident in its tracks before it becomes a catastrophe.
Efficiency and ROI: According to IDC research, AI-driven SOC solutions provide a huge 338% Return on Investment (ROI). This value comes from lowering manual workloads, reducing the costs associated with breaches, and optimising long-term data management.
Trust and Resilience: For organisations, this means greater operational resilience and enhanced compliance. For customers and the public, it translates directly to improved data protection and less exposure to the chaos caused by cyberattacks.
Addressing India’s Cybersecurity Imperatives
India’s digital growth story comes with a serious challenge as the country faces a cybersecurity talent shortfall of nearly one million roles. PwC’s 2025 study linked this shortage to a 15% rise in weekly cyberattacks. AI-powered SOCs offer a way out. They bridge the skills gap by automating the heavy lifting and empowering junior analysts to perform tasks that once required years of experience.
This aligns closely with the government’s priorities. India’s National Cybersecurity Exercise in July–August 2025, which involved more than 600 professionals, focused squarely on AI-driven malware, deepfakes, and crisis readiness. The initiative underscores the urgent need to move beyond legacy systems and adopt advanced tools that safeguard India’s digital economy and critical public infrastructure.
CISOs and security leaders in India must recognise that GenAI and agentic AI are not optional upgrades but foundational technologies. By adopting advanced, AI-enabled automation solutions, organisations can empower their SOC teams to shift their focus from manual, reactive firefighting to proactive threat mitigation. This strategic shift is key to positioning India to thrive in spite of an increasingly complex threat landscape.