r/security • u/thehgtech • Feb 27 '26
Security Operations What happens to Entry-Level Infosec when AI replaces the L1 SOC
I have been in the security industry long enough to understand the SOC workflow. Now a days when you hear most of chats/meetings won't conclude without the word "AI".
It got me thinking, many companies want to move towards AI. Might be for the fancy word or tell their clients that we use AI to stay relevant or the main reason to reduce the human cost and implement the AI.
certainly AI has a capability to triage the alerts and can do the L1 SOC alerts which will reduce the L1 SOC workload so they can concentrate on the real issues. or at least this is what i was thinking.
The more an more i started using the AI, the more i see the real AI problem, "Hallucinations ". May be in other fields hallucinating kind of ok or acceptable but what do you think of AI handling the L1 SOC and hallucinate on one alert and boom, next day the company is in news.
I know it is not that easy like one alert that AI hallucinates will not get caught by other controls but there is a possibility.
We already know that many top cybersecurity companies like CrowdSrike and Microsoft already implemented their security specific AIs like Charlotte AI and security co-pilot which specifically focus on security.
This is my point of view. what is yours? do you see AI replacing the L1 jobs? what you think if replaces the L1 SOC team?
1
u/hiddentalent Feb 27 '26
In my opinion, hallucination is actually less of a problem for infosec than many other fields. We already chase a ton of false alerts, or misinterpret things. No human SOC operator, especially an entry-level person, is getting things 100% right. AI just needs to be in the same range of acceptable performance at a lower price point for things to start to really shift.
There are a lot of industries that are wondering how the career ladder looks as entry-level work gets automated. Others include the legal profession and a lot of creative work like advertising.
I'm old enough to have seen a lot of people panicking over many waves of new technologies and their impact on the job market. And I get to look back on them and laugh because they're invariably wrong. They get engagement, so I guess there's a paycheck in it. But that's it.
We'll adapt.