IDC’s Worldwide Semi-Annual Software Tracker, April 2023 suggested that 49% of Security Operations Center (SOC) team members can only act on half of the alerts within a workday. Also, a Gartner press release published in 2023 predicted that by the end of 2025, more than half of cybersecurity incidents will be caused by either a shortage of skilled security staff or human error. These statistics highlight a clear message: AI is no longer optional, it's essential. With increased cyber threats, security teams are under pressure to identify and respond to security incidents faster. However, due to a lack of availability of resources and skilled analysts, most Security Operations Centers (SOCs) are overloaded.
To address this, IBM is introducing the QRadar Investigation Assistant—an AI-powered solution designed to transform security operations through generative AI.
Seamlessly integrated into IBM QRadar SIEM, this cutting-edge app will streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and empower analysts to uncover threats more efficiently. By reducing manual effort and simplifying investigations, security teams can focus on proactive threat detection and response, making cybersecurity operations smarter and more effective than ever.
Want to know how AI-driven investigations can reshape the future of security? Let’s dive deeper!
Key Benefits
The QRadar Investigation Assistant powered by watsonx uses Large Language Models (LLM) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to help analysts while working with offenses.
Crisp and accurate AI-generated offense summary helps:
- Reduce false negatives caused by complex attacks that are not easily observable to the human eye
- Reduce the skills required for security analysts to understand complex incidents and attack vector
- Boost analyst productivity by significantly reducing time spent on offense investigation
Additionally, AI-generated Short-Term and Long-Term Recommendations help take decisive actions against critical threats.
Let’s take a quick look at how each of the above benefits helps boost analyst productivity at SOCs.
Boosting Analyst Productivity with Offense Summarization
The assistant helps analysts work more efficiently, intelligently, and effectively. With a simple click of a button, analysts can get a clear offense summary including extended description and context. If the threat is complex and difficult to detect with the human eye, then the risk of false negatives is high, but with the use of AI Assistant, the risk can be reduced.
With the help of a crisp and accurate AI-generated offense summary, security analysts can pinpoint the associated most significant IP Addresses, Log Sources, Rules, etc, and investigate further deeply.
Recommendations that suggest reactive and proactive measures
The assistant provides not just short-term but also long-term recommendations.
Short-term recommendations help security analysts respond to the threat identified in the context of the particular offense for which the summary is generated.
Long-term recommendations help security analysts implement some long-term proactive measures that may help organizations prevent such attacks from happening in the future.
Probe further using Natural Language Prompts
Once the offense summary is generated, a security analyst can ask a few further relevant questions in natural language to get more information related to the offense such as the potentially associated Attack Vectors, Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), MITRE Tactics and Techniques, etc.
A Cybersecurity and QRadar Expert always at your command
Malwares and Ransomwares often come with creative names that may have more than one meaning irrelevant to cybersecurity. Investigation Assistant comes locked with cybersecurity and QRadar as the default context so that the app is always context-aware and responses remain restricted within the boundaries of the cybersecurity domain and QRadar. This helps avoid distractions that come with generic AI assistants ensuring accurate and relevant information without any hallucinations.
Investigation Assistant also comes with a tightly integrated user experience with QRadar. So, security analysts would never need to switch screens and seek assistance from any other unapproved and generic AI assistant.
Conclusion
With the launch of the QRadar Investigation Assistant, IBM is addressing the real-world needs of cybersecurity teams. From simplifying the investigation process, improving accuracy, and speeding up threat response by leveraging powerful tools like Watsonx and LLMs, IBM is transforming investigations.
This means security teams no longer need to decide whether they should prioritize speed or accuracy. The investigation assistant enables teams to achieve both - maintaining speed and efficiency in their workflows.
This is a new chapter in SOC. Utilizing trusted tools like QRadar SIEM and capable LLMs at the investigation stage, the assistant sets security teams up to mitigate today's threats and develop strategies for the threats of tomorrow.
IBM’s QRadar Investigation Assistant is a glimpse into the future of cybersecurity - a future when AI changes the way we work for the better. By combining thoughtful generative AI use, strong user privacy commitment, and heavy integration into the existing QRadar ecosystem, IBM has set a new standard for the cybersecurity space.
And all of this is just the beginning as we will continue to evolve the app with many more generative AI use cases in the future and stay true to our commitment to our customers for continuous innovation.