One of the questions I hear most often lately is:“Will AI replace cybersecurity analysts?”
After another week of reviewing vulnerabilities, incidents, and threat activity, I think the better question is:“What makes a great analyst in an AI-enabled world?”
The answer isn’t memorizing every CVE. It isn’t recognizing every threat actor. And it isn’t reading more alerts than anyone else.
It’s curiosity and this week’s headlines reinforce that idea.
Critical vulnerabilities requiring organizations to prioritize hundreds of patches. Nation-state activity targeting critical infrastructure. Social engineering leading to healthcare data theft. Zero-day exploitation against enterprise platforms.
AI can help us process those stories faster. It can summarize reports. It can correlate indicators.
It can identify patterns. But it still takes people to ask the questions that matter.
Does this activity make sense?
Why was this organization targeted?
What does this mean for our environment?
Those questions are where analysts create value.
One of the things I’ve learned working in Security Operations is that great analysts don’t simply collect information. They stay curious. They verify assumptions. They follow the signal until they understand the story behind it.
That’s a skill AI can strengthen, but not replace.
The future of Security Operations isn’t people versus AI. It’s people using AI to become even better analysts. The more routine work AI can handle, the more time we have to investigate, learn, collaborate, and solve problems that actually move Security forward. That’s an exciting future to be part of.
