SANS 2026 SOC Survey Finds AI Adoption Outpacing Workflow Integration
Report discovered via Awesome Annual Security Reports.
Summary
The 2026 SANS SOC Survey finds 79% of respondents use AI/ML, but only 36% integrate it into defined workflows. Findings also highlight staffing misalignment, limited OT/IoT monitoring, and threat intelligence rarely informing investment.
Key points
- The survey collected 444 qualified practitioner responses; approximately 150 completed a deeper section, and a parallel survey covered 69 senior security executives.
- AI/ML tools are used by 79% of respondents, but only 36% include them in defined SOC workflows. The report warns that unvalidated AI output creates operational risk.
- While 59% of security leaders say management closely attends to SOC hiring and retention needs, only 32% of practitioners agree.
- Only 16% report monitoring all at-risk OT/IoT systems, with another 29% reporting partial coverage.
- Among security leaders, 74% use cyber threat intelligence for security operations and threat hunting, but only 26% use it to prioritize budgets and spending.
- Meaningful work, career progression, and training ranked above compensation as effective SOC staff retention methods.
- Incident counts remain the leading SOC metric, cited by 70%. The report recommends measuring containment time, eradication thoroughness, and incident avoidability to better demonstrate impact.
Article Details
- Publisher
- SANS Institute
- Report Period
- 2026 survey edition
- Scope
- SOC operations, architecture, staffing, technology, AI governance, threat intelligence, and executive-practitioner alignment.
- Sample Size
- 444 qualified practitioner responses; approximately 150 completed the deeper second section; a separate leadership survey received 69 responses.
- Key Statistics
- 79% of practitioner respondents use AI or ML tools: 36% have integrated them into defined SOC workflows, while 43% use them outside defined workflows.
- 59% of cyber leaders say management pays close attention to SOC hiring and retention needs, compared with 32% of practitioners, a 27-percentage-point gap across the separately surveyed groups.
- 74% of cyber leaders apply CTI to security operations and threat hunting, while 26% use it for budget and spending prioritization.
- 45% of practitioner respondents report some OT/IoT monitoring coverage: 16% support all at-risk smart systems and 29% support some.
- 70% of respondents report incident counts as a SOC metric; the report identifies it as the leading reported metric for 10 consecutive survey years.
- Recommendations
- Establish defined AI workflows, governance, output validation, and analyst training; begin with tools addressing documented capability gaps and measure their results.
- Improve enterprise visibility through cross-environment data integration and complete asset inventories.
- Use CTI to inform annual investment and budget prioritization, not only daily operations.
- Align staffing investment with operational needs and support retention through meaningful work, career progression, and training.
- Supplement incident counts with detection-to-containment time, eradication thoroughness, and avoidability metrics.
People
Christopher CrowleyReport author and SANS Senior Instructor who also wrote the foreword.Cristian-Mihai ViduSANS Certified Instructor and Cyber Security Consultant; contributed commentary on validating AI-generated outputs and retaining core investigative skills.Maxim DeweerdtSANS Principal Instructor and leadership team member at NVISO; contributed commentary on hybrid identity monitoring and SOC visibility gaps.Nick MitropoulosSANS Certified Instructor and Cybersecurity Consultant; contributed commentary on automated visibility, AI confidence, and detection blind spots.