TL;DR:
AI is powerful. But it is not enough. The SOCs that win also invest in human-led threat hunting, supercharged by AI that works in the service of the analyst. That is exactly how we built our model at Armor, and we have the outcomes to prove it.
The market loves its buzzwords. Autonomous detection. Fully AI-driven response. Zero-touch triage. It sounds slick in a demo.
But in the middle of a real attack? You want experience. You want instinct. You want humans.
At Armor, we do not theorize about that balance. We live it every day. We operate a front-line SOC that defends some of the most targeted environments in the world. We built our threat hunting model on a simple principle: you can automate detection, process, and reasoning, but not instinct.
Triage Is Not Threat Hunting
Here is the problem. Too many vendors blur the line between triage and threat hunting. It is not the same work. And mistaking one for the other gets organizations burned.
AI excels at triage.
It ingests telemetry at scale, clusters events, and flags deviations. Armor’s Intelligence Platform (AIP) processes large volumes of telemetry daily, applying triage logic at rates no humans can match, surfacing what needs scrutiny, and reducing decision time by up to 95%.
But triage is not hunting. Threat hunting starts where triage ends. It is human-led, hypothesis- driven, and takes context into account. The difference is similar to following a predefined path versus drawing the map as you go.
Four Places Human Analysts Still Lead
01 Context Is King
AI cannot read the room. It is unaware of your company’s reorganization, the criticality of your ERP system, or that someone has just left the company under questionable circumstances. Our analysts do. And they use that context to make calls that AI would miss.
I have seen analysts connect dots that seemed invisible to AI, such as a routine software update that coincides with unusual traffic or a piece of administrative activity that aligns too well with a recently terminated employee’s access history. That kind of context is something AI does not yet process the way a human can.
Those detections do not happen by chance. They happen because we train for them.
02 Creative Correlation
When a cross-tenant threat emerged from a supply chain compromise, Armor’s team found it before it became a headline. Not because it triggered a known signature, but because an analyst spotted a subtle, repeated anomaly. They trusted their guts and followed the trail.
AI had the data. Our analyst had the instinct. That is the power of an AI-enabled human analyst.
03 Judgment Under Uncertainty
Real attacks rarely announce themselves. Our team regularly works cases where nothing is obvious. No malware hash. No alert flood. It’s just strange behavior and a few pieces that do not add up.
AI can support that work, but it cannot drive it. Not yet. Not in the environments we defend.
At Armor, our analysts make risk-weighted decisions that preserve business continuity and stop attacks before they detonate. That is not automation. That is expertise.
04 True Threat Adaptation
Attackers evolve fast, but so do we.
Armor’s SOC analysts shift detection strategies mid-incident. They pivot between environments. They spot techniques that bypass static models.
AI can scale those updates once discovered. But finding them in the first place? That still takes the human brain. Our model is built to prioritize that agility. We do not wait for the vendor patch or signature update. We hunt now.
What Elite Threat Hunters Look Like
There is a meaningful difference between a SOC analyst and a threat hunter. Most SOC analysts are trained to operate in a reactive mode. They respond to alerts, investigate escalations, and validate detections. It is necessary work, but it often ends where the rulebook does.
At Armor, threat hunters operate differently. They are proactive, not reactive. They do not just validate alerts. They question assumptions, form hypotheses, and pursue faint signals before they become incidents. They think like adversaries. They adapt like special forces operators. And they act with the autonomy and precision you would expect from someone trusted to defend mission-critical environments.
At Armor, we don’t just hire analysts. We develop threat hunters. The ones who thrive here share five traits:
- Technical depth
- They know how attackers operate and what that looks like on disk, on wire, and in logs.
- Business awareness
- They can separate what is noisy from what is mission critical.
- Analytical rigor
- They do not panic. They test, validate, and escalate with precision.
- Clear communication
- They can brief both technical and business stakeholders.
- Relentless curiosity
- They stay sharp. They question everything. They never settle.
You want that kind of team defending you. And if you are not building it internally, you had better make sure your security partner is.
Invest in People or Accept the Risk
Let’s stop pretending this is optional. The organizations that win the long game are the ones that invest not only in infrastructure and software, but also in human capital, including:
- Training with tabletop exercises, red/blue team testing, and incident response.
- Career paths that retain top-tier talent.
- Compensation that matches the risk they carry.
- Recognition that encourages depth over burnout.
Armor does this because our customers expect more than alert monitoring. They expect absolute protection.
The Armor Intelligence Platform: Built for Hunters, Powered by AI
But investing in people alone is not enough. You also need to give them the right tools, the kind that remove noise, streamline triage, and amplify the effectiveness of every decision. That is why we built the Armor Intelligence Platform.
AIP is not just an automation engine. It is an operational force multiplier. It runs our triage engine, prioritizes behaviors, suppresses noise, and enriches signals in real time. And most importantly, it keeps the human in the loop.
It is not a black box. It is a system designed to make our analysts faster, smarter, and more effective.
And the results speak for themselves:
40 seconds
Mean Time to Decision (MTTD)
Mean Time to Decision (MTTD) in our SOC has dropped
from 15 minutes to just 40 seconds.
8x
Faster Workflows
Our threat analysis workflows are now over eight times faster
without compromising depth or accuracy.
This is not theoretical efficiency. This is real time saved with the same threat hunters and the same adversaries. But now with help of an agentic AI platform.
That is why our detection rates are higher, our investigations faster, and our SOC quieter when it matters most.
AI Doesn’t Replace Hunters — It Elevates Them
AI will continue to evolve. And this is a good thing. But it’s not going to replace threat hunters. The future belongs to SOCs that use AI to sharpen human judgment. Not as a substitute for it.
Armor is already operating in that future. We are not waiting for the next breakthrough or the next tool. We continue to sharpen our agentic AI platform, create new detection rules, train our hunters, and deliver positive security outcomes.
This is how you defend against modern threats, and we do it every day.
About Armor
Armor is a global leader in cloud-native managed detection and response. Trusted by over 1,700 organizations across 40 countries, Armor delivers cybersecurity, compliance consulting, and 24/7 managed defense built for transparency, speed, and results. By combining human expertise with AI-driven precision, Armor safeguards critical environments to outpace evolving threats and build lasting resilience. For more information visit our website, follow us on LinkedIn, or request a free Cyber Resilience assessment.