Why SOC Roles Need to Evolve to Attract a New Generation

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COMMENTARY

When I began my career, the security operations center (SOC) analyst role seemed like an exciting entry point into a promising career. And for me, it was. However, the job is increasingly perceived as thankless and high-stress, filled with repetitive tasks, high stakes, and limited opportunities for professional growth.

High turnover and talent shortages are common, so if businesses want to retain skilled analysts and appeal to the next generation of talent, the SOC role needs a serious rebrand.

Why SOC Roles Are Losing Their Appeal

I won’t sugarcoat it: The SOC Tier I analyst role is incredibly challenging. In a typical day, analysts receive thousands of alerts, many of which are false positives.

This constant flood of data leaves analysts struggling to sift through the noise and focus on real threats, a task that demands both accuracy and a clear rationale for every action taken. Dismissing an alert too quickly risks missing a critical event, while escalating a low-risk alert could divert resources away from more urgent priorities. This pressure, coupled with the fear of making mistakes that could affect the team or your own credibility, often leads to burnout. The pressure, the sheer volume of alerts, and the feeling of always being under scrutiny make this role uniquely taxing.

Another significant issue I’ve encountered is the lack of growth opportunities. With so much time dedicated to the constant alerts, analysts rarely have time to develop new skills. Despite the extensive training and certifications many analysts bring, they’re often stuck with monotonous tasks like reviewing phishing emails, limiting exposure to broader infrastructure or skills required for senior roles.

This lack of growth and evolution leads to disengagement and, eventually, many talented analysts leave the role entirely.

Leveraging AI and Career Development to Transform SOC Jobs

The key to transforming the status quo for SOC analysts lies in reimagining these positions to make them more dynamic, rewarding, and sustainable.

One solution is thoughtfully integrating AI to enhance — not replace — human expertise. By doing so, organizations can:

Automatically resolve false positives, allowing SOC analysts to focus on more critical, actionable alerts
Automate repetitive tasks that can be time consuming, like threat intelligence enrichment, false positive filtering, and alert triage prioritization
Provide 24/7 monitoring to alleviate the strain of on-call shifts and cover gaps by allowing AI to investigate and escalate alerts
Triage the flood of alerts to surface only the most critical and relevant issues, empowering SOC analysts to proactively threat hunt rather than only react to alerts

These applications of AI not only reduce the workload but help prevent human error, which is more likely when analysts are overwhelmed by large volumes of data.

But AI alone doesn’t fix everything. While AI can free up analysts’ time by automating many entry-level tasks, businesses must then provide the appropriate structure and growth opportunities to align with these changes.

To help SOC analysts grow and avoid stagnation, while also providing the necessary support, businesses should do the following:

Provide mentorship opportunities after taking steps to ensure senior analysts aren’t bogged down with the same repetitive tasks as junior analysts. In many cases I found that no one on the team had bandwidth for anything beyond alert response.
Invest in training and upskilling so analysts can perform more sophisticated tasks and advance in their careers rather than becoming pigeonholed in low-level tasks.
Implement regular evaluations to assess the well-being and development needs of SOC analysts. These evaluations are commonplace in the public sector, but I’ve rarely encountered them in the corporate world.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement throughout the organization, empowering all team members to seek out new skills and opportunities.
Secure a permanent seat for security in strategic decision-making. SOC teams are often seen as blockers and are typically the last to learn about key business changes. By integrating security early, security teams can influence strategies, ensuring that protocols are built in from the start and reducing future risks.

Investing in Tools, Training, and the Future of SOC Roles

Budget constraints and organizational inertia often prevent companies from investing in the tools and training needed to make analyst roles more meaningful and sustainable.

However, the cost of not investing is far greater — high turnover leads to gaps in security coverage, increased vulnerability to cyberattacks, lost institutional knowledge, and longer incident response times. Plus finding, hiring, and training replacements only consumes more time and resources.

The solution lies in rethinking the SOC analyst role — embracing AI to reduce stress and improve efficiency while providing better support and growth opportunities. Forward-thinking businesses that face these challenges head-on will be better equipped with the highly skilled, motivated analysts ready to tackle the threats of the future.

I want to see SOC analysts succeed. These days, I love that I’m able to help SOC analysts as a solutions engineer, working with them to implement and adopt tools to alleviate the stress and alert fatigue that can come from working in a SOC.

Companies that fail to address these issues risk losing not only their analysts but also their security edge against attackers.

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