AI-Powered Cyber Threat Hunting Will Become Fully Autonomous

By 2030, AI systems will independently detect, investigate, and respond to threats in real time. Routine alert triage, correlation, and first-line containment will be handled end-to-end by agentic AI, cutting dwell time and freeing human analysts to focus on strategy, threat intel, and governance.

The result? Lean, high-throughput SOCs where autonomous platforms handle the bulk of operations 24/7/365 with human supervision, set policy, and tackle the hardest investigative and resilience tasks. Think automated controls implemented upon the identification of an attack, threat, or risk which will be relaxed either upon remediation or conclusion of the attack.

Why I Believe This

Agentic AI, SOAR/XDR automation, and real-world deployments are converging—moving from “assistive” to hands-off threat detection and response at scale.

1. Enterprise deployments are already shipping autonomous SOC functions — IBM’s ATOM touts autonomous triage, investigation, and remediation, with major portions of L1 work automated. IBM Newsroom | IBM ATOM

   
   

2. Industry surveys show growing reliance on AI in threat hunting — The SANS 2025 Threat Hunting Survey highlights accelerating automation and AI integration across hunting workflows. SANS 2025 Threat Hunting Survey | SANS Webcast

   
   

3. Major vendors are building real-time, automated detection and response into platforms — AI is embedded in detection/response stacks and cross-vendor integrations to speed automated actions. Palo Alto Networks: AI in Threat Detection | Okta × Palo Alto AI integrations

   
   

4. Analyst views acknowledge limits today but chart a path toward autonomy — Forrester cautioned that a fully autonomous SOC was “a pipe dream” (2022), while more recent analysis details how AI agents are progressing toward practical autonomy. Forrester (2022): Autonomous SOC Is a Pipe Dream | Forrester (2025): Autonomy Is The Future

   
   

5. Mainstream coverage shows enterprises already offloading high-volume work to AI — Large organizations are using autonomous AI to triage floods of alerts and act with minimal human input. WSJ: Security Chiefs Turn to AI