For someone trying to enter cybersecurity, this is a worrying question. The SOC has traditionally been one of the clearest starting points: begin as an L1 analyst, learn how alerts work, investigate incidents, and gradually move toward threat hunting, incident response, or security engineering.
AI is beginning to challenge that path.
It probably will not eliminate the SOC entirely, but it is likely to change the L1 analyst role significantly.
What AI can automate
Much of an L1 analyst’s work involves reviewing alerts, checking IP addresses and hashes, investigating suspicious logins, following playbooks, and closing false positives. These tasks are often repetitive and predictable, which makes them suitable for automation.
As AI tools improve, companies may need fewer analysts for basic alert triage. That does not mean AI will handle every security decision correctly. It can miss important details, make incorrect assumptions, or confidently classify a real attack as harmless. During serious or unusual incidents, human judgment remains essential.
How the role changes
The bigger change may be in how analysts spend their time. Instead of manually handling every alert, they may supervise AI-driven investigations. Their responsibilities could include validating AI conclusions, questioning its assumptions, investigating complex threats, improving detections, and making important response decisions.
That shift could also make cybersecurity harder to enter. L1 roles have traditionally allowed beginners to build experience through routine investigations. If AI handles many of those basic alerts, new analysts may have fewer opportunities to learn through repetition.
What this means for beginners
This does not mean aspiring SOC analysts should avoid AI. It means they need to understand more than just how to operate a SIEM or follow a playbook. Strong foundations in networking, Windows, Linux, cloud environments, detection engineering, and incident response will become increasingly important.
AI can help an analyst investigate faster, but its conclusions still need to be checked. A useful analyst should be able to explain why an alert was classified a certain way, identify missing evidence, and recognize when the result does not make sense.
The bottom line
The real question is not whether AI will replace every SOC analyst. It is whether analysts who understand AI will replace those who do not.
Some repetitive SOC tasks will probably disappear. However, skilled analysts who know when AI is right, when it is wrong, and what to do next will remain valuable.
Some information may be outdated