How to keep up with talent attrition in a SOC?

One of the most persistent challenges I saw during my years as a Gartner analyst—and one that continues to plague the industry today—is the "revolving door" of the Security Operations Center. We have long known that basic monitoring and "Level 1" jobs are often unappealing and difficult to keep staffed. The intense operational pressure, combined with the sheer monotony of the work, leads to high burnout and turnover.

For a long time, the industry tried to solve this with better perks or clearer career paths, but the fundamental nature of the work remained the same. However, as we move into 2026, the equation is changing. The single most effective way to retain talent in a modern SOC is to deploy AI-enabled automation.

Here is how AI is transforming the analyst experience from a burnout factory into a fulfilling career.

Eliminating the Toil of Level 1

The primary driver of attrition in junior roles is "toil": The manual, repetitive, copy-and-paste work required to triage thousands of low-fidelity alerts. Historically, we had to hire people just to be "warm bodies in seats" to handle this volume.

AI SOC solutions change this dynamic by effectively automating the role of the Level 1 analyst. By handling the mind-numbing tasks, such as gathering logs, checking IP reputations, and correlating events, the AI reduces the toil that makes the job so demanding and unfulfilling.

This doesn't mean we simply fire the junior staff. Instead, we expand their responsibilities. In a SOC with a high level of automation, there are no analysts resigned to just doing basic triage. The job becomes more fulfilling because humans are only brought in when the AI has already done the heavy lifting and nuanced cognition is required.

Reducing the Noise, Reducing the Stress

Beyond the boredom of repetition, there is the stress of volume. Most SOCs are overflowing with alerts, creating a high-pressure environment where analysts feel like they are constantly drowning. This "noise" impairs human judgment and leads to fatigue.

AI acts as "Active Noise Cancellation" for the SOC. It autonomously investigates and closes the vast majority of benign alerts and other typical cases of noise. This drastic reduction in volume lowers the stress levels on the human team.

This change in posture creates space for growth. When analysts aren't buried under a mountain of false positives, they have the opportunity to engage in other, high-value activities, such as threat hunting and detection engineering. As Oliver Rochford and I discussed in our recent webinar, AI shines as an augmentation tool that frees humans to focus on these "hard problems" rather than just clearing queues.

The AI as the Ultimate Mentor

Finally, we cannot overlook the impact of training on retention. Analysts often quit because they feel they have stopped learning or need to leave to find better opportunities.

In a traditional SOC, training often involves reading static, dusty playbooks or wikis. In an AI-driven SOC, the training model is interactive. Junior analysts can effectively "shadow" the AI analyst. Because modern AI SOC tools are designed with explainability in mind, they provide a transparent narrative of the investigation.

An analyst can review a case and understand exactly why the AI took specific steps, what queries it ran, and how it reached its conclusion. They can query the AI endlessly to understand the decision-making process. This turns every alert into a learning opportunity, accelerating the analyst's development and making them less likely to look elsewhere for professional growth.

Why Leave a Job in the SOC?

The traditional advice for building a SOC often warned against the "SOC decay" caused by attrition and resource drain. Today, AI SOC technology allows us to build an Agile SOC, operating in a leaner and smarter way, and more satisfying to work in. A SOC with meaningful work is a SOC where analysts enjoy working, not simply a stepping stone for the next step in their careers. 

By removing the drudgery of Tier 1 work, reducing the stress of alert volume, and providing a constant feedback loop for learning, AI makes the SOC more efficient in its core purpose. But it doesn't stop there; it also makes it a place where talent actually wants to stay.