A shift is underway in the security platform and SIEM landscape, and it’s not just driven by vendor hype. As highlighted in the latest Forrester Wave for Security Analytics Platforms report, AI has become a key differentiator, not because of buzzwords, but because of its potential to meaningfully assist security teams. The daily work of analysts is still full of repetitive, high-effort tasks that don’t scale. The report makes it clear: AI has the power to change that, but not every platform is currently delivering. 

AI won’t replace security professionals anytime soon, but when used in the right places, it will make them more efficient and effective. The real difference isn’t in the flash, it’s in whether the AI is actually helping people do their best work.

Human-In-The-Loop by Design

Today, AI delivers the most value in security operations when it supports, not replaces, human decision-making. When tools remove humans from the loop, they risk making decisions without full context. Even a small piece of missing information can steer an automated system in the wrong direction, potentially leading to major consequences. The most effective AI capabilities are built to work alongside analysts, enhancing their context and clarity, ultimately improving their decision making and speed.

Whether it’s enriching results with helpful data context from another source, mapping data in a cloud bucket to a chosen schema, or summarizing alerts, AI is best when acting as a trusted co-worker. This approach gives analysts superpowers, without asking them to surrender control, or creating a mess for them to clean up.

Mission-Focused Agents

Security operations have always suffered from high burnout and high turnover. Why? Because much of the job is tedious: triaging alerts, writing and fine-tuning detections, investigating incidents, mapping data across fragmented systems, or executing cognitively intensive one-off taskings. These aren’t intellectually satisfying tasks, they’re necessary, but repetitive.

This is where AI shines. Our own AI agents at Query are good examples designed to be more than just a “chatbot for security.” Instead, we focus on real jobs-to-be-done:

  • Schema mapping: Aligning fields across dozens of systems is tedious, error-prone work. Our AI helps by automatically mapping incoming data to the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF), saving hours of data engineering work that most Security Operations Centers are not well prepared for.
  • Alert Triage Agent: This agent is designed to accelerate the initial assessment of incoming alerts. By automating enrichment, contextualization, and prioritization, it gives analysts a clear head start; freeing analysts to focus on what needs investigation, not what can be ignored.
  • Result summarization: Analysts can ask our agent to summarize search results across data lakes, EDR tools, and cloud platforms, instantly surfacing what matters. Use it to write escalation emails or tickets, suggest follow up actions, or understand more about the events. 
  • Investigation copilot: AI helps navigate complex investigations by chaining queries and suggesting next steps, reducing decision fatigue without removing agency.

The Power To Make Humans The Heroes

The Forrester Wave makes it clear that AI isn’t just about adding features, it’s about transforming your team. The best platforms are using AI to enable analysts, not replace them. When used well, AI elevates the people doing the hard work.

The real potential lies in helping overburdened teams move faster, with more confidence. For example, an AI agent that automatically maps fields across systems saves engineers from tedious schema documentation. Another that summarizes a multi-source investigation can turn hours of manual data stitching into minutes of insight.

The vendors that stand out in the Forrester Wave didn’t just offer basic incident summaries or chat interfaces. They built capabilities that automate the hard, dull, high-value work. That’s the benchmark: is your AI solving the kinds of problems humans hate doing?

From automated parsing and enrichment to real-time anomaly detection across distributed data, the right AI capabilities eliminate the need for analysts to constantly pivot, format, filter, and normalize data themselves.

The AI Co-worker You Actually Need

At Query, we’re building with a practical mindset toward using AI to empower security operators. Our mission is simple – turn the data and investments you already have into a strategic security advantage. The foundation of our approach is the Query data mesh, which serves up-to-date, normalized data from across your entire environment. This is exactly what makes our AI solutions so effective. Our agents and co-pilots have access to clean, federated data anywhere, without the limitations of what is centralized in your SIEM or pipelined into one data lake.

We see the future of security operations as federated, AI-assisted, and built around the real needs of analysts. Data is growing rapidly and will continue to sprawl. Teams that can harness it effectively, without wasting time constantly moving, reformatting, and replicating it, will see significant improvements across security operations. 

Now is the time to rethink how your security team works with data. If you’re interested in seeing how Federated Security and SecDataOps can help you cut through noise and unlock insights faster, reach out. If you have an hour, we’ll get you started with a trial and show you what’s possible with Query.

If you have 30 minutes, we’ll get you started with a trial and show you what’s possible with Query.