Anthropic's Claude reduces SOC investigations from 5 hrs to 7 min, 95% accuracy
Security operations centers have long wrestled with the gap between alert volume and analyst capacity. A single incident can sit on a queue for hours while junior staff sift through logs, hoping to spot the same patterns that seasoned analysts recognize in minutes. That bottleneck isn’t just a productivity issue; it’s a risk factor when attackers move fast.
Anthropic’s Claude, the firm’s latest large‑language model, was dropped into a real‑world SOC workflow to see whether an AI‑driven assistant could keep pace. Engineers built the model into the existing platform, letting it pull telemetry, correlate events and suggest next steps without human prompting. Early tests compared the AI’s conclusions against those of senior analysts across dozens of incidents.
The results were striking: the model matched senior‑level decision‑making with high confidence and cut the average investigation cycle from multiple hours to single‑digit minutes. That level of speed and precision, if consistent, could reshape how SOC teams allocate talent and respond to threats.
The company's DevOps and engineering teams discovered that platform-integrated AI can deliver comprehensive threat investigations matching senior SOC analyst decision-making with 95% accuracy, while reducing investigation time from five hours to under seven minutes, providing a 43x speed improvement. "The ideal approach is typically to use AI as a force multiplier for human analysts rather than a replacement," Vineet Arora, CTO for WinWire, told VentureBeat. "For example, AI can handle initial alert triage and routine responses to security issues, allowing analysts to focus their expertise on sophisticated threats and strategic work." eSentire's Hillard noted: "Earlier this year, around Claude 3.7, we started seeing the tool selection and the reasoning of conclusions across multiple evidence-gathering steps get to the point where it was matching our experts. We were hitting on something that would allow us to deliver better investigation quality for our customers, not just efficiency." The company compared Claude's autonomous investigations against their most experienced Tier 3 SOC analysts across 1,000 diverse scenarios spanning ransomware, lateral movement, credential compromise and advanced persistent threats, finding that it achieved 95% alignment with expert judgment and 99.3% threat suppression on first contact.
Anthropic's Claude has slashed investigation times dramatically. In eSentire's Atlas XDR platform, a five‑hour deep dive now finishes in seven minutes, a 43× speed boost. The model reportedly matches senior SOC analyst decisions with 95 % accuracy, according to the VentureBeat interview.
Yet the claim rests on a single deployment, and broader validation is still pending. While the reduction in manual effort is clear, the trade‑off between speed and false positives isn’t fully quantified. Moreover, the article does not detail how the accuracy figure was measured or what margin of error exists in real‑world alerts.
Still, integrating AI directly into XDR tools appears to shift the operational tempo of security teams. Whether other vendors can replicate the same gains remains uncertain, as does the long‑term impact on analyst skill development. For now, the data points to a notable efficiency gain, but further independent testing would help confirm the robustness of the results.
The findings suggest a promising direction, though practical adoption will likely depend on additional evidence.
Further Reading
- Building AI for cyber defenders - Anthropic
- Claude News Timeline - ClaudeLog - ClaudeLog
- Anthropic Economic Index report: Uneven geographic and occupational adoption of Claude - Anthropic
Common Questions Answered
How did Anthropic's Claude impact investigation time in eSentire's Atlas XDR platform?
Claude reduced the average SOC investigation time from five hours to under seven minutes, delivering a 43× speed improvement. This dramatic reduction was observed in a real‑world deployment within eSentire's Atlas XDR platform, according to the VentureBeat interview.
What accuracy level did Claude achieve when matching senior SOC analyst decisions?
Claude matched senior SOC analyst decision‑making with 95% accuracy during the trial. The high accuracy suggests the model can serve as a reliable force multiplier for human analysts, though broader validation is still needed.
What does Vineet Arora, CTO of WinWire, say about using AI like Claude in SOC workflows?
Arora emphasizes that AI should act as a force multiplier rather than replace analysts, highlighting its role in accelerating investigations while preserving human oversight. He noted that platform‑integrated AI can deliver comprehensive threat investigations that align with senior analyst judgments.
What limitations or open questions remain regarding Claude's performance in SOC environments?
The article notes that the reported speed and accuracy figures come from a single deployment, so broader validation across different SOCs is pending. Additionally, the trade‑off between faster investigations and potential false‑positive rates has not been fully quantified.