The Hype-Free CISO's Guide to Testing an AI SOC Solution

As we saw at RSAC 2026, there's a lot of hype in the market around AI SOC Solutions.

We partnered with the Cyberfuturists to help cut through some of that hype. Recovering Gartner analysts Oliver Rochford and Prateek Bhajanka put together a more vendor-agnostic guide for CISOs to use in their evaluations. 

Key criteria and questions:

• Accuracy & Context: Can the AI produce reliable verdicts? 

• Operating Model: Does it fit how your team works? 

• Sustainability & Risk: Will it stay reliable over time? 

• Lessons from Production: What do practitioners wish they had known? 

This guide breaks down these criteria into a four-stage framework (with an in-depth checklist and a list of red flags in the appendix).

A throughline from the Cyberfuturists: they advocate for a human-AI hybrid model in which probabilistic AI handles triage and investigation, while deterministic safeguards govern containment, escalation, and irreversible actions.