Subj : Why your SOC's new AI agent might be a malicious actor in disguis To : All From : TechnologyDaily Date : Wed Nov 05 2025 15:30:08 Why your SOC's new AI agent might be a malicious actor in disguise Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2025 15:13:36 +0000 Description: SOC's new AI agents are risky: hallucinations, autonomy, and compromise threaten security operations. FULL STORY ====================================================================== Standing up and running a modern Security Operations Center (SOC) is no small feat. Most organizationsespecially mid-sized enterprisessimply dont have the time, budget, or specialized staff to build one in-house, let alone keep up with the pace of innovation. Thats why many are turning to managed security providers. But not all are created equalespecially when it comes to their use of AI and automation. As cybersecurity threats grow in speed, sophistication, and scale, security operations teams are turning to multi-agent systems (MAS) to extend their capabilities. These systemsmade up of intelligent, autonomous agentsoffer a way to scale threat detection and response while reducing analyst fatigue and response time. However, deploying a MAS in a SOC is far from trivial. Its not just about writing clever code or connecting a few APIs. Without the right safeguards, these autonomous systems can become a dangerous liability. Multi-agent systems for incident response must function collaboratively, reason independently, and make timely, high-stakes decisionsoften in complex and hostile environments. From vulnerabilities and hallucinations to autonomy and trust, MAS introduces a whole new set of technical challenges that teams must solve for AI to truly become a force multiplier in cybersecurity, rather than a threat itself. Orchestrating collaboration: coordinating agents in real time For MAS to work effectively in a SOC environment, agents must coordinate seamlessly across disparate systemssharing intelligence, workload, and intent. This coordination is complex. Agents need robust communication protocols that prevent data bottlenecks and race conditions. Moreover, they must share a common understanding of terminology and context, even if theyre parsing information from entirely different sources (e.g., SIEM logs, EDR telemetry, cloud identity signals). Without semantic alignment and synchronization, agents risk working in silosor worse, generating conflicting conclusions. Designing for scale: when more agents equals more complexity While MAS promises scalability, it also introduces a paradox: the more agents in the system, the harder it becomes to manage their interactions. As agents proliferate, the number of potential interactions increases exponentially. This makes system design, resource management, and fault tolerance significantly more challenging. To maintain speed and reliability, developers must build dynamic load-balancing, state management, and orchestration frameworks that prevent the system from tipping into chaos as it scales. Empowering autonomy without sacrificing control The whole point of MAS is autonomybut full independence can be dangerous in high-stakes environments like incident response. Developers must walk a fine line between empowering agents to act decisively and maintaining enough oversight to prevent cascading errors. This requires robust decision-making frameworks, logic validation, and often a "human-in-the-loop" failsafe to ensure agents can escalate edge cases when needed. The system must support policy-driven autonomywhere rules of engagement and confidence thresholds dictate when an agent can act alone vs. seek review. Preventing hallucinations: the hidden threat of confidently wrong AI One of the most insidious challenges in multi-agent AI systems is hallucinationwhen agents confidently generate incorrect or misleading outputs. In the context of security operations, this could mean misclassifying an internal misconfiguration as an active threat or vice versa. Hallucinations can stem from incomplete training data , poorly tuned models, or flawed logic chains passed between agents. Preventing them requires strong grounding techniques, rigorous system validation, and tight feedback loops where agents can check each others reasoning or flag anomalies to a supervising human analyst. Securing the system: trusting agents with sensitive data MAS must operate within environments that are often under active attack. Each agent becomes a potential attack surfaceand a potential insider threat if compromised by an external actor. Security measures must include encrypted communication between agents, strict access control policies, and agent-level audit logging. Additionally, MAS must be built with privacy by design, ensuring that sensitive information is processed and stored in compliance with data protection laws like GDPR or HIPAA. Trustworthy agents are not just effectivethey're secure by default. Bridging systems and standards: building interoperability into MAS Security tech stacks are notoriously fragmented. For MAS to work in a real-world SOC, agents must interoperate with a wide variety of platformseach with their own data schemas, APIs , and update cadences. This requires designing agents that can both translate and normalize data, often on the fly. It also means building modular, extensible frameworks that allow new agents or connectors to be added without disrupting the system as a whole. Building human trust in AI: making MAS understandable and accountable For multi-agent systems to succeed in security operations, human analysts need to trust what the agents are doing. That trust isnt built through blind faithit comes from transparency, auditability, and explainability. Below are several foundational strategies: Explainable outputs: Agents should provide not just answers, but reasoning chainssummaries of the evidence, logic, and decision path used. Continuous feedback loops: Every human-validated or rejected outcome should feed back into the system to improve agent reasoning over time. Defined escalation paths: MAS should know when to act, when to pause, and when to escalate. Confidence thresholds and incident criticality scores help enforce this. Ethical AI guidelines: Development teams should follow a defined ethical framework to prevent bias, protect privacy , and ensure accountability. MAS can be transformativebut only if built right Multi-agent systems have the potential to fundamentally change how the cybersecurity industry responds to security incidentsshifting from alert triage to autonomous, full-context investigation and resolution. However, that shift only happens if security professionals approach MAS with rigor. These systems must be designed not just for intelligence, but for interoperability, trust, and resilience against subversion. For developers, security architects, and AI scientists alike, the challenge isnt whether MAS can be powerfulits whether it can be built and implemented responsibly, with scale, and safety as a top priority. A system that isn't secure can be worse than no system at all. If we do, we wont just be automating SecOps . Well be redefining it. We've featured the best encryption software. This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/why-your-socs-new-ai-agent-might-be-a-malicious- actor-in-disguise --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .