CyberAgent: An Agentic AI Framework for Autonomous Security Operations with Reduced Operational Cost

Abstract

Aim/Purpose: The primary objective is to address the structural operational cost crisis in modern SOCs by designing and formally specifying a three-layer agentic AI framework that integrates semantic alert triage, adaptive reinforcement-learning response, and episodic knowledge synthesis into a unified architecture. Background: Modern SOCs are experiencing an acute operational crisis. Exponential growth in alert volume, high false-positive rates (>40%), and chronic analyst attrition have created a perfect storm. Existing rule-based SIEM and single-agent SOAR approaches only achieve 20–55% alert automation and fail to address the full operational lifecycle. Methodology: The framework evaluation is based on a structured comparison with seven benchmark systems across four dimensions (threat coverage breadth, integration completeness, cost quantification, and adversarial safeguards), each rated on a five-level ordinal scale using replicable criteria. Contribution: The paper makes four contributions: (1) a formal algorithmic specification of a three-layer agentic AI architecture including three pseudocode procedures and a PPO state-action-reward formalism; (2) a quantitative operational cost projection framework explicitly distinguishing designed targets from measured performance, with a maximum designed workload reduction of 86%; (3) a systematic four-dimensional comparative analysis against seven benchmark frameworks demonstrating that CyberAgent is the only framework achieving full architectural completeness (integrating all three of semantic triage, adaptive RL response, and episodic knowledge synthesis simultaneously), an architectural claim requiring empirical confirmation; and (4) dual adversarial safeguards (prompt injection mitigation and reasoning consistency verification) absent from all seven benchmark frameworks. Findings: CyberAgent is a theoretical design-science artefact that has neither been implemented nor empirically evaluated. All quantitative projections are designed to achieve targets grounded in prior work, not verified outcomes: an alert automation rate of 85–90%, an analyst workload reduction of 56–86% (design target 86% under the product-rule independence assumption), an MTTR reduction of 65–75%, and a false-positive reduction of 60–70%. These projections require empirical validation using CybORG and the DARPA OpTC dataset, with this as the primary future work priority. Recommendations for Practitioners: The PTL’s Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning traces provide human-readable decision narratives that enhance transparency and may support auditability workflows relevant to GDPR Article 33, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and SOX. However, CoT traces do not automatically satisfy regulatory auditability or compliance requirements; they are one architectural input to a broader compliance process. Formal legal and compliance assessment by qualified professionals is required before deployment in regulated environments. Practitioners should treat CoT output as decision-support documentation, not as regulatory certification. Recommendation for Researchers: Future work should also develop federated DRL training protocols to ensure policy convergence under data-scarce conditions and rigorously test the adversarial robustness of the PTL’s consistency-checking mechanism against novel prompt-injection strategies. Impact on Society: If empirically validated, CyberAgent could make enterprise-grade cyber defence more accessible to mid-market organisations that cannot afford 24/7 SOC analyst staffing, by substantially reducing the alert-triage workload. All such impact claims are conditional on validation results. Future Research: Priority directions include: (1) empirical implementation and red-team validation across diverse enterprise environments; (2) federated DRL training to address the data sharing constraints that limit policy learning in regulated sectors; (3) extension of the KSL to support cross-organizational threat intelligence sharing; and (4) longitudinal studies measuring analyst skill development and human-AI trust calibration under progressively increasing levels of CyberAgent autonomy.