As businesses become increasingly digital, cyber security must be a top priority. With more touchpoints for criminals to exploit, the risk of a successful attack on your business grows. This brings plenty of turmoil through financial loss, operational disruption and declining customer trust.

Unfortunately, the rising cyber risk is set against a skills imbalance. Many organisations, especially smaller ones, have only a small IT team to cover their entire security operations. This limits how well they can defend themselves.

However, Copilot for Security offers a solution. As the first cyber security tool to leverage generative AI, it can augment the skills of your IT team and help you better monitor and respond to threats. Even with limited resource, you stay protected.

We examine Copilot for Security in more detail, including the positive use cases it can bring to your business.

What is Copilot for Security?

Microsoft Copilot for Security is an innovative cyber security tool that harnesses the power of generative AI for threat detection and response. It empowers security professionals by automating routine tasks, providing actionable insights and guiding their response to incidents.

Copilot for Security uses vast amounts of security data from multiple sources and advanced AI algorithms to identify patterns, anomalies and suspicious activity. It can then offer intelligent recommendations, generate comprehensive reports and even automate specific security actions.

It therefore complements the skills of your existing cyber security professionals, while enabling them to be more productive and accurate.

Copilot for Security is also licenced on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning you can tailor usage to suit your budget and needs.

Why is Copilot for Security important now?

Copilot for Security is the first tool of its kind. So, why have Microsoft chosen to launch it now?

Firstly, there’s the exponential rise of AI in the last few years. More tools are now leveraging artificial intelligence to facilitate productivity, accuracy and automation for businesses. Copilot for Security takes these benefits and applies it to the field of cyber security.

But AI becoming more accessible also has negative implications. Criminals are now using AI to plan their attacks and exacerbate the scale of their targeting. Using AI tools, they can also craft deceptive communications to fool your staff into giving them access to systems and data.

As AI becoming a weapon used by attackers, the best approach is to fight fire with fire. Tools like Copilot for Security understand the patterns and algorithms used within AI, which puts it in a great position to combat malicious activity. It’s also more methodical and accurate than humans, leaving things less likely to be missed.

Addressing IT skills shortages_

Another reason why Copilot for Security is so critical now is due to the skills shortage addressing the cyber security industry today. Research from the UK government reports that half of businesses are facing a basic cyber security skills gap.

Very few organisations have adequate resource in-house to provide the level of protection needed. This leads to cyber security being deprioritised, with businesses left as significant risk.

However, Copilot for Security can build on the skills of your existing resource, filling the gap. They can achieve more without needed extra time or effort, keeping your business better protected. Copilot for Security can also guide junior team members, allowing them to achieve tasks that would typically be reserved for senior IT professionals.

Even for those businesses who do have internal security operation centres, it’s common for those teams to feel overwhelmed. The average SOC receives thousands of alerts every day, which is impossible to keep up with.

But Copilot can summarise those alerts, providing actionable insights that help teams to prioritise and respond.

The result is reduced pressure on your security teams, reducing staff burnout and giving them the capacity to be more productive.

6 use cases for Copilot for Security_

Copilot for Security offers a variety of benefits, helping various business types and job functions. Here are the most impactful use cases to optimise your security:

1. Summarise incidents_

Copilot for Security enhances incident response by providing concise and informative summaries of alerts.

First, the tool analyses raw alert data, extracting the critical details, such as source and severity. It leverages its knowledge and historical data to add context, considering factors like related incidents and your security posture.

Copilot can then identify the most relevant information from the alert and generate a summary. This allows security teams to quickly understand the threat, assess the impact and decide next steps.

2. Analyse impact_

Copilot supports teams in assessing the impact of security incidents, based on several factors.

These include considering past incidents and their consequences for the business, understanding weaknesses in the organisation’s security posture that may be exploited, and the assets potentially impacted.

Using this information, it can conduct a risk assessment that predicts outcomes and prioritises preventative actions. This makes it easier for teams to respond accurately to suspicious activity and ward off attacks.

3. Reverse engineer scripts_

IT teams often need to analyse malicious scripts through reverse engineering to better understand the attackers’ approach. This can teach lessons to prevent future attacks and allow them to uncover the best resolution for the current issue.

However, manual reverse engineering is time-consuming. Copilot speeds things up.

It can analyse complex command line scripts and translate them into natural language, so people can clearly understand the tactics utilised. It can also extract and link indicators found in the script to their respective entities in your environment, so you can see which systems are affected and how.

This makes it easier for even junior team members to understand threats and improve responses.

4. Guide remediation_

Copilot can shape your remediation approach, allowing teams to respond faster and smarter to security incidents. It will analyse the severity and context of the incident and suggest actionable recommendations to implement.

It can also provide step-by-step guidance to support staff in completing remedial tasks correctly and efficiently.

Finally, Copilot can continuously monitor the effectiveness of remediation measures and provide feedback on their impact. This helps ensure that the issue is fully resolved and encourages a consistently robust strategy.

5. Develop junior staff_

When you have junior staff in your security team, you may find yourself limited by their experience. However, Copilot can upskill these team members and help them to achieve advanced tasks.

It offers real-time assistance as junior staff work through complex tasks, ensuring the job is completed correctly and promoting learning. It can also provide answers to questions, encouraging colleagues to improve their knowledge.

Copilot for Security can create test scenarios where junior staff can carry out work in a simulated environment, allowing them to experiment without directly impacting your security posture.

The result is junior resource that can achieve more, while improving confidence in their ability to tackle complex cyber security challenges.

6. Automate manual tasks_

Copilot for Security can automate manual security tasks, freeing up internal capacity and allowing small teams to achieve more.

It can seamlessly integrate with your existing security tools and platforms, allowing for automation of remediation tasks without manual intervention.

It also offers pre-configured workflows for common security tasks, such as incident response, threat hunting and vulnerability management. These workflows can be customised to meet specific business requirements.

By automating these tasks, your IT team can save considerable time while keeping up with the demands of a high-performing security operations centre.

What are the benefits of Copilot for Security?

Now you know what you can achieve with Copilot for Security, you may be wondering what the impact is on your business.

Data from Microsoft found that, with Copilot for Security, their cyber security teams were able to:

• Follow more appropriate remediation steps
• Better spot attacker scripts
• Compile more efficient incident reports
• Improve accuracy across tasks by 7%
• Complete tasks 22% faster
• Correctly answer 35% more business-specific cyber security questions

By using Copilot for Security, you can enable your team to operate faster, be more productive and improve efficiency across their core tasks. This allows your business to better detect threats, respond to incidents and mitigate damage.

On top of this, Copilot is a tool security professionals genuinely enjoy using. 97% of security analysts said they wanted to use the tool again, with 85% stating it reduced effort levels and 93% believing it improved their work quality.

So, not only can it improve your cyber security provisions and safeguard your business against the rising tide of attacks, but it can also improve your team’s working life and make them more productive for your business.

Preparing for the AI cyber security landscape_

As AI increases risk, it’s crucial to both protect yourself against the threats facing your business and leverage AI to meet new challenges.

Copilot for Security is just one tool in your arsenal to counteract AI risk. But it should be backed by a comprehensive cyber security practice and full understanding of what the landscape looks like now.

In our eBook, Cyber Security in the Age of AI, we explore everything your business needs to stay safe with practical tips and expert advice.