A new era of efficiency for XDR with ESET AI Advisor

ESET AI Advisor’s conversational prompts and interactive dialogue empower effortless threat analysis and endow cybersecurity processes at all skill levels.

At ESET, we’ve always been keen on providing the most resource-efficient approach to cybersecurity, focusing on enhancing business and personal security postures with a prevention-first vision.

What this vision takes into account are two things:

1. Taking care of threats before they turn into incidents
2. Ensuring a fast response with a low impact on performance and business processes

Assuredly, this has led the company to tackle several issues that impact businesses globally, starting from lowering the rate of false positives, through showcasing a transparent approach to threat dissemination/hunting, to giving our partners all the required tools that should break down any barriers to establishing a clear cybersecurity vision – with these tools ranging from powerful endpoint security to full-service offerings in the form of Managed Detection and Response (MDR).

Lately, the big focus has been on making security even more efficient, unburdening security analysts, and enabling fledgling threat hunters to get to grips with their novel tasks – and for both of these issues, our new ESET AI Advisor can be of tremendous support, starting with its introduction in ESET Inspect¹, the XDR-enabling component of the ESET PROTECT Platform.

During ESET World 2024, our own James Rodewald, security monitoring analyst at ESET, described the plethora of challenges businesses face these days, as in an ever-evolving and fairly dynamic threat landscape, it is impossible to find a still and secure corner.

Larger businesses, and enterprises especially, face threats at a larger scale due to the scope of their operations, creating more openings for a potential attack – like through their partners in the form of small businesses, their foreign offices, hybrid workers, and more.

As a result, in-house security operators and analysts have a much tougher job of covering the size and scale of the businesses entirely, as in a complex environment, detections can come from a multitude of points – from small company devices, through servers, to the cloud.

Hence, the amount of noise vectoring from notifications, some of which can be false positives, might lead to negative security and business outcomes. This is true especially when faced by novice unskilled operators, but is also a challenge for more experienced security analysts who are so overburdened that their perception of the threat environment is clouded by the increasing scope of their tasks (of which some can be quite repetitive, like reporting).

Collectively, these challenges represent a rather problematic conundrum, but thanks to new AI-native processes, they’re easier to tackle, especially when enabled in professional security software.

The truth is that cybersecurity solutions like Extended Detection and Response (XDR) are complex and require significant, highly skilled manpower. Thus, some vendors are addressing this complexity either with automation with machine learning and AI-driven technologies or by outsourcing with cybersecurity services like MDR.

In the past, we have discussed how deliberately designed smart UX decisions within detection software can lead to easier security management, specifically when underpinned by an AI-native function of correlating and contextualizing detections, such as the automatic incident creator within ESET Inspect. Thanks to it, novice and mature admins can better understand their detections, leading to more secure businesses.

To further enhance this capability and the workflow of analysts/admins, we are introducing the ESET AI Advisor in ESET Inspect, aiming to increase an organization’s efficiency by arming security analysts with an AI assistant that can help identify, analyze, and mitigate threats using conversational prompts and interactive dialogue, reducing the complexity of security tasks to a few clicks.

The ESET AI Advisor is a generative AI cybersecurity assistant offering personalized insights and immediate assistance tailored to the organization’s specific cybersecurity needs. It is helping with one of the most repetitive tasks done by security analysts, incident investigation.
By equipping security analysts with real-time, relevant, and actionable insights, the ESET AI Advisor enables swift responses to critical situations and minimizes the impact of security breaches, which results in more effective incident management processes.

It’s not just about facing the unknown; it’s about being prepared for it – equipped with insights that are as real-time as they are relevant.

Easily one of the best things about ESET AI Advisor is that it caters to users of all skill levels. It simplifies complex threat information, making it accessible even to less experienced IT and security professionals. By enhancing threat understanding, it bridges the cybersecurity skills gap, empowering users to make informed decisions and respond effectively to security incidents, addressing one of the largest current cybersecurity challenges.

Moreover, ESET AI Advisor can automate tedious tasks such as data collection, extraction, and basic threat search and detection. Handling these routine processes frees security teams to focus on strategic activities, improving overall efficiency and productivity.

Additionally, it can also help with specific security tasks. For example, ESET AI Advisor can flag unusual or suspicious behavior, helping security teams take appropriate action. As well as this, ESET AI Advisor can help identify and analyze potential threats, providing insights into their behavior and impact. It can also assist in recognizing phishing attempts and advising users on how to avoid falling victim to fraudulent emails or websites.

To summarize, whether you have questions about cybersecurity best practices or require immediate assistance with a potential security incident, ESET AI Advisor is here to help.

It enables even less mature security teams/professionals to harness the powerful potential of the ESET PROTECT Platform, addressing major security challenges in the process, leading to more efficient workflows and, in turn, more efficient business operations in a prevention-first approach to security.

Thanks to ESET Inspect’s already powerful AI-native engine, ESET AI Advisor adds an additional enhancement to lead cybersecurity operators through the muddy waters of an evolving threat landscape.

¹ESET AI Advisor is available in ESET Inspect as part of the ESET PROTECT MDR Ultimate subscription tier. Additionally, it is also available for ESET Threat Intelligence.

For more information on how ESET XDR and MDR can protect your business against top threats, read our blog on their protective powers against ransomware.