Ep107: Cloud-Scale Security Monitoring – How Panther and AI are Revolutionizing Cybersecurity

Chief Architect Russell Leighton discusses how Panther's cloud platform revolutionizes security operations by treating detections as Python code and AI enabled alert vetting turning responses from hours into minutes.

Topics Include:

• Panther is a cloud security monitoring tool (cloud SIEM)
• Works at massive scale, more cost-effective than legacy systems
• Key differentiator: "detections as code" written in Python
• Brings software engineering best practices to security operations
• Enables unit testing and version control for security detections
• Recently adopted generative AI to improve security workflows
• SOC burnout is renowned due to tedious ticket processing
• AI has intelligence of security engineer, works much faster
• Example: Alert shows "Russ Leighton removed branch protection"
• Old way: Manual log analysis, checking user profiles manually
• Takes hours of squinting at detailed log data
• New AI way: Automatic vetting happens in minutes
• AI checks user profile in Okta or IDP
• Determines engineer status, assesses typical behavior patterns
• Provides risk assessment based on historical alert data
• Low risk for engineers, high risk for unusual users
• Example: HR person accessing production code is escalated
• Customer quote: Takes vetting "from hours to seconds"
• Panther customers get dedicated AWS accounts for security
• Company can't see customer data, only self-reported metrics
• AI provides summaries, risk assessments, timelines, visualizations
• Also suggests remediations like human security engineer would
• Initial concerns about putting AI in production environment
• Customer feedback exceeded expectations with feature requests
• AWS Bedrock integration addresses customer security concerns
• Uses Anthropic Claude as base LLM through Bedrock
• Customers can enable additional Bedrock guardrails independently
• AI transparency prevents hallucination concerns through explanations
• Claude's extended thinking mode shows reasoning process
• AI visualizes thinking with flowcharts explaining decision process

Participants:

• Russell Leighton – Chief Architect, Panther

Further Links:

• Website: Panther.com
• AWS Marketplace

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