What's the best way to evaluate AI SOC solutions in 2026?
our alert backlog and investigation times have both crept up, and we're starting to miss things we shouldn’t, so i've been taking vendor calls more seriously this quarter. six demos in and slide five is always some version of the same before-and-after chart mentioning "faster investigations," "AI-powered detection." at some point the pitches look all the same.
i know the underlying problem is real. what i don't know is how I can differentiate real value from fluff and empty promises from a good deck in a 30 min call. So, for the CISOs here who've gone through a real evaluation process, did you find a specific question that helps you understand whether a vendor can back up their claims, versus one that just repeated the same talking points when pushed?
any advice would help a lot.