Revolutionizing Security with AI: An Introduction to Microsoft Copilot for Security

Microsoft Copilot for Security is one of the first security products to enable defenders to move at the speed and scale of AI. It combines an advanced large language model (LLM) with a security-specific model from Microsoft.

Microsoft has also created a platform and foundation for partners like BlueVoyant and our clients to build complementary and additive capabilities to drive further innovation. Whether it involves security ethics, investigations, metrics, or attribution, Copilot for Security presents opportunities for customization and expansion.

Microsoft Copilot for Security is continually evolving and will forever improve the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations.

Security Challenges

Experienced security analysts are valuable. They must focus on strategic and critical activities, not routine and tedious tasks.

Post-incident forensics, monitoring the next steps, and tracking process competition can be laborious. Ensuring communication and documentation are clear, complete, and consistent is time-consuming.

Sophisticated threats are becoming faster and more elusive. Identifying security trends, developing metrics, and tracking down a vulnerability takes resources. Moreover, analysts do not always have time to manually gather data and do basic analysis to hunt a potential threat.

Whether you consider AI a paradigm shift, game-changer, or just another tool, there is no doubt that Copilot for Security can perform many tasks faster so that analysts can do more high-value work, such as eradicating a live threat and developing strategies that prevent them from happening again.

Microsoft Copilot for Security is a Game-Changer

Copilot for Security combines an OpenAI GPT-4 generative AI (large language model/LLM) with Microsoft’s own security-specific model. The model incorporates security-specific skills and is informed by Microsoft’s threat intelligence and more than 65 trillion daily signals.

Although Copilot for Security operates similarly to a chatbot, it should be thought of as an intelligent notebook. Copilot is continuously gathering data, learning, and evolving to help security teams be more secure - faster. Security analysts can ask Copilot a security-related question, such as an overview of a specific vulnerability, a list of IP addresses on a subnet, or details about data from other security tools. They can also give Copilot for Security files, URLs, and code snippets for analysis. It can even generate a PowerPoint slide that outlines an incident or an attack vector.

Using Microsoft Copilot for Security with Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Sentinel

It helps to start thinking sooner than later about who on your Microsoft security team can leverage Copilot for Security and for what use cases. Through our experience with Copilot for Security, we’ve created some use cases that can help you jump-start your Copilot for Security planning process.

In our Microsoft Copilot for Security blog series, we’ll review some of the use cases one by one and provide more detail on how Copilot for Security can assist.

Microsoft Copilot for Security for Incident Response Teams and Security Analysts

Copilot for Security can play an important role in enhancing cybersecurity incident response, threat detection capabilities, and help build KQL queries. Here are a few ways Copilot for Security can assist incident response teams and security analysts:

• Incident Response - Gather and analyze data quickly to help response teams know where to focus their efforts faster
• Anomaly Detection - Create baselines to help identify unusual patterns or behaviors
• Threat Intelligence Integration - Analyze threat intelligence data to find information to help identify vulnerabilities and potential threats in a specific environment
• Incident Correlation - Correlate data from various sources to provide a holistic view of the environment and where a threat may have spread
• Automated Response Actions - Help develop more precise rules to trigger an automated response
• Threat Hunting - Assist by providing insights into potential threats and suggesting areas to investigate

Copilot for Security can enhance Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries in several ways, providing improvements in terms of efficiency, accuracy, and user experience. Here are some ways Copilot for Security can be applied to enhance KQL queries:

• Query Optimization
  • Analyze historical query performance and suggest optimizations to make queries more efficient
  • Automatic query rewriting to improve execution plans based on the data distribution and query patterns
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
  • Implement NLP capabilities to allow users to express queries in a more natural language format
  • Auto-completion and suggestion features based on context to help users write queries more quickly and accurately
• Anomaly Detection
  • Assist in identifying anomalies and patterns within the data, helping users formulate more targeted queries to investigate issues or trends
• Predictive Analysis
  • Analyze historical data trends and make predictions, allowing users to build queries that incorporate more possibilities
• Smart Indexing Recommendations
  • Analyze query patterns and suggest appropriate indexes to optimize database performance
• Dynamic Query Generation
  • Dynamically generate queries based on user-defined objectives, allowing users to interactively explore data without extensive manual query writing

CISOs and their teams have a mission to keep their organizations secure. It can involve dozens to hundreds of security functions and ten times as many tasks, many of which can benefit from AI.

By leveraging Copilot for Security, cybersecurity teams can not only respond to incidents more efficiently but also stay ahead of evolving threats in today's dynamic threat landscape.

BlueVoyant is an early adaptor and member of Microsoft’s Design Advisory Council for Copilot for Security. Further, BlueVoyant was recognized by the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) as the Security MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider) of the Year. Our commitment to our clients is to continually provide guidance on how and where to optimize security operations with Microsoft, including Copilot for Security.

Read the next blog post in this series, Unmasking Threats: Microsoft Copilot for Threat Intelligence.