Ensign InfoSecurity's Agentic SOC Wins Two PIKOM Digital Excellence Awards  

Ensign’s Agentic SOC just won two awards, and the real story is the AI behind it

Ensign InfoSecurity said on Sept. 22, 2026 that its Agentic Security Operations Centre won two PIKOM Digital Excellence Awards in Kuala Lumpur, one in Cybersecurity, Agentic SOC and one in Managed Services, Agentic AI SOC. That is not just trophy shelf material. It is a sign that managed security providers are moving hard toward autonomous AI inside the SOC, while still keeping human analysts in charge of the big calls.

What Ensign says this SOC actually does

Ensign describes the Agentic SOC as developed and engineered in-house. The company says it uses autonomous AI agents to help with alert triage, threat enrichment, incident correlation, investigation, and recommended response actions. Human analysts still retain control over critical decisions. That part matters more than the award names. We do not want a machine making final security calls by itself when the business is on the line.

This is the practical shift. SOC work is full of repetitive noise, and a lot of it can be sorted faster by software than by a tired analyst reading alerts at 2 a.m. If the AI can cut through junk and surface the threats that need a person, that is useful. If it starts making sloppy calls, it becomes expensive very fast.

Why small businesses should care, and why most should not overreact

For a 30-person company, this news does not change the basic math. You still need good endpoint protection, MFA, backups, patching, and someone who answers quickly when something looks wrong. You do not need your own SOC. You probably never will.

What this does show is where the market is headed. Managed security services are increasingly packaging AI into detection and response. That can help smaller companies get better coverage without hiring a full security team. Fine. But we would not buy a service just because it says Agentic AI on the brochure. We would ask what it actually reduces. False alarms? Response time? Analyst workload? If the vendor cannot show that in plain language, the feature is mostly marketing.

What we would ask before paying for any AI-driven SOC

We would keep the questions blunt. Not the buzzwords. The business owner needs to know what changes, what stays manual, and what happens when the AI gets it wrong.

• What decisions are automated, and which ones still require a human.
• How the system handles false positives and missed alerts.
• Whether response actions are recommended only, or can be executed automatically.
• How often the SOC is reviewed by a real analyst.
• What evidence the provider can show from live incidents, not demos.

If the answer is vague, walk away. Security products love vague answers. Buyers should not.

The plain business takeaway

Ensign’s win tells us the SOC market is changing, but it does not mean every company should rush into an AI-first security service. For larger environments with constant alert volume, this kind of automation can be valuable. For a typical small business, the bigger win is still having a provider that filters noise, spots real threats, and responds fast without forcing you to staff a security operations team of your own.

If you are trying to decide whether your current security setup is enough, ask for a reality check on your alerts, your response times, and your actual risk. IT911Now can help with that, and we would start by looking at what you already have before spending a dollar more.