Cybersecurity teams are swamped with data. According to Microsoft Threat Intelligence, a mind-boggling 84 trillion signals are processed every day, exposing an alarming array of potential threats, from thousands of password attacks initiated each second. But manually investigating every alert is not feasible. This is where autonomous AI agents — such as those now integrated into Microsoft Security Copilot — stand ready to transform cyber defense. Rather than just flagging potential problems, these AI agents are built to spring into action. Microsoft announced a phishing triage agent as a prime example. In fact, this agent can automatically respond to suspicious emails, including analyzing the content and links of the email, determining the threat level, and then responding to routinely encountered attacks (quarantine the email, block the sender, etc.) without having to pester the human, at least for routine attacks. Its value proposition is enormous. By automating the response to high-volume, low-complexity alerts, these agents reduce response times dramatically and alleviate human security analysts from repetitive, low-effort work. This enables skilled personnel to apply their expertise to novel and advanced threat investigations, proactive threat hunting, and improving the security strategy overall. Microsoft has taken a dual approach with agents, building both internally and through partners, built into the Copilot platform Importantly, organizations control the degree of autonomous behavior these agents have, maintaining human interaction when appropriate. They are leveraging agentic AI as part of a major shift in cyber defense, from pure reactive alerting to automated remediation, doing so faster than attackers can respond to the growing sophistication of attacks.