July 2025 Summaries

Tines has appointed Heather Planishek as their new Chief Operating and Financial Officer, bringing her extensive experience from her previous role as Chief Accounting Officer at Palantir Technologies. Known for her operational discipline and action-oriented approach, Heather will oversee Tines' global operations and finance functions, joining at a pivotal time following the company's $125 million Series C funding and $1.125 billion valuation. Her leadership is expected to enhance Tines' operational scalability and precision, ultimately improving outcomes for customers. Heather has already begun immersing herself in the role, demonstrating a keen interest in leveraging Tines' capabilities to streamline internal processes. Based in Colorado, she plans to engage closely with the team in Ireland, emphasizing her commitment to building robust systems and focusing on long-term success for Tines.

In a recent webinar titled "Product Spotlight: Build agents in Tines," Head of Product Stephen O'Brien introduced the AI Agent action, emphasizing the platform's flexibility in managing both deterministic and agentic workflows securely. The session covered tailoring agents using tools, templates, and chat modes, and addressed questions about identifying use cases for AI agents, integrating with Slack, and handling data control and errors. The discussion also highlighted the differences between the agent's chat mode and the Tines copilot Workbench, the selection of various AI models, and token limits, while underscoring the importance of customizing agents to fit unique organizational needs rather than relying on generic off-the-shelf solutions. The webinar concluded with an invitation to explore further resources, such as sample stories in the Tines Library and opportunities to participate in an upcoming agents bootcamp or a free trial.

The 2025 SANS SOC Survey highlights persistent challenges faced by Security Operations Centers (SOCs) despite evolving technology, such as understaffing, tool sprawl, and inadequate performance metrics. SOCs struggle with staff retention, as many professionals feel unsupported and face high turnover, which weakens security posture. While AI and machine learning tools are being quickly adopted, they often fail to meet expectations due to lack of customization and strategic integration, adding complexity instead of delivering promised insights. Additionally, many SOCs dump data into Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems without a clear strategy, leading to inefficiencies in data retrieval and alert management. The survey indicates that SOCs often rely on manual processes for metrics reporting, which is time-consuming and misaligned with business outcomes. To address these issues, the report suggests automating repetitive tasks, customizing AI tools, developing clear data strategies, and aligning metrics with business value to enhance efficiency and impact.

Eric Newcomer, Principal Analyst at Intellyx, emphasizes the critical role of data in constructing effective AI workflows, particularly in the realm of security incident response. He highlights how generative AI (gen AI) can automate and optimize operational processes by using both public and private data to train large language models (LLMs). Public data aids in identifying workflow steps and preparing organizations, while private data enhances execution efficiency, reducing employee cognitive load and expediting business benefits. Gen AI can streamline incident response by automatically triaging events and suggesting actions based on quality private data, thus improving resolution time, especially for customer-impacting issues. The Tines Workbench is showcased as an example of an AI-powered tool that automates security workflows by integrating with Elastic Security to process alerts and collaborate with various security tools. Newcomer notes the importance of high-quality data in AI's effectiveness and suggests a targeted approach to workflow design to mitigate AI inaccuracies, ultimately reducing cognitive demands on human operators and maintaining customer trust.

Communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams are vital in modern workplaces, but the increasing orchestration and automation demands have led to "ChatOps fatigue" due to the overwhelming volume of notifications. This phenomenon occurs when excessive alerts cause team members to ignore important messages, potentially missing critical information. To combat this, alerts should be urgent, actionable, and targeted, ensuring they only reach the necessary individuals. Best practices to reduce alert fatigue include respecting work hours, staggering reminder pings, using visual cues for different use cases, and incorporating one-click actions for immediate response. Non-urgent information should be moved to dashboards to prevent unnecessary notifications. Organizations are encouraged to audit current notifications, create clear communication frameworks, use visual differentiation, and incorporate feedback to optimize notification systems. By refining ChatOps practices, teams can focus on meaningful alerts, enhancing responsiveness and reducing fatigue.

Tines has introduced several new features and updates, including the AI Agent action that allows users to build autonomous workflows using tools from their tech stack, and enhanced governance settings for page access control, offering more granular editing and distribution options. The platform now supports exporting scheduled dashboard snapshots, duplicating dashboards, and new case management features such as case group block types and improved navigation. Additionally, Tines has added new networking options for the Run Script feature, including no networking, standard, and dedicated options, providing flexibility for AWS Lambda requests. Other enhancements include configuring custom AI models with Anthropic, interacting with records based on Record ID, and new APIs for story monitoring and management, along with several other updates aimed at improving user experience and functionality.