The combo could be particularly helpful given Watson's depth. The system has studied over 1 million security documents to brush up on the language of security, and it parses reports from sources as diverse as research papers, blogs and incident data. In theory, this cuts the total time for an investigation from days to minutes -- you spend less time interpreting info and more time working with it.

Don't expect to see Havyn in widespread use just yet. It's currently in testing with a handful of IBM analysts, and it's only four months old -- it came about when company inventor Mike Spisak and his son decided that sending text commands to Watson was cumbersome. That leaves a lot of room for Havyn to grow, however, and it's easy to imagine the assistant becoming indispensable to security pros who could quickly be overwhelmed if they're not careful.