Cybersecurity tools play a vital role in defending against digital threats by monitoring user behaviour, network traffic, and system operations to identify and mitigate risks before they escalate. However, there is a common misconception that more tools equal better security, according to David Atkinson, CEO, at the platform SenseOn.
This belief, shared by 78 per cent of cybersecurity professionals according to research by SenseOn, leads to organisations using a variety of tools, with limited impact.
In fact, this approach to cybersecurity could be doing more damage than organisations realise. Instead of enhancing security, funds are often spent on point products to address specific problems, resulting in overly complex security stacks and adding to the pressure on IT teams. This is occurring while SOC analysts are worried about missing crucial security events due to being buried under a flood of redundant alerts from a wide range of solutions. Known as ‘alert fatigue’, this is a very real and dangerous phenomenon that both reduces the effectiveness of threat detection and can lead to burnout among analysts and IT teams.
Real impact of ‘alert fatigue’
Point-focused solutions can generate thousands of alerts each week, with only a small fraction being reliable. This overwhelming number of notifications places a significant burden on those responsible for reviewing each alert, resulting in many hours spent on false positives. The consequences of alert fatigue shouldn’t be underestimated.
Not only does it incur costs for businesses, but it also impacts the wellbeing of SOC teams. This could lead some to consider changing jobs or pursuing new career paths, worsening the existing cybersecurity talent shortage. SOC analysts can also feel a huge sense of responsibility for missing critical security incidents amid the flood of repetitive or redundant alerts. If a malicious alert is dismissed as another false alarm, organisations risk overlooking a genuine threat which could lead to a potentially catastrophic data breach.
The reality is that with every false positive, an organisation’s ability to respond promptly and effectively to true threats is further compromised. Alert fatigue can also erode trust in security operations throughout the organisation, as frequent false alarms disrupt workflows and cause employees to take security events less seriously.
Filtering out alert alarms
Undeniably, tuning out false positives can be challenging, as an environment that is too quiet can be just as risky. When configuring the system to reduce the frequency of alerts, there’s always the danger of missing real threats. Resolving the problem of alert fatigue involves two key steps: dynamically filtering out false positives and making it faster and less stressful for SOC teams to investigate real alerts. This can be achieved by investing in proactive defence, automating threat detection at endpoints, and integrating AI into cybersecurity platforms.
However, automating threat detection requires a new approach to data collection. Analysts need a unified data source that combines network, endpoint, and user information into a single case. At the same time, SOCs require a single solution that collects and correlates all endpoint data with network and cloud information. Advanced AI-powered anomaly detection can then identify genuine threats, significantly reducing false positives. Using automation in this way for data correlation and alignment with MITRE ATT&CK frameworks can also greatly enhance SOC productivity.
To fully leverage AI-powered cybersecurity platforms, teams need to understand normal user and device behaviour patterns. Incorporating user and entity behaviour analytics goes beyond simple rule-based alerts, enabling SOCs to detect anomalies that could signal a threat more quickly. This dynamic approach, which adapts to an organisation’s evolving environment, improves the accuracy of threat detection and reduces false alarms.
In IT with numerous users and detection methods, the volume of data flowing into SOC from various sources makes alert fatigue inevitable. As threat actors become more sophisticated, the noise that cybersecurity teams must filter through will only increase, exacerbating alert fatigue. Before SOC teams burn out and an ignored alarm leads to a devastating data breach, organisations must embrace AI-powered cybersecurity to streamline and enhance detection capabilities. The stakes are too high to wonder if an alarm is a real threat or a false positive – teams need certainty, every time.
