Cybersecurity Alert Fatigue
What It Is, Why It's a Problem, and the Challenge of Combating it
While tools can enhance protection and visibility, they also, in turn, generate a massive volume of events and alerts. And therein lies the problem.
- - - - - -When faced with a deluge of potential attacks, security analysts can quickly become overwhelmed. In fact, many attacks succeed not because a tool failed to raise an alert, but because the alert was missed or ignored by an analyst.
What is Alert Fatigue?
Common tools that can trigger additional alerts and contribute to alert fatigue include: but are not limited to
Firewalls
Endpoint Security
Cloud Security
This operating environment of all noise and no signal is known as “cybersecurity alert fatigue,” and it has real costs for the professionals and businesses impacted by it.
Alert Fatigue
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A state experienced by security professionals exposed to a high volume of alerts in a brief period, resulting in decreased effectiveness and detection of legitimate threats.Why Alert Fatigue is a Problem
Depending on your industry and the size of your organisation, your daily alert count can climb into the tens or even hundreds of thousands. Each of these alerts has the potential to represent a real threat, but the sheer fire-hose volume of them can quickly overwhelm a security team.
THIS MEANS:
Organisations cannot afford to ignore a single alert. Yet, when a security team is impacted by alert fatigue, more than a quarter of alerts get ignored — every week.
The Challenges of Staffing
When these hard-won analysts spend substantial amounts of time reviewing and responding to the deluge of alerts they are being kept from the high-value tasks and strategic initiatives you really need them for.
THIS MEANS:
Your organisation ends up paying top-dollar talent to complete low-skill tasks.
Percent of security alerts fielded by organisations that are false positives
Threats & Concerns
Constant alert triage takes your team away from the challenging, meaningful work that drew them to the field in the first place.
THIS MEANS:
Alert fatigue impedes not only an organisation’s ability to identify the real alerts from the false ones, but also its ability to rapidly react to actual breaches.
THIS MEANS:
When alert fatigue sets in, incidents are improperly investigated or outright ignored, creating a dangerous precedent in your organisation that some alerts don’t need to be reviewed.
Percentage of organisations who reported a doubling in their alerts since 2015
Numbed by the Noise
“There were several detections of the attacker’s activity … but these did not result in a cybersecurity incident and investigation initiated by the HSE and as a result opportunities to prevent the successful detonation of the ransomware were missed.”
Independent Post Incident Review
View SourcePercentage of breaches that take months or even years to detect
The size of attack surfaces and the rate of cyber attacks increase each year. To keep pace and stay secure, many organisations have resorted to adding more security tools to defend more systems than ever before. Rather than reducing risk and increasing efficiency, however, the addition of more tools increases complexity and reduces effectiveness.
THIS MEANS:
Organisations using more than 50 tools ranked themselves 8% lower in their ability to detect an attack, and around 7% lower when it comes to responding to an attack.
Why Combating Alert Fatigue is a Challenge
The detection alert rules on your tools need to be continually re-tuned to reflect changes in an organisation’s IT environments.
1
Properly integrating tools is a time-consuming task that can only be accomplished if your tools are interoperable, and there’s often little incentive for vendors to create tools that integrate and communicate with one another.
2
Playbooks and workflows can add context to help security teams avoid the time-sink of disjointed events but identifying and providing that context is no small task. And, since alerts will change as tools are added and removed, it is a never-ending chore.
3
While these steps will provide some relief, the consistent time and effort required makes these options less viable solutions for already small or overextended security teams.
That’s why more organisations are turning to a single, comprehensive solution to the problem of alert fatigue.
The Benefits of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Providers
MDR is an increasingly popular solution since it often delivers real-time, 24×7 monitoring, detection, and response using a holistic, turnkey approach. A cost-effective alternative to building an in-house security operations centre, MDR protects against advanced threats and enables organisations of all sizes to follow cybersecurity best practises even within resource constraints.
Workload Management
Free-up time for your internal security team to work on business-critical projects.
Talent Retention
Create more opportunities for your team to do meaningful work, increasing the likelihood that you will retain your top security talent.
Security Maturity
Reduce your costs while strengthening your security posture and increasing your security maturity.
Access to Experts
Get access to seasoned cybersecurity specialists with a wide range of skills.
Advanced Tech and Tools
Utilise advanced technology and a comprehensive suite of tools.
Cost Savings
Get a security force multiplier at significant cost savings.
Reporting and Analytics
Gain access to advanced analytics and reporting tools.
Not all managed detection and response services are created equal. Here are the key features your organisation should look for in a potential MDR partner:
Do they provide a team of dedicated security engineers?
Are they available whenever you need them, or is there an hourly cap on how much you can utilise them?
Do they offer 24x7 coverage?
Are they able to work with your existing security tools, or do they need to “rip and replace?”
Do they offer predictable pricing and unlimited log data?
Do they provide posture hardening recommendations to help you mature your security?
Do they provide updates and reports? Which types and how frequently?
Do they collect and retain log sources? Which ones?
Do they support compliance and audit reporting?
How Arctic Wolf Can Help
Arctic Wolf works with your existing tech stack to immediately begin monitoring your environment, ensuring proactive and dynamic detection and response to threats, intrusions, and attacks. Organisations receive timely and actionable intelligence from an always-available team of expert security analysts—without the overwhelming noise of endless false positives.
Built on an open XDR architecture, the Arctic Wolf® Platform provides real-time, continuous monitoring, and threat hunting on your network.
And our Concierge Security® Team works as an extension of your internal IT team, offering 24×7 access to expert analysts with no cap on hours and providing incident response, vulnerability scans and assessments, compliance management and reporting, and regular reports on the state of your company’s security posture.
It's Time For A Solution
What is Alert Fatigue Costing Your Organisation?
If you’re ready to reduce your organisation’s alert fatigue, an important first step is to quantify what it is costing you in time and money.
Calculate how much alert fatigue is costing your organisation and, when you’re ready to consider a new solution, contact us for a demonstration of how Arctic Wolf can save time and money while keeping your data safe from cyber attack.