In the realm of application security (AppSec), organizations face a pressing challenge: the overwhelming number of alerts generated by various security systems. Recent research has shown that between 2-5% of these alerts are actually urgent. On the other hand, actually a lot worse than that, a mind-boggling 95% of them are bad. This imbalance not only impacts the efficiency of security teams’ workflow, but it can have a serious impact on an organization’s overall security posture.
The overwhelming number of alerts that are produced can cause triage and remediation opportunities to be inadvertently missed. Over time, security professionals become inundated by alerts. This inundation of alerts often causes them to miss essential alerts that could stop a breach or the discovery of a vulnerability. Some organizations are at greater risk, even if they do not realize it. They have a hard time distinguishing important things from red herrings.
Security experts are urging the government to re-examine how these alerts are created and controlled. Relatedly, they worry about the problem of alert fatigue. Many organizations continue to rely on legacy systems. Compounding the issues with these legacy systems are the millions of alerts they create, further exacerbating the issue. Poor alert management is a fast track to burnout, especially when security staff have the daily struggle of managing a firehose of alerts.
To combat this problem, specialists advise using more advanced alerting systems that rank the importance of alerts, so life-threatening alerts take precedence over those that are more trivial. By utilizing powerful algorithms and machine learning, companies can sift through the noise to get to the stuff that really matters. By shifting to this approach, security teams can save a lot of time and effort spent on manual processes. It greatly increases their capacity to respond fast to actual threats.
Agencies are incentivized to take a proactive approach to alert management. Conducting regular audits of alert systems can help to identify systemic patterns that may allow for updating of thresholds for alert generation. Ongoing training for security teams on prioritization methodologies can further equip them to react more quickly and effectively to imminent threats.