Cybersecurity teams continue to struggle with the challenge of alert fatigue. SOC staff, detection engineers, and CSIRT/DFIR professionals struggle to determine the true significance and severity of alerts or detections. On one side, detection engineers constantly innovate methods to catch threat actors. On the other side, SOC and CSIRT staff are inundated with numerous alerts, requiring them to prioritize and take action.
It may seem logical to increase the number of detections to bolster metrics, but this approach inevitably adds to the problem of alert fatigue. So, how can security teams strike a balance that ensures the presence of effective detections without overwhelming SOC analysts and incident responders with alerts that offer little value in thwarting threat actors within an organization's network?
I spoke about this significant challenge during my presentation at the 35th Annual FIRST Conference in Montreal, particularly in organizations where there are distinct teams responsible for writing detection rules and those handling incident response and forensics. I've always had concerns about determining which alert should be our top priority in preventing a compromise. It's crucial to identify the alert that signifies a compromise in progress, or one that is about to happen shortly. It’s these alerts that our security operations team needs to jump on as a priority as they present an immediate risk to organizations.
Article Link: Combat Cybersecurity Alert Fatigue with a Priority Matrix