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Alert Management vs Alert Triage

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It’s an all-too-familiar story. SOCs overrun by a huge number of alerts, often reaching millions each month. Most of these alerts are false positives or low-priority events, making the data almost useless for proactive security monitoring. It’s a huge haystack that feels impossible to manage. 

But every story has its hero — and in this case, it’s alert management. 

Alert management is the backbone of a well-run Security Operations Center (SOC). It’s the critical function that helps security teams efficiently manage and take action on the large volume of alerts generated by various security tools and systems. 

But before we dive into how it works, it’s important to understand how it differs from alert triage.

What is Alert Triage?

Alert triage is the critical first step in the alert management process. It’s where teams separate the real threats from the false alarms. Here’s how it typically plays out:

  • Alert Ingestion: Alerts pour in from various sources, like intrusion detection systems (IDS), firewalls, and endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools. They’re gathered in a centralized location, ready to be analyzed.
  • Initial Analysis: SOC analysts take a first look, checking for false positives, comparing alerts to threat intelligence, and digging into the context to determine whether the alert is worth investigating further.
  • Categorization: Once the initial assessment is done, alerts are categorized by severity—low, medium, high, or critical—helping determine how quickly each one needs attention.
  • Prioritization: The team then ranks the alerts by urgency. They assess which assets are at risk and how severe the impact could be, moving high-priority alerts to the top of the list.

Why Alert Triage Isn’t Enough

Alert triage involves organizing and prioritizing alerts to focus on the most critical issues. However, relying solely on triage can introduce its own set of challenges.

  • Volume Overload: Triage organizes alerts but doesn’t reduce their volume. Without taking action, the backlog keeps growing.
  • Missed Insights: Without thorough documentation and review, you miss the chance to learn from past incidents and fine-tune your defenses.
  • Team Burnout: The endless cycle of alert sorting without resolution leads to frustration and burnout.
  • Scalability Challenges: As cyber threats evolve and grow more sophisticated, triage processes struggle to scale effectively. 

SOCs Need Effective Alert Management

Alert management is not just about triaging alerts; it’s about managing them throughout their entire lifecycle.

  • Initial Assessment: Reviewing an alert’s details to evaluate its potential severity and legitimacy.
  • Prioritization: Sorting alerts by urgency to ensure the most critical issues are tackled first.
  • Context Gathering: Digging deeper to understand the full scope and impact of an alert.
  • Validation: Determining if the alert is a true threat or simply a false positive.
  • Categorization: Classifying the alert (e.g., malware, unauthorized access) to ensure it gets the right response.
  • Escalation Decision: Deciding whether the alert should be escalated to senior analysts or incident response teams.
  • Initial Response: Taking immediate action to contain or mitigate the threat, based on the analyst’s scope of authority.
  • Documentation: Carefully recording what was discovered, what actions were taken, and the lessons learned for future reference.

Triage helps you survive the day. Alert management helps you win the long game.

Benefits of Alert Management

As SOCs continue to face an unrelenting barrage of threats, they need a comprehensive approach, not just a quick fix. Alert management can help:

  • Reduce response time for critical security incidents
  • Minimize the impact of false positives on team resources
  • Ensure proper allocation of security resources based on threat severity
  • Provide a systematic approach to handling a high volume of alerts
  • Improve overall security posture by identifying patterns and trends in alerts

With alert management, you’re not just putting out fires. You’re building a SOC that’s prepared for whatever comes next.

Go Beyond Triage with Bricklayer AI

Manage 100% of alerts, faster and more efficiently than your human team can do alone with Bricklayer’s autonomous AI team.

Alert Management Use Case →

The SOC Alert Management Playbook →

The post Alert Management vs Alert Triage appeared first on Bricklayer AI.


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