Stop Chasing Ghosts: Why Validation Is Key to Fixing Alert Fatigue

Every security team I speak with tells me the same thing: they’re drowning in alerts.

On average, SOC teams face 17,000 alerts per week coming from multiple tools that rarely integrate or speak the same language. And yet, when you dig deeper, it turns out that half or more of these alerts are false positives. For some MSSPs, the false positive rate is as high as 99%.

The result is predictable and painful: analysts spend hundreds of hours chasing ghosts—alerts that look urgent but have no real impact. Over time, it drains resources, burns out teams, and erodes trust in the very tools designed to keep organizations secure.

The Hidden Cost of Noise

False positives don’t just waste time, they create a ripple effect across the entire SOC. With so much meaningless noise, real threats are more likely to slip through unnoticed. Analysts become overwhelmed, alerts pile up, and before long, entire teams stop trusting their detection tools.

In large enterprises, this problem has measurable consequences: 286–424 hours lost per week, roughly $1.3M per year wasted on ghost-hunting, and 81% of alerts ultimately ignored simply because there aren’t enough people or hours in the day to investigate them all. 

The human toll is just as severe: 62% of teams report frustration and 70% report burnout. That’s the productivity death spiral in action—more alerts, fewer investigations, more burnout, and even more false alarms slipping through.

And the real risk isn’t just wasted time—it’s missed threats. 55% of organizations admit they’ve missed real threats due to alert fatigue. Under pressure, shortcuts happen: 68% of security teams say they knowingly ignore vulnerabilities they assume are false positives. Attackers count on this and rely on alert fatigue to succeed.

A Costly Example: When Ghost Alerts Conceal Real Threats

Earlier this year, a large financial services provider faced a wave of “critical” alerts from multiple security tools flagging a potential ransomware outbreak. Their SOC team spent two full days investigating 500+ high-severity alerts, only to discover that 98% of them were false positives caused by a misconfigured vulnerability scanner.

By the time they identified the real issue—an unpatched remote access server—an attacker had already exploited it to gain an initial foothold. The breach was contained, but it cost the company $750,000 in remediation and downtime.

This isn’t an isolated case but the reality for many organizations. When analysts are exhausted and stretched thin, they inevitably miss the issues that matter most—with time lost, alerts ignored, and teams burning out.

Detection Isn’t the Problem

Most tools today are excellent at detection. They can identify vulnerabilities, outdated software versions, exposed services, and risky configurations at scale. The problem is what happens next.

Detection is not the truth. Detection, in my opinion, should be treated as the initial lead—a starting point, not the conclusion. It’s where the process begins, not where it ends. Detection tells you something might be wrong, but it doesn’t confirm whether the issue is real, relevant, or exploitable. That’s where validation comes in.

Without it, SOC teams treat everything as critical and end up chasing phantom threats. This is where the ghosts come from: thousands of “high-severity” alerts that seem urgent. In reality, only a fraction pose any real-world risk.

Why Validation Matters

Validation changes the way SOCs operate. Instead of reacting to every detection, you confirm whether a vulnerability is exploitable in the real world. That starts by asking simple but powerful questions:

• Can an attacker reach this asset?
• Is there an actual exploit, and can we safely test it?
• If compromised, would this asset truly impact the business?

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By layering this context on top of detection, you cut through the noise. At ULTRA RED, we’ve seen organizations reduce alert volume by up to 90% while improving trust in their findings. Analysts move away from endless triage and start focusing on meaningful security work—threat hunting, incident response, and strengthening defenses.

When validation becomes part of the process, everything changes. False positives drop to almost zero. Mean Time to Remediate shrinks from months to hours. Teams collaborate better because they finally trust the data in front of them. Detection shows you where to look, but validation tells you what to fix. Without it, you’re just chasing ghosts.

Don’t Let Ghosts Ru(i)n Your Security Program

In our latest on-demand session, we break down the full validation workflow and share practical tips to help security teams eliminate noise and focus on real risks.

Watch the webinar on-demand now.

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