Eighty-one percent of surveyed information technology (IT) professionals say that more than 20% of their cloud security alerts are false positives, while 43% say more than 40% of their alerts are false positives.

The Orca Security 2022 Cloud Security Alert Fatigue Report asked over 800 IT professionals across five countries and ten industries about their cloud security posture.

With 55% of respondents using three or more cloud security tools, a combination of multi-cloud adoption and disparate tooling is overwhelming security teams with a flood of inaccurate alerts. For example, 59% of respondents receive more than 500 public cloud security alerts per day, and 38% receive more than 1,000 per day.

The cost of alert fatigue

Over half of respondents spend more than 20% of their time deciding which alerts should be dealt with first. The overload of alerts and false positivity rates are not only contributing to turnover, but also to missed critical alerts. More than half of respondents (55%) say their team missed critical alerts in the past due to ineffective alert prioritization — often on a weekly and even daily basis.

Cloud security alerts

The 2022 Cloud Security Alert Fatigue Report also found that:

• On a daily basis, 79% have more than 500 cloud security alerts open.
• Alert fatigue causes burnout, turnover, and internal friction: 62% of respondents say that alert fatigue has contributed to turnover, and 60% said that alert fatigue has created internal friction.
• Those with 10 or more cloud security tools are 67% more likely to receive more than 1,000 alerts per day than those with 5 or fewer tools.

For additional report findings, click here.