Alert fatigue refers to the state of mental or operational exhaustion that arises when individuals—such as security analysts in a SOC—are inundated with a high volume of alerts (many of which are low priority, false positives or non-actionable). Because there are so many notifications, the ability to detect, triage and respond to genuine threats is degraded.
In the context of cybersecurity, alert fatigue means the diminished capacity of a security team to effectively distinguish, prioritise and act on meaningful security alerts because the volume, repetition or noise of alerts has desensitised the analysts. The meaning extends beyond volume: it covers contextual irrelevance, poor alert quality, rule over-generation and human cognitive overload.
Alert Fatigue Examples
- A SOC receives thousands of alerts daily from endpoint, network, cloud and SaaS tools. Many turn out to be benign, but that volume causes some alerts to remain uninvestigated or ignored.
- A corporate breach went undetected because early alerts were buried in non-urgent noise—classic case of too many alerts, too few processed in time.
- An organisation’s analysts report high stress, frequent overtime, backlog of alerts and reduced focus—all signs of alert fatigue.
SOC alert fatigue
SOC alert fatigue specifically refers to the challenge faced by Security Operations Centres (SOCs) where teams of analysts contend with constant streams of security alerts. These alerts may come from SIEMs, IDS/IPS, cloud-security monitors, endpoint protection platforms, etc.
The problem in SOCs is magnified because the stakes are high (actual cyber threats), the volume is large, and the resources are constrained. When SOC analysts become fatigued, they may miss critical alerts, respond slowly or lose trust in their monitoring infrastructure.
