Technology Company: Overcoming Alert Fatigue & Analyst Burnout
Key outcomes
Daily Alert Volume
False Positive Rate
Mean Time to Detect
Analyst Burnout Score
The challenge
A rapidly growing SaaS company with 500+ employees was drowning in security alerts. Their five-person SOC team received over 2,000 alerts daily from multiple security tools (SIEM, EDR, CSPM, IDS/IPS). With an 88% false positive rate, analysts spent 75% of their time on manual triage, leading to severe burnout - two analysts had resigned in six months. Critical alerts were being missed in the noise, and Mean Time to Detect had climbed to 6.5 hours. Leadership was concerned about compliance audits and the team's ability to detect real threats.
Our approach
We deployed a 3-engineer FDE pod for a 12-week engagement, starting with a rapid assessment of their alert ecosystem: Weeks 1-2 (Discovery & Quick Wins): - Analyzed 30 days of alert data to identify noise patterns and true positive rates per detection - Implemented immediate tuning on the noisiest 20 detections, reducing daily alerts by 40% - Established a false positive feedback loop with weekly triage reviews Weeks 3-8 (Detection Redesign): - Consolidated 150+ legacy rules into 45 high-fidelity, context-aware detections using behavioral analytics - Built automated enrichment workflows that pulled user context, asset data, and threat intelligence - Created tiered alert severity with auto-escalation rules based on risk scores - Implemented SOAR playbooks for 12 common investigation scenarios (compromised credentials, malware execution, lateral movement) Weeks 9-12 (Knowledge Transfer & Sustainability): - Trained the SOC team on detection engineering principles and tuning methodologies - Established a monthly detection review cadence with metrics dashboards - Documented runbooks for 25 investigation scenarios - Implemented analyst feedback mechanisms to continuously improve automation
The outcome
The transformation was dramatic: - Daily alert volume dropped from 2,000 to 180 (91% reduction) - False positive rate decreased from 88% to 12% - Mean Time to Detect improved from 6.5 hours to 45 minutes - Analysts now spend 80% of their time on proactive hunting and threat modeling instead of manual triage - Team morale improved significantly - no resignations in the 8 months post-engagement - The company passed their SOC 2 Type II audit with zero security findings The SOC manager reported: 'My team can finally breathe. We're catching threats we would have missed before, and our analysts are doing the work they were hired for.' The company enrolled in our Operate tier for quarterly detection reviews and ongoing optimization.
Covenda didn't just tune our alerts - they rebuilt our entire detection philosophy. For the first time in two years, my team isn't working weekends trying to keep up with noise. We're actually hunting threats now.
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