Cure Alert Fatigue with Security Automation

How is your IT team doing? If they’re like most teams, they’re just hanging on. IT teams have had a difficult last year with the complications that arose from securing a new remote workforce, exploding cybercrime and the global pandemic. Plus, everyone is trying to do more with less in a challenging economy. The preponderance of beeps, clicks and status updates from a growing panoply of security solutions isn’t helping matters either. 

As we’ve moved to a more fluid, cloud-based way of doing business, we’ve also added significantly to the number of solutions that IT teams need to manage. In this study of more than 1,000 business executives, 85% of security decision-makers said they believe they are adding technologies faster than they can productively use them, with 71% admitting most existing tools are underutilized. Experts estimate that enterprises maintain 19 different security tools, with only 22% of such tools serving as vital to primary security objectives. About 47% of existing IT security tools are actually used daily. 

Too Many Bells and Whistles

That creates an undue burden on already overtaxed IT teams, as illustrated in a late 2020 study. Almost half of the respondents reported personally investigating 10 to 20 alerts each day, a 12% increase from 2019. An overworked 25% of respondents said they investigate 21 to 40 alerts each day, up from 14% the year prior, and 66% of survey takers reported seeing an increase in alerts since the known spread of COVID-19 began in mid-March of 2020. 

The alerting features of many solutions are The Boy Who Cried Wolf for security teams. They’re faced with “urgent” messages from every direction constantly. A cacophony of alerts doesn’t help the cause – and 47% of all respondents in a survey about IT team burnout noted that they regularly turn off high volume alerting features when they are just too busy or there are too many alerts for analysts to process. That’s extremely dangerous because turning off, ignoring or muting alerts means that a real emergency may be missed. 

A Flood of Alerts Wastes Time, Money & Patience

Many of those notifications are completely bogus, further diluting the power of alerts. Nearly 70% of respondents said that 25% to 75% of the alerts they investigate on a daily basis are false positives, with 15% reporting that more than half of their security alerts are false positives. Those phantom problems cost companies a fortune every year. An in-depth study showed that a security analyst can spend as much as 25% of their time is spent chasing false positives — of every payroll hour you’re paying for, they’re wasting 15 minutes on false positives. The typical organization wastes an estimated 300 hours per week or more just wading through on false positives. 

Those are hours that your IT team doesn’t have. Over 70% of IT managers in a staffing survey said that they couldn’t find the personnel they needed last year, leaving 82% of security teams chronically understaffed. Money and expertise are in short supply at most organizations. Only 45% of organizations reported having enough budget available, and only 39% of companies feel they have adequate IT expertise on staff to handle increased ticket volumes. This opens the door for cybersecurity disasters as stress and inefficiency leads to problems that may not be addressed until it’s too late. 

Dramatically Reduce Alert Volumes with Automation

Automation is the key to fulfilling your IT team’s needs without adding to your payroll. IT executives agree that adding automation to their security team has been a boon: 68% of executives that were surveyed about the benefits of AI security said AI technology helped them optimize the value of their existing tools and personnel. It also increased everyone’s bandwidth, creating a positive net result. Automated security increases caseload capacity by 300% or more while still reducing trouble tickets by 80%.  

Altogether, 76% of those survey respondents said that adding AI maximized the efficiency of security staff while also increasing morale and decreasing turnover. That’s crucial when IT talent is at a premium and security risks have never been higher. Everyone wants a happy, focused IT team that’s not going to bolt to the first job that looks a little less stressful. Companies can quickly and easily add automation tools that start relieving some of that burden on day 1: When they choose Graphus for email security. 

Add a Strong Defender to Your Team Fast

Graphus is powered by a smart AI that uses more than 50 individual data points to adjudicate an incoming email to spot and stop phishing. It catches 40% more dangerous emails than competing traditional security solutions while generating fewer false-positive alerts because it’s smart. The Graphus AI never stops learning, analyzing every company’s unique communication patterns to provide strong protection by gathering its own threat data. Plus, it’s ideally suited to painlessly support a hybrid workforce. Graphus also doesn’t add to anyone’s maintenance burden. There’s no need to constantly fuss with settings or updates and it seamlessly integrates with most popular email solutions.  

Don’t wait until your IT team is exhausted enough to miss important signs of trouble from alert and maintenance fatigue. Add an automated AI-powered email security guardian to your team today. Learn more about how Graphus saves businesses money while strengthening security at an unbeatable price in the eBook How AI Can Add to Your Security Team Without Adding to Your Headcount, available now. Or contact our experts for a demo to see how your business benefits from Graphus.