How to Reduce False Positives in Correlation Searches?
High false positives can overwhelm SOC teams, causing alert fatigue and missed real threats. The best solution is to fine-tune suppression rules and refine thresholds.
#How Suppression Rules & Threshold Tuning Help:#Suppression Rules: Prevent repeated false positives from low-risk recurring events (e.g., normal system scans).#Threshold Refinement: Adjust sensitivity to focus on true threats (e.g., changing a login failure alert from 3 to 10 failed attempts).
#Example in Splunk ES:#Scenario: A correlation search generates too many alerts for failed logins.#Fix: SOC analysts refine detection thresholds:
Suppress alerts if failed logins occur within a short timeframe but are followed by a successful login.
Only trigger an alert if failed logins exceed 10 attempts within 5 minutes.
Why Not the Other Options?
#A. Increase the frequency of the correlation search - Increases search load without reducing false positives.
#C. Disable the correlation search temporarily - Leads to blind spots in detection.#D. Limit the search to a single index - May exclude critical security logs from detection.
References & Learning Resources
#Splunk ES Correlation Search Optimization Guide: https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/ES#Reducing False Positives in SOC Workflows: https://splunkbase.splunk.com#Fine-Tuning Security Alerts in Splunk:
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/security