False Positives and Alert Fatigue: What You Need to Know

Imagine a control room in a power plant. Operators are watching critical systems, keeping electricity flowing to hundreds of thousands of homes. Suddenly, their security consoles flood with alerts. Most turn out to be nothing. A routine software update. A harmless network anomaly.

But here’s the problem: after the tenth false alarm, the urgency fades. Operators stop dropping everything to investigate. Some start ignoring alerts entirely. And in the worst cases, they disable the detection system altogether just to make the noise stop — leaving critical systems effectively blind.

In operational technology (OT) environments, where uptime and safety are non-negotiable, false positives aren’t just annoying — they’re dangerous. They steal attention from genuine threats, create fatigue, and erode trust in the very systems designed to protect critical infrastructure. This is the modern cybersecurity version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

What Are False Positives and Alert Fatigue?

In its simplest form, a false positive is an alert that claims a threat exists when it doesn’t. Alert fatigue is what happens when operators are forced to deal with too many false positives for too long.

The signs of alert fatigue are easy to spot:

• Operators start to assume alerts are harmless, and hence begin to ignore them
• Alerts begin to become annoyances and the targets of resentment.
• Real alerts are missed, hidden in the all-consuming fog of the false ones.
• Some staff quietly turn off alerting altogether, removing the safety net entirely.

Why Traditional Cybersecurity Tools Struggle in OT 

Most contemporary cybersecurity tools — even those marketed for critical infrastructure — were originally built for Information Technology (IT) environments. They depend heavily on probabilistic algorithms and AI-enhanced pattern recognition, which are designed to spot behaviors that might be malicious based on historical patterns.

That approach comes with built-in problems both in the IT world, as well as in the OT world:

• Over-sensitivity in probabilistic detection rules – To avoid missing threats, many tools are tuned to alert on anything remotely suspicious. That means legitimate processes often get flagged.
• Behavioral misinterpretation – OT equipment produces patterns that look unusual to IT-oriented tools. A surge in network traffic or a spike in memory use might be part of a normal operational cycle, but still gets flagged as an attack.
• Dependence upon “virus signatures” – Signature-based tools look for known “fingerprints” of malware. Harmless files, patches, or updates that share similarities can trigger false alerts.
• Unfamiliar baselines – Without a deep understanding of what “normal” looks like for a specific OT process, detection systems might treat harmless deviations as threats.
• Backend or cloud dependence – Because their systems throw so many false positives, many tools require alerts to be sent to a remote Security Operations Center (SOC) and/or AI triage system for validation. This delays action, and in OT, where seconds matter, that lag can cost you. It also means that if communication connectivity to the critical backend is cut, validations and meaningful responses are rendered impossible.
• Performance-heavy scanning – OT devices with limited processing power can’t run traditional IT cybersecurity tools. The “agents” that are designed to sit inside of the protected devices are simply far too bloated and inefficient. Even a “tiny” traditional agent of “only” 100 MB cannot be shoe-horned into an 8 MB device.

Why This Matters for Operational Technology

In OT security, trust in your alerting system isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s non-negotiable. If your operators don’t trust the alerts, they won’t act on them. And when seconds matter, hesitation can be catastrophic.

False positives don’t just waste time. They:

• Reduce operational efficiency
• Increase dwell time for real threats
• Drain morale and accelerate staff turnover
• In extreme cases, cause operators to disable security altogether

This is the hidden cost of security in name only, or security theater: cybersecurity tools that appear robust but ultimately push operators towards disengagement rather than response. Eliminating false responses is both a security imperative and an operational necessity. 

Breaking the Cycle with Crytica’s RDA

Ignoring alerts isn’t the answer. If anything, it’s a dangerous breach of protocol that leaves critical infrastructure exposed. The real solution is to improve the quality of alerts so that every notification is worth an operator’s time and attention. That means moving away from the “catch everything” mentality and toward precision-driven detection that operators trust.

Here’s how Crytica’s Rapid Detection & Alert (RDA) system applies the key principles to break the cycle:

Detect at Injection, Not After Execution

The earlier you identify malicious code, the less noise you generate and the faster you can respond. If you’re waiting until after code executes — or until behavior deviates far enough to be suspicious — you’re already behind. Detecting at the point of injection means threats are identified before they have the chance to run, hide, or cause damage.

RDA applies this by detecting the presence of malicious code at the moment of injection, allowing operators to stop threats before they can activate. This also prevents the false positives that come from late-stage behavioral analysis.

Deliver Actionable Alerts

More alerts don’t equal more security, especially when operators have to sift through logs and false positives just to find something that matters. Actionable alerts cut through the noise by telling you exactly what happened, where it happened, and when.

RDA issues alerts only when a verifiable, unauthorized change has occurred. No probabilistic scoring systems, no playing of the percentages. Just a binary yes/no answer: did something change that wasn’t supposed to? If no, then no alert is issued. If yes, RDA pinpoints the exact file, process, or configuration affected, the moment it was altered, and the system involved. This gives operators the intelligence they need to respond immediately, without wasting time chasing irrelevant or inaccurate events.

Go Deterministic, Not Probabilistic

Probabilistic detection is guessing with varying levels of confidence. Deterministic detection is certainty. By using algorithms that definitively identify the presence of malicious code rather than making statistical inferences based on behavior and/or virus signature pattern matching, you eliminate the ambiguity — and with it, the false positives.

RDA’s deterministic approach works by inspecting each device’s set of instructions, verifying the presence of unauthorized code before it can execute. This process doesn’t depend on historical patterns, behavior modeling, or external validation — it’s a direct confirmation of whether unauthorized code is present. This level of precision means fewer wasted investigations, faster incident response, and stronger trust in the security system itself.

Lightweight by Design for Critical Infrastructure

A detection tool is only useful if it can run continuously without slowing or interrupting operations. In OT, where devices may have extremely limited processing power or memory, tools must be engineered for efficiency. A lightweight footprint ensures you can maintain full-time coverage without compromising system performance, or forcing trade-offs between protection and productivity.

At around 100 KB, RDA’s probes run unobtrusively on even the most resource-constrained devices, providing persistent protection without affecting system performance. This efficiency allows RDA to operate alongside critical processes without competing for resources, so security never comes at the cost of uptime.

Actionable Alerts in Operational Technology

When these principles work together, the result isn’t just fewer alerts — it’s actionable alerts. Alerts that demand attention. Alerts that operators know are worth acting on. And alerts that keep the system secure without drowning the people responsible for protecting it.

High-confidence, actionable alerts keep your operators focused on real threats, not ghosts in the machine. In an industry where uptime is critical and resources are finite, reducing false positives is one of the fastest ways to strengthen your entire security posture.

Want to see how RDA performs in real-world OT environments? Reach out to our team for a demo and experience cybersecurity built for OT.

‍