Stop Accepting Alerts You’ll Never Action: Building Signal-Driven Security

Every business collects logs.

Some collect alerts.

But very few collect signal—the kind of insight that actually drives action.

Most teams we work with are over-monitored and under-informed. Their tools are alerting constantly—but almost none of it is meaningful, relevant, or aligned to what they’d actually respond to.

This is the paradox of modern cyber tooling: the more you enable, the less you see.

Why Most Alerts Get Ignored

It’s not laziness—it’s psychology.

When teams are bombarded with low-priority alerts:

• They become numb

• They learn which ones don’t matter

• They stop investigating unless it looks serious

Eventually, no one’s looking. The tooling becomes wallpaper.

And when the critical alert does land? It gets missed—because it looks like the last 200 that didn’t matter.

The Difference Between Logs, Alerts, and Signal

It helps to break it down:

• Logs are raw data—events, transactions, activities

• Alerts are rules triggering from those logs

• Signal is what should trigger action—because it’s meaningful, risky, or abnormal in context

You need all three. But if your alerts don’t reflect what your business actually considers high risk, you’re wasting time and energy.

Examples of Useless Alerts

Let’s be honest—these sound familiar:

• User logged in from a known office IP at 9 AM? No one cares.

• Antivirus flagged a temp file but auto-quarantined it? No action needed.

• Backup job failed once, succeeded the next retry? Logged, not escalated.

Now multiply that by 30 systems.

That’s your day gone—and your team disengaged.

What Makes a Useful Alert?

A useful alert is one that answers:

• What happened?

• Why is it risky?

• What should we do?

It should:

• Be tied to a known response workflow

• Include context (user, time, location, device)

• Be prioritised based on business impact

• Route to someone who can act

If it can’t trigger a decision or action—it shouldn’t be an alert.

How to Build Signal-Driven Security

1. Start With What You’d Actually Respond To

Ask:

• What events would warrant escalation?

• What would trigger us to notify someone, isolate a device, or investigate further?

Document that list. Build backwards.

2. Audit Your Existing Alerts

Run through your current tools:

• What’s triggering?

• How often?

• Who sees it?

• What happens next?

Kill the ones with no owner, no action, or no business relevance.

3. Tune Based on Behaviour, Not Just Events

Instead of alerting on single events, look for patterns:

• Unusual access and unusual device? That’s a signal.

• Data downloads and external file sharing? That’s a signal.

• MFA fatigue combined with login from a new geo? That’s a signal.

This is where tooling like Defender, Sentinel, or even lightweight SIEMs can help—but only if tuned intentionally.

4. Route Alerts Intelligently

Don’t send everything to everyone.

Route based on:

• Severity

• Role

• Platform knowledge

• Response capability

This reduces alert fatigue and increases accountability.

Final Thought: Less Noise, More Clarity

Security isn’t about catching everything. It’s about catching what matters—fast.

If your team is constantly reacting, never responding, it’s time to step back and ask:

• Are these alerts helping us?

• Do we know what good signal looks like?

• Are we aligned on what needs action—and what doesn’t?

When you focus on signal over noise, your tooling gets sharper.Your team gets calmer.And your response gets faster.

Because the best alert is the one that gets seen—and solved.