The number of daily alerts in a midsize enterprise's SOC jumped from roughly 500 to more than 2,000 after new detection rules were enabled in its SIEM. Analysts are already spending overtime triaging noise, and management is worried that a ransomware intrusion could slip past them during peak periods. The SOC manager asks the team to implement a change that will highlight the most dangerous events without permanently hiding potentially useful telemetry. Which action will BEST help the analysts prioritize and manage the flood of alerts so that critical incidents are addressed first?
Deploy automated responses to reduce manual intervention for all alerts.
Increase the thresholds for alert generation in the SIEM solution.
Disable low-priority alerts to reduce overall alert volume.
Implement a tiered alerting system that categorizes alerts based on severity.
Introducing a well-defined tiered alerting taxonomy-such as Critical, High, Medium, and Low-automatically tags each alert with a severity score. Dashboards, escalations, and analyst SLAs can then be aligned to these tiers, ensuring that true high-impact threats are surfaced immediately while lower-fidelity alerts remain visible for later review. Raising SIEM thresholds or disabling low-priority rules does reduce volume but risks suppressing important context. Blanket automation for every alert can accelerate response, yet it does not itself decide which alerts deserve attention. Only a structured, severity-based tiering scheme directly tackles prioritization.
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What is a tiered alerting system in a SOC?
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Why not increase SIEM thresholds to manage alert volume?
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How does automated response differ from a tiered alerting system?