Is Alert Fatigue Sabotaging Your Cyber Security?

Alert fatigue is one of the most dangerous “slow-burn” risks in cyber security. It doesn’t make headlines like a ransomware attack or a data breach. Still, it quietly erodes your defenses day after day, until the moment something critical slips past because everyone’s too exhausted to see it.

For small organizations and local governments, where security is often “one hat among many,” beating alert fatigue isn’t a luxury. It’s a survival skill.

Here’s how to understand it, spot it, and fix it before it leads to real damage.

What is Alert Fatigue?

Alert fatigue happens when people are exposed to too many notifications, warnings, and system messages to the point that they become desensitized and start tuning them out.

In cyber security, this can look like:

• A flood of email alerts from firewalls, antivirus, and cloud tools
• A SIEM or logging system that flags hundreds of “medium” alerts a day
• Tools that cry wolf so often that staff assume “it’s probably nothing.”

Over time, the human brain does what it always does with constant noise: it filters. The problem is that, buried in that noise, might be the one alert that signals a real attack.

Why Alert Fatigue is So Dangerous

For small organizations, alert fatigue is uniquely risky because:

1. You already have limited staff.
   Your “security team” might be one IT person, a managed service provider (MSP), or even a tech-savvy staffer who has other full-time responsibilities. Alert overload takes them from “stretched” to “overwhelmed” very quickly.
2. Important alerts look just like unimportant ones.
   If every tool throws red exclamation marks and “critical” banners, your people don’t know what truly deserves immediate attention.
3. It builds a false sense of security.
   Leaders may assume, “We’ve got alerts turned on, so we’ll be warned.” But if no one is actually reviewing, triaging, and responding, those alerts are just background noise.
4. Attackers count on it.
   Many attacks start with low-level signs: unusual logins, odd file activity, or minor policy violations. If those are ignored because “we get stuff like that all the time,” the door stays wide open.

Signs Your Organization Has Alert Fatigue

You don’t need a security assessment to see the red flags. If any of these feel familiar, you may already have alert fatigue:

• Unread alerts piling up in shared inboxes or dashboards
• Staff saying things like, “Oh, we always get those.”
• Alerts turned off or automatically filtered to folders no one checks
• No clear owner for “Who responds when this warning fires?”
• Alerts acknowledged (clicked or cleared) but not actually investigated

If no one could tell you, right now, “Here are the alerts we care about most and how we handle them,” that’s a problem.

Step 1: Reduce the Noise

The first step to beating alert fatigue is not more effort; it’s less noise.

Turn off or tune low-value alerts.
Work with your IT team or cyber secruity consultant to review:

• Which alerts never lead to action
• Which warnings are purely informational and can be summarized in daily or weekly reports instead of real-time pings
• Which tools are duplicating the same alerts

It’s better to have 20 meaningful alerts a day than 200 that no one has time to read.

Prioritize by risk, not by default settings.
Every tool ships with its own idea of what’s “critical,” “high,” “medium,” or “low.” That doesn’t mean it matches your reality.

For example:

• A failed login from a foreign country to a privileged account? High priority.
• A routine user mistypes their password once? Probably low.

Design your own “alert tiers” based on your systems, your sensitive data, and your operations, not just vendor defaults.

Step 2: Define Clear Ownership and Process

The quickest way to ignore alerts is to make them “everyone.” When something belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one.

Assign roles.
Decide and document:

• Who receives which alerts
• Who is responsible for the first review/triage
• Who gets notified if something looks serious

This doesn’t have to be a complex org chart. For a 20-person organization, it might be as simple as:

• IT lead or MSP: first review of all security alerts
• Executive director or department head: notified only for high-impact issues (possible breach, ransomware, major outage)

Create simple playbooks.

For your top 5–10 most important alerts, write down:

• What the alert means in plain language
• What to check first
• When to escalate, and to whom
• What to document

These don’t need to be 20-page manuals. A one-page checklist is enough to keep responses consistent and quick.

Step 3: Automate Where It Makes Sense

You don’t beat alert fatigue by making people work 24/7; you beat it by making the technology do more of the heavy lifting.

Possible automations include:

• Auto-closing low-risk, repetitive alerts that meet specific criteria and are known to be benign
• Grouping alerts from the same source or user into a single incident so you’re reviewing one case, not 30 nearly identical messages
• Using rules to tag or route high-risk alerts (e.g., anything involving admin accounts or financial systems goes to the top of the queue)

The goal is to spend human attention where human judgment truly matters.

Step 4: Train Your Team on What Matters

Alert fatigue isn’t just a technical issue; it’s a human one. Your people need to understand:

• Which alerts (or types of alerts) are truly urgent
• What their role is when they receive one
• Why “just ignoring it this once” can lead to bigger problems

Short, focused training sessions can help:

• Show real-world examples of ignored alerts that led to breaches
• Walk through a mock incident from alert to resolution
• Reinforce that speaking up when something “looks off” is always the right move

When people understand the “why,” they’re much more likely to take the “what” seriously.

Step 5: Regularly Review and Adjust

Alert tuning is not a one-and-done project. As your systems, tools, and threats change, your alerts should evolve too.

At least quarterly, review:

• Which alerts generated real security value
• Which ones were noise
• Any incidents where alerts were missed, ignored, or misunderstood

Use that feedback to:

• Turn off, combine, or downgrade noisy alerts
• Improve rules and thresholds
• Update your playbooks and training

Think of it like spring cleaning for your security operations.

Where Commonwealth Sentinel Fits In

Beating alert fatigue isn’t just about comfort; it’s about resilience. When your team can clearly see and act on the signals that matter, you:

• Catch threats earlier
• Respond faster and more effectively
• Reduce burnout for already-stretched staff
• Build a culture where security is manageable, not overwhelming

Commonwealth Sentinel can help organizations:

• Review and tune existing alert configurations
• Design practical playbooks and workflows
• Provide training so non-technical staff know what to do (and what to ignore)
• Offer ongoing monitoring so your people aren’t drowning in noise

You don’t need more alerts to be safer; you need the right alerts, going to the right people, with a clear plan for what happens next. When you beat alert fatigue, you give your organization something priceless: the ability to see danger coming before it’s too late.

If you want help, Commonwealth Sentinel can design a cybersecurity training program to fit your organization’s needs and budget! At Commonwealth Sentinel, we stay focused on cyber security so you can focus on other things. Contact us today or sign up for a free consultation.