Hey everyone, I'm feeling overwhelmed with the security alerts we've been receiving. Our security team just sent us a massive list of 5000 "critical" findings, but a lot of them are just basic issues, like our S3 bucket being publicly accessible for our marketing site, which is supposed to be public. On the flip side, we had a serious data leak last month from a misconfigured RDS instance that didn't get flagged as critical at all. I understand they need to cover their bases, but when everything is labeled as critical, it loses its meaning. How do others deal with this? What strategies do you use to filter out the noise and focus on the actual risks without ignoring security? I'm starting to think we need a solution that looks at what's currently active instead of just scanning countless config issues.
5 Answers
I’ve worked with teams that have implemented tiered alert systems. They rank issues based on real operational risk, rather than just automated scans. It really cuts down the noise, and you only focus on what poses a genuine threat. Collaboration with the security team to set their criteria right is key.
I feel you. It seems like many security teams focus more on compliance rather than actual security. They crank out those reports just to cover themselves for audits rather than preventing serious breaches. It's more like a culture of covering your ass than offering real protection!
Exactly! It's frustrating when they drown us in reports without context.
"Compliance theater" really sums it up! They need to be accountable for actionable findings.
Sometimes, the solution lies in having them rerun the scans after excluding the known low-risk items. If something can't be classified properly, it should be set aside for later review. They need to have mechanisms for accepting certain risks; that seems like a basic failure if they don’t!
Right? If they're just spamming alerts without context, they're missing the point.
Building a prioritization matrix for the security alerts might help a lot. Not every critical issue is truly critical for your environment. It's crucial that the security team adjusts their assessments based on what actually matters to your business, or else you could drown in alerts without addressing the real threats.
Totally! Contextualizing alerts makes them so much more manageable.
To help with the S3 alerts, consider putting your buckets behind CloudFront and setting the right bucket policy to filter those alerts out. Tagging your resources effectively can also make a big difference—push back on the security team to label anything public so they don't flag it as an issue. A collaborative approach can shift this relationship from adversarial to more productive.
Love that idea! Tags can really help streamline the process.
A tiered approach sounds great! Definitely worth exploring.