Why Cloud Security Tools Have So Many False Positives?

Cloud security presents significant challenges, notably the issue of false positive alerts that can overwhelm security teams and detract from addressing genuine threats. The dynamic and complex nature of cloud environments, compared to static on-premises infrastructures, complicates the establishment of baseline behaviors, leading to misclassification of legitimate activities as threats. Examples include auto-scaling misconfigurations, temporary resource alerts, misconfigured security groups, IP address anomalies, and cloud storage misinterpretations. Traditional security tools often lack the contextual awareness needed to accurately assess cloud activities, resulting in frequent false positives. Additionally, the evolving threat landscape necessitates rapid adaptation of security tools, which can further increase false positives as new threat detection models struggle to differentiate between benign and malicious activity. Understanding the root causes of these false alerts can help security teams focus on real risks, and solutions like Stream Security can reduce the time spent on false positives by providing enhanced contextual awareness.