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Security Operations · Foundational

False Positive (FP)

An alert that flags benign activity as malicious.

Definition

False positives waste analyst time and contribute to alert fatigue. They are caused by overly broad rules, incomplete baselines or legitimate admin tools resembling attacks. Tuning, allowlisting and context enrichment reduce them.

Example

An IDS alert for SQL injection triggered by a developer's legitimate test query.

Exam tip

False positives are an annoyance; false negatives are more dangerous because threats go undetected.

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