High-Fidelity Events: How Clear NDR Eliminates Alert Fatigue and Extensive Tuning

For security teams using Darktrace and similar anomaly-based NDR solutions, the scenario is all too familiar: a constant stream of alerts from ‘model breaches’ requiring investigation, extensive tuning sessions to reduce false positives, and the lingering concern that important threats might be missed in the noise. This alert fatigue isn't just an annoyance—it's a serious operational burden that diverts valuable analyst time away from genuine threats.

Clear NDR from Stamus Networks takes a fundamentally different approach to this challenge through its unique high-fidelity event framework, centered around Declarations of Compromise (DoCs) and Declarations of Policy Violation (DoPVs). These aren't just rebranded alerts—they represent a paradigm shift in how network detection can work.

The False Positive Problem: More Than Just Annoyance

Before exploring the Clear NDR solution, it's worth understanding the full impact of the false positive challenge with anomaly-only NDR and legacy security approaches:

• Analyst Burnout: SOC teams suffer decreased morale and increased turnover when constantly investigating non-issues
• Alert Desensitization: Teams begin to ignore alerts after too many false positives, potentially missing genuine threats
• Resource Diversion: Critical security resources are spent tuning systems rather than hunting threats
• Detection Deterioration: Many teams ultimately reduce detection sensitivity to manage alert volume, creating security gaps

A recent Forrester Research study entitled “The State of Network Security” found security teams spend an average of 28 hours per week just on alert triage, with 53% of decision makers citing that “too many false positives” is a major challenge. For a typical enterprise, this translates to thousands of wasted analyst hours annually.

A Different Philosophy: High-Fidelity Over High-Volume

Clear NDR's approach to alert management isn't simply better algorithms or more efficient interfaces—it's a philosophical shift from high-volume to high-fidelity detection through its innovative dual framework of Declarations of Compromise (DoCs) and Declarations of Policy Violation (DoPVs).

Declarations of Compromise: Identifying True Threats with Confidence

Declarations of Compromise (DoCs) represent Clear NDR's highest confidence security events that signal "serious and imminent" threats on assets. Unlike traditional alerts that require investigation to determine validity, DoCs automatically collect and present comprehensive evidence.

The architecture behind DoCs explains why they eliminate the false positive problem:

1. Curated Detection Methods: The Stamus Labs research team continuously identifies and curates atomic detection methods that, when triggered, represent high-confidence threats. These methods are organized into 25 threat families, with coverage updates provided daily.
   
   
2. Asset-Centric Approach: A DoC is created the first time a curated attack method triggers against a single asset (host, user, or email account). Clear NDR then considers that asset "under attack" and begins associating subsequent activities and evidence artifacts with that asset.
   
   
3. Complete Attack Timeline: Clear NDR maintains the "first seen" and "last seen" state of any threat as well as the asset's current kill chain phase, creating a detailed timeline of attack progression that allows analysts to trace back to "patient zero."
   
   
4. Rich Contextual Evidence: Each DoC automatically aggregates all related metadata, files, packet captures (PCAPs), transaction logs, and alerts associated with the threat, eliminating the manual correlation burden placed on analysts.
   
   

"When we receive a DoC, we don't ask 'Is this real?' – we immediately shift to containment and response," explains a Security Operations Manager who switched from Darktrace to Clear NDR. "The confidence level is so high that we've never experienced a false positive DoC in over six months of operation."

Declarations of Policy Violation: Extending High-Fidelity Beyond Threats

While DoCs focus on malicious activity, Clear NDR's Declarations of Policy Violation (DoPVs) apply the same high-fidelity approach to identifying non-compliant activity. DoPVs are high-confidence, high-priority notifications of security policy violations such as:

• Clear text passwords
• Outdated TLS versions
• Insecure cipher suites
• TOR browser usage
• Potential data leakage
• Unauthorized application usage
• Adware

This extends visibility beyond just external threats to include high-risk activities that might otherwise only be caught through proactive threat hunting. DoPVs contain the same comprehensive information as DoCs, including:

• Network information (source and destination IP, offender and victim IP, subnet ID)
• Protocol details (protocol, port, application protocol)
• Detection method specifics (ID, name, severity)
• Flow information (bytes transferred, packet counts)
• File information (filenames, hashes)
• Geo IP data
• Detailed policy violation information
• Packet capture (PCAP) of the related session(s)
  
  

Customizing High-Fidelity Events for Your Environment

One of Clear NDR's most powerful capabilities is the ability to customize both DoCs and DoPVs to meet organization-specific requirements:

1. Custom DoCs: Using threat hunting filters, security teams can elevate specific types of alerts to DoC status based on their unique threat landscape.
   
   
2. Custom DoPVs: Organizations can elevate any security event to a policy violation, creating a detection strategy that aligns perfectly with internal policies and compliance requirements.
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For example, an organization could create a custom DoPV to detect and alert when FTP applications are used to or from specific servers. This customization ensures that Clear NDR's high-fidelity framework adapts to your specific security policies rather than forcing you to adapt to generic alerting thresholds.

Automated Response to High-Confidence Events

Because both DoCs and DoPVs represent extremely high-confidence security events, they can be configured to trigger automated responses without the false positive concerns that plague traditional NDR solutions. Clear NDR supports multiple integration options:

• Initiate blocking or quarantine action: Automatically trigger a blocking or quarantine action in EDR, Firewalls, DNS, DHCP, or IAM systems
• Ticketing Systems: Automatically create tickets in corporate ticketing systems
• SIEM Integration: Send alerts to your SIEM with native Splunk integration and syslog support
• Chat Notifications: Trigger notifications in enterprise chat applications 
• Email Notifications: Send detailed alerts directly to specified addresses

This automation is only possible because of the high-fidelity nature of Clear NDR's events—organizations can confidently implement automated responses without fear of disrupting operations due to false positives.

The Operational Impact: From Alert Fatigue to Strategic Response

The shift from Darktrace or other traditional NDR high-volume anomaly alerts to Clear NDR's high-fidelity DoCs and DoPVs transforms security operations in several ways:

1. Accelerated Decision-Making: With high-confidence events, teams can move directly to containment and response rather than spending time determining alert validity
   
   
2. Comprehensive Coverage: The dual framework addresses both external threats (DoCs) and policy violations (DoPVs) from a single operational center
   
   
3. Reduced Alert Noise: By focusing only on high-confidence events, Clear NDR dramatically reduces the volume of alerts requiring investigation
   
   
4. Improved Automation Confidence: The high-fidelity nature of DoCs and DoPVs enables confident implementation of automated response workflows
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As one Security Director who switched from Darktrace to Clear NDR noted: "We've gone from spending 80% of our time investigating alerts to spending 80% of our time responding to actual threats and policy violations. The difference in operational efficiency is remarkable."

Real-World Impact: From Continuous Tuning to Immediate Value

Organizations that switch from Darktrace to Clear NDR consistently report dramatic reductions in both false positives and tuning requirements:

"With our previous solution, we had weekly tuning sessions and still struggled with false positives. With Clear NDR, we haven't had a single tuning session in over three months, and every DoC has represented a genuine security issue requiring action." – CISO, Financial Services Organization

The Operational Advantage: Beyond False Positive Reduction

The impact of Clear NDR's high-fidelity approach extends beyond simply reducing false positives. Organizations experience:

1. Faster Time to Response: With confidence in alert validity, teams move directly to response without lengthy investigation
2. More Efficient Resource Allocation: Security resources shift from alert management to threat hunting and security improvements
3. Enhanced Incident Clarity: Clear attack patterns and comprehensive evidence streamline incident response
4. Improved Executive Communication: High-confidence events with clear evidence simplify security reporting to leadership
5. Reduced Analyst Burnout: Eliminating alert fatigue improves analyst job satisfaction and retention

Conclusion: Could this be the End of Alert Fatigue?

The traditional approach to network detection—generating alerts based on anomalies and requiring security teams to investigate each one—creates an unsustainable operational burden. Clear NDR's high-fidelity event framework, centered on Declarations of Compromise and Declarations of Policy Violation, represents a fundamental shift away from that model.

By providing high-confidence, evidence-rich security events that virtually eliminate false positives, Clear NDR transforms how security teams operate. Analysts can focus on genuine threats rather than alert triage, dramatically improving both security outcomes and operational efficiency.

For organizations currently struggling with Darktrace's – or similar anomaly-based NDR – alert volume and tuning requirements, Clear NDR offers not just an alternative NDR solution, but a completely different approach to network security—one that delivers immediate value without the false positive burden.

About Stamus Networks: Stamus Networks offers Clear NDR, a multi-layered network detection and response solution that provides immediate value, transparent detections, and rich supporting evidence. 

Want to experience the difference high-fidelity detection can make?  Request a demo at https://www.stamus-networks.com/demo or request custom pricing using our quote generator at https://www.stamus-networks.com/pricing-quote-generator