350-701 False Positive Practice Question
A security analyst is tuning Snort IPS rules to reduce false positives. Which TWO strategies are effective?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common trap is thinking that changing the action from 'drop' to 'alert' reduces false positives. It does not—it only reduces the impact (blocking) but the false positive still generates an alert. The goal of reducing false positives is about reducing incorrect alerts, not just changing the response.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Disable the rule that is causing false positives
Disabling a rule that is triggering false positives immediately stops those false alerts. Adding a pass rule tells Snort to ignore that traffic, preventing false positives for known benign traffic. Changing the action to 'alert' does not reduce false positives; it only changes the response from dropping to alerting, so the false alerts persist.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Disable the rule that is causing false positives
Why this is correct
Disabling removes the false positive.
- ✗
Increase the sensitivity of all rules
Why it's wrong here
Increasing sensitivity may increase false positives.
- ✗
Enable all rules to maximize coverage
Why it's wrong here
This increases false positives.
- ✓
Add a pass rule for known benign traffic
Why this is correct
Pass rules whitelist specific traffic.
- ✗
Set the rule action to 'alert' instead of 'drop'
Why it's wrong here
This reduces impact but not false positives.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 350-701 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Cisco certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 350-701 exam.