SSCP Risk Identification, Monitoring, and Analysis Practice Question
A security analyst is tuning a SIEM to reduce false positives. Which of the following actions is most likely to reduce false positives while maintaining detection of real threats?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse 'reducing false positives' with 'eliminating all alerts,' leading them to choose disabling detection rules (Option C) or whitelisting (Option D), rather than understanding that correlation tuning preserves detection capability while filtering noise.
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
✓
Modify correlation rules to require multiple events before alerting
Modifying correlation rules to require multiple events before alerting reduces false positives by ensuring that a single benign event does not trigger an alert. This technique, often called 'thresholding' or 'event correlation,' filters out noise while still detecting multi-step attack patterns, such as a brute-force login attempt that requires multiple failed logins within a time window.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the severity of all alerts to high
Why it's wrong here
This would not reduce false positives; it would desensitize analysts.
- ✓
Modify correlation rules to require multiple events before alerting
Why this is correct
Requiring multiple events reduces single-event false positives and improves signal-to-noise ratio.
- ✗
Disable all anomaly-based detection rules
Why it's wrong here
This would eliminate anomaly detection, potentially missing novel threats.
- ✗
Create a whitelist for known benign IP addresses
Why it's wrong here
Whitelisting reduces noise but may miss threats from whitelisted IPs if compromised.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SSCP practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 SSCP exam.