Security Red Flags: Real World costs of false Alarms

We all know the frustration of an incessant car alarm that just won’t stop. It may affect your mood. You might try to shut out the noise. Over time the monotony of the alarm’s cry dulls your reaction. It becomes the boy shepherd in Aesop’s fables. It is the car that cried wolf. Until one day the emergency is real and the wolf has turned up. 

Evidence exists that false alarms desensitize safety systems, waste resources, and dilute human reactions to real-life security threats and emergencies. According to a study by the Ponemon Institute in the US, reacting to false positives and needless security alerts amounts to around 21,000 wasted work hours. That’s more than two years’ worth of time wasted. The cost globally is likely unquantifiable.

In his book ‘Cry Wolf: The psychology of false alarms’, psychologist Shlomo Breznitz posits that the human psyche may well be the weakest link in any security alarm or early warning system. A single false alarm reduces the fear reaction to the next threat by close to fifty percent, according to his findings.

In ‘Alarms and human behaviour: implications for medical alarms’, a  research paper carried out at the University of Plymouth, it is suggested that people will tailor their reaction according to the perceived reliability of an alarm. The more one thinks an alarm is wrong, the more a person will likely ignore it. This is a problem when businesses, medical professionals, or law enforcement are relying on these triggers to do their job.

“If a system is perceived to be 90% reliable then they will respond practically every time an alarm is sounded, whereas if it is perceived to be only 10% reliable then they will respond only infrequently,” the research paper stated.



Studies on the impact of false positives have been carried out across a number of workspaces. This includes research in medical environments to determine the impact of desensitization on healthcare. Research has suggested that 72% to 99% of clinical alarms are made in error.

In Monitor Alarm Fatigue: An Integrative Review, Maria Cvach explains how alarm fatigue is a national problem in the US.

In her 2012 research article, she explains how from 2005 through 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database received 566 reports of patient deaths related to monitoring medical alarms. A four-month review of the MAUDE database between March 1, 2010 and June 30, 2010 revealed 73 alarm related deaths, she writes.

Cvach makes the point that when an alarm is viewed as a nuisance, caregivers may disable, silence, or ignore the warning intended to signal threats or emergencies. .Rather than creating a safer environment, a large number of nuisance alarms have an opposite effect, resulting in desensitization, she says.

A more recent study in Poland used available literature on false alarms and intensive care units to determine the impact on nurses.  In the analyzed studies, 389 nurses assessed tested, working in different intensive care units. The study found that the nurses felt overburdened with an excessive amount of duties and a continuous wave of alarms.

It concluded that alarm fatigue - contributed to by false positives - may have serious consequences, both for patients and for nursing personnel. The researchers advised that it may be necessary to introduce a strategy of alarm management and for measuring the alarm fatigue level.

So the research appears to confirm that false alarms can impact workload and quality to varying degrees. In a study of Aviation Safety Reporting System data from 2015-2020, analysts looked at 370 reports for hits, misses, false alarms, and correct rejections.

The study surmised that errors associated with automated signals are more likely to include false alarms. It also suggested while excessive alarms can increase operators’ response times, overall response rates can decrease.

Economic impact

But false alarms don’t just affect psychological response and working conditions. Bogus alerts threaten the bottom line. It is estimated that billions worth of revenue is lost annually to inaccurate security alerts or false positives. In the case of a camera security system, a false positive could be an alarm triggered by rain or something as innocuous as a bird landing. 

From the promiseQ security solution perspective, these false positives are a major problem for security monitoring centers. It’s why we exist as a business - to cut out non-threat alerts and increase the accuracy of CCTV monitoring using artificial intelligence. 

False alarms not only burden organizations with extra workloads but can also result in significant financial costs, either through increased labour or mental strain, or even large fines due to police or fire units being mistakenly dispatched. 

Research by the Centre for Orientated Policing into police practices indicates that US authorities are constantly fighting against a tide of false alarms with around 3 million monitored security systems added to the nation’s infrastructure each year. 

Shockingly, some $1.8 billion has been wasted by US police per year as a result of false alarms picked up by many of these often unreliable systems. False alarm systems are now in place in US cities in an effort to recoup costs of wasted time.

For example in Seattle, alarm companies are billed directly from the City of Seattle Finance and Administrative Division for use of police services including false alarm fees. The fees included a cost of $115 for responding to a false automated burglar alarm.

The system came into place in 2004, after the Seattle Police Department found that 97% of its callouts were false. Despite hitting people and companies with a financial penalty, the department estimates that it spends $1 million a year reacting to inaccurate alarms.

In the UK, London Fire Brigade is considering charging for false alarms. The emergency service states on its website that in 2017, its firefighters attended 38,000 false alarms. 

An expenditure analysis of the Fire & Rescue New South Wales agency provides further insight into the financial costs of false alarms.

The average net cost of false automatic fire alarm system alerts for the government agency was estimated as AUD$234 million, with a median net cost of AUD$229 million. 

False/non-malicious events increase noise for already over-worked security teams and can include software bugs, poorly written software, or unrecognized network traffic, the analysis stated. 

For promiseQ, an alarm system that regularly swamps its SOC with inaccurate alerts is a significant weak link to any network. 

It’s a liability rather than a strength. We are now working on cloud-based analytics and artificial intelligence solutions in an effort to cut non-malicious alerts and reduce costs for clients

To find out how we can help solve your false alarm problem, contact our founders here: FREE CONSULTATION