The Cost of Quiet Alarms - Security Detection Limits and False Positive Costs (2003-2025)

The Cost of Quiet Alarms - Security Detection Limits and False Positive Costs (2003-2025)

Detection techniques are based on the idea of "if you can't prevent it, find it," but as sensitivity increases, false positives (False Positives) increase; NIST notes the irreconcilability of false positives and false negatives, and perfect detection accuracy theoretically does not exist. Especially in areas with very few positives, the base rate trap reduces the positive positive predictive value (PPV), leading to enormous false alarms and response costs; even an FP rate of 0.1% would result in 10,000 false alarms in a surveillance of 10 million people, causing social disruption. The optimal detection point is found on the ROC curve, but it is not just a mathematical threshold; the overall optimization must include on-site processing capacity, ethics, regulations, and operational structure. ENISA and OWASP also position false positives as "the core of operational costs" and recommend integration with monitoring and log design. True optimization is not about zero misses, but
about "striking a social and ethical balance in the rate of false alarms that can be handled. Detection is not a science, but an intellectual equilibrium point that challenges field and human judgment.