IDS False Positives: How Alert Noise Drains OEM Cybersecurity Budgets

OEMs are well aware of the need for strong in-vehicle cybersecurity to minimize the risk of a cyber attack, ensure safety and comply with regulatory requirements. Automotive Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems are being used to inspect in-vehicle traffic in real time and detect anomalies that could indicate a potential attack. These anomalies are typically sent as alerts to a backend fleet monitoring solution (i.e., Vehicle Security Operations Center) for analysis and response.

One of the biggest challenges in IDS implementations is commonly referred to as “alert noise.” Most first-generation vehicle IDS solutions generate massive volumes of alerts (about 80% on average are false positives), making it highly difficult for SOC analysts to detect real attacks and at the same time catapulting OEMs’ cellular data transmission and cloud storage costs.

Understanding the cost impact of IDS false positives is critical for OEMs looking to deploy IDS solutions for their next generation vehicle fleets. Over the course of a vehicle’s lifetime, the additional operational costs related to false positives can reach millions of dollars for a large vehicle fleet. These long-term costs should be taken into account when OEMs compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of potential IDS solutions.

This blog analyzes the differences between traditional and High Fidelity IDS solutions, and quantifies the 15-year savings that an OEM could achieve by implementing a High Fidelity IDS.

“Alert noise” is a backbreaker for OEMs

As noted, first-generation or non-specialized in-vehicle IDS solutions typically generate a high percentage of false positives. Not only does this result in higher operational costs, it also increases security risk.

• Excessive “junk” data: Many early systems generate a high volume of suspected cybersecurity alerts, which need to be transmitted from the vehicle to the SOC and then stored in the cloud. This “noise” has been identified as a major operational cost for vehicle manufacturers, as well as creating significant inefficiencies.
  
• Operational burden and cost: Each alert, regardless of its validity, typically requires investigation by a Vehicle Security Operations Center (VSOC) analyst. When a large percentage of these are false alarms, the result is wasted resources, increased operational costs and a frustrated security team. Industry experience shows that confirming whether an alert is a true positive can take weeks in some environments.
  
• Risk of missing real threats: When security teams are overwhelmed by a flood of low-value alerts, their capacity to detect and respond to sophisticated, genuine cyberattacks is significantly diminished. Real threats that need to be investigated can get lost in the noise. 
  

The difference between traditional and High Fidelity IDS

By understanding the differences between traditional, first-generation intrusion detection systems and High Fidelity IDS, organizations can bypass the pitfalls inherent in earlier approaches. The goal of High Fidelity IDS is not just to detect intrusions, but to do so intelligently, providing clear, actionable insights without overwhelming security operations.

Unlike traditional vehicle IDS solutions, High-Fidelity IDS filters out much of the “noise” inside the vehicle – i.e., before it reaches security operations. This type of IDS is specifically designed to remove irrelevant and redundant data, thus significantly reducing alert volumes with high accuracy and relevance. This level of precision saves valuable bandwidth and resources within the vehicle network, which can be utilized to carry out other important functions.

Exemplifying this approach, PlaxidityX’s IDS products are designed to minimize operational noise using advanced heuristics. This capability means the IDS can differentiate between actual anomalies and expected traffic deviations (even rare events) before reporting. This translates to a near-zero false positive rate, which is crucial for OEMs managing vast fleets.

Consequently, the operational burden on security teams decreases, allowing them to focus on genuine threats. High-Fidelity IDS optimizes costs related to data handling, storage, and SIEM processing. Ultimately, it provides a more efficient, cost-effective, and future-ready security posture, setting the foundation for leveraging AI-powered threat protection as these capabilities become available.

Quantifying the long-term cost savings of High Fidelity IDS

To illustrate the potential savings an OEM could achieve by implementing a High Fidelity IDS, we have quantified the additional data transmission, cloud infrastructure, and VSOC operational efficiency costs associated with a “noisy” IDS (i.e., 80% false-positives as is common in the industry). For purposes of this analysis, we have assumed a fleet of 500,000 vehicles, each with a 15-year lifespan. We then compare these costs to those for a High Fidelity IDS with zero false-positives (note: the PlaxidityX IDS product achieves this level of precision in production environments as demonstrated by internal data from customers and independent studies). 

Data Transmission & Cloud Infrastructure Costs

Noisy, first-generation IDS solutions can generate excessive “junk” data due to false positives, redundant data and verbose logging. All of this irrelevant data (false alerts, logs, context) is then sent from the vehicle to the VSOC over the cellular network (using the vehicle’s built-in SIM card), resulting in increased cellular data transmission costs.  

In addition, storing excessive, non-actionable data generated by IDS false positives directly impacts cloud storage and processing expenses. Today’s major cloud providers charge OEMs for both long-term cloud storage and for any related cloud processing. Thus, the more junk data being generated by your IDS, the higher the costs.

Illustrative Savings: Based on typical prices for data transmission and cloud storage and processing, it is estimated that a noisy IDS can incur an additional $2.50 – $4.50 per vehicle in avoidable data-related costs over a vehicle’s lifetime. 

Optimized VSOC Operational Efficiency

The most significant operational cost of a noisy IDS is the human effort wasted on investigating false alarms. For example, if your SOC team comprises 20 analysts, there is a finite limit as to how many alerts they can investigate per day. As your fleet grows and the volume of alerts (including IDS false positives) continues to increase, OEMs need to either enlarge the size of the team (not always possible due to budget constraints and/or skill gaps) or accept the fact that real threats may go unnoticed.  

Illustrative Savings: By dramatically reducing false positives (potentially by over 90% compared to some baseline systems), High Fidelity IDS can help reclaim 25-50% of VSOC analysts’ time. For a moderately-sized VSOC team supporting a 500K-vehicle fleet, this reclaimed productivity and focus on genuine threats can equate to a savings of $100,000 – $250,000+ in annual operational value, depending on team size and labor costs. The efficiency gain per analyst becomes even more critical at scale.

Lower SIEM & Backend Processing Costs

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms (e.g., Microsoft Sentinel) and other cloud-based backend analytics systems used by OEMs often have costs tied to data ingestion volume and the number of events processed.

Illustrative Savings: By feeding the SIEM cleaner, pre-qualified and significantly reduced alert data from a high-fidelity IDS, organizations can anticipate lowering SIEM-related ingestion, storage and processing costs by an estimated 20-40%. For a fleet of 500,000 vehicles, savings of this magnitude represents significant financial relief and improves the performance and effectiveness of central security analytics. 

Total Lifetime Savings

Based on the cost components analyzed above, and assuming a typical vehicle lifetime of 15 years for a fleet of 500,000 vehicles, the typical additional cost for an OEM due to IDS false positives is estimated to be $1,500,000 – $2,300,000.

The Future of In-Vehicle Security: AI-Powered High Fidelity IDS

The automotive cybersecurity landscape is rapidly evolving, with AI poised to play an increasingly significant role in threat detection and response. Future IDS solutions will leverage AI to identify complex attack patterns, predict emerging threats and automate responses.

That said, the effectiveness of any AI-driven security system is fundamentally dependent on the quality and reliability of the data it ingests. By removing irrelevant data, high-precision, contextual IDS solutions serve as an essential prerequisite for successfully implementing and capitalizing on AI-powered advancements down the road. 

A High Fidelity IDS is crucial for training and operating intelligent threat detection systems. Without a clean, reliable data foundation that minimizes false positives, AI algorithms will struggle to learn effectively and may even amplify existing “noise,” diminishing their value.

At PlaxidityX, we have already applied this principle in our IDS products. For example, the current ruleset configurator is AI-based, ensuring that vehicle communication databases (e.g., DBC or ARXML files) and security configurations are free of collisions and optimized for performance. This AI-powered feature allows OEMs to deploy the IDS and generate an optimized ruleset in as little as two weeks.

Bottom Line

Modern High-Fidelity IDS solutions minimize alert noise, enabling OEMs to build a more resilient, efficient and cost-effective vehicle cybersecurity operation:

• Avoid “alert fatigue”: Implement a system that security teams can rely on.
  
• Enhance threat detection: Focus resources on genuine threats, rather than chasing false alarms.
  
• Optimize operational costs: Reduce the expenses associated with managing a high-volume, low-fidelity alert stream, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually (depending on scale).
  
• Future-ready security posture: Benefit from a sophisticated, best-practice approach that aligns with the evolving cybersecurity landscape and prepares the foundation for AI-driven advancements.

IDS false positives have a major impact on OEMs’ operational costs over a vehicle’s lifetime. This is a critical factor that should not be overlooked when evaluating potential IDS solutions for vehicle fleets. Investing in a robust, high-precision IDS not only lowers OEMs’ total cost of ownership for vehicle fleets today, it also represents a strategic step towards AI-powered threat protection in the future.

 Learn more about our High Fidelity IDS solutions for CAN and Ethernet vehicle networks.