- More UK IT teams ignore alerts than the global average
- Tool scatter is the biggest problem, false alerts are also a problem
- IT teams need to strengthen observability with more context and remediation
Three in four UK IT teams suffered outages in 2025 due to missed critical alerts, highlighting the risks not only of poor configurations that led to these failures, but also of so-called alert fatigue.
A new report from Splunk found that misconfigured alerts meant that more than half (54%) of respondents agreed that false alerts hurt morale. As a result, British IT teams are also more likely to ignore alerts (15% vs. 13% globally).
The report added that tool sprawl (61%) causes more stress and missed alerts than false alerts (54%) and alert volume (34%), showing that a properly configured environment could actually prevent many missed alerts.
Missed and false alerts are a major problem for IT teams
Some of the common outcomes associated with this include increased risk of downtime or breaches, customer disruptions, lost revenue, reputational damage, and IT staff burnout.
“[A] Lack of clarity puts a lot of pressure on teams and slows down response times,” explained Petra Jenner, Senior Vice President and General Manager EMEA.
Splunk’s recommendations are that companies look to implement more robust observability tools that add richer context and suggest remediation paths. The company is also calling for massive simplification by reducing the number of tools and interfaces IT teams must deal with.
But the report also highlights the importance of taking care of the IT teams that monitor outages and address downtime; It is essential to improve coordination and ownership between teams. “To build resilience and combat alert fatigue, organizations must consider the psychological well-being of their IT staff,” Jenner added.
This has already been evidenced by two-thirds (64%) of global respondents agreeing that better collaboration between observability and security teams reduces customer-impacting incidents.
“With the right systems in place, along with better coordination between departments, teams can act quickly, with confidence and avoid the dangers of alert fatigue,” Jenner concluded.
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