Manual vs. Automated False Positive Triage: Pros and Cons

Manual vs. Automated False Positive Triage: Pros and Cons

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools are known for surfacing a high volume of alerts—many of which turn out to be false positives. Whether your team handles those alerts manually or uses automation will define how efficiently you respond to vulnerabilities.

In this article, we’ll compare the pros and cons of both approaches to false positive triage—manual and automated—and help you decide which is right for your team.

Need a workflow to put either approach into practice? Start with How to Build an Effective SAST Triage Workflow.

What Is Manual Triage?

Manual triage means human analysts or engineers manually review each finding flagged by a SAST tool. They validate whether the issue is exploitable, assign it to the correct developer, and decide how to handle it.

Pros of Manual Triage:

• Human judgment accounts for context, edge cases, and business-specific logic
• Ideal for high-risk, critical applications where precision is key
• Enables nuanced decision-making and learning across the team

Cons of Manual Triage:

• Doesn’t scale—especially for large codebases or frequent scans
• Prone to inconsistency across reviewers
• High time and resource costs
• Causes backlog buildup and slower MTTR

If you’re still managing triage manually and overwhelmed by noise, you’ll want to visit Why False Positives Hurt DevSecOps (and What You Can Do).

What Is Automated Triage?

Automated triage uses scripts, custom logic, or AI tools to analyze, classify, and suppress non-exploitable issues without requiring a human to review every alert.

Pros of Automated Triage:

• Scales easily across large teams and repositories
• Reduces time spent reviewing low-risk issues
• Consistent, repeatable filtering logic
• Frees up security teams to focus on true positives
• Enables near real-time security reviews in CI/CD

Cons of Automated Triage:

• Less flexible in edge-case scenarios
• May require tuning or training to avoid suppressing real issues
• Can create overreliance on tools if not monitored properly

For real-world examples of how this works, see Using AI to Automatically Triage and Fix SAST Findings.

Which Approach Is Right for You?

• Small team working on high-risk code:
  Use manual triage with automation support to ensure precision while saving time on low-risk findings.
• Mid-size team with frequent releases:
  Adopt a hybrid approach that combines automated triage for volume and manual spot checks for high-impact issues.
• Large team with mature AppSec practices:
  Rely on AI-powered automated triage with clear escalation paths for critical or ambiguous findings.

Bonus: The Hybrid Approach

Most successful AppSec teams don’t rely exclusively on one method. They build automated triage as a first pass to eliminate low-risk noise, then layer in manual validation for high-severity or ambiguous cases.

A hybrid model gives you scale without sacrificing accuracy—and it’s easier to implement than you think.

Explore a step-by-step guide for integrating both into your workflow: How to Reduce False Positives in SAST.

Final Thoughts

Manual triage is accurate, but expensive. Automation is fast, but needs guardrails. The best strategy is one that evolves with your team—starting small, learning fast, and letting technology carry the load wherever possible.

Want to prioritize what actually matters? Start with How AppSec Teams Can Prioritize Real Vulnerabilities Faster.