Topic starter
20/08/2026 5:41 pm
TL;DR: Internet scanning is deliberate, enumerable activity rather than ambient background noise, and GreyNoise founder Andrew Morris argues that defenders can baseline it across major cloud regions and strip it from logs, according to Sprocket Security. The real value is not just cleaner telemetry but better attribution, because noisy traffic and hostile reconnaissance often look the same until governance, filtering, and context are applied.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Sprocket Security: “Ahead of the Breach - GreyNoise's Andrew Morris on Internet Background Noise as Data”.
Key questions
Q: How should SOC teams handle internet scan traffic without losing real threats?
A: SOC teams should baseline routine internet scan sources first, then filter that expected activity before analysts review alerts.
Q: Why do legitimate and malicious scanners create the same detection problem?
A: Because the network patterns can look nearly identical while the intent is different.
Q: What breaks when internet background noise is not filtered from logs?
A: Analysts lose signal quality.
Practitioner guidance
- Build a scan-source baseline across major cloud regions Deploy sensors in the large cloud regions first, then expand outward until you have a defensible list of current scanning sources to filter from logs and SIEM outputs.
- Classify scanner intent with behavioural indicators Use reverse DNS, user-agent conventions, robots.txt respect, and opt-out behaviour to distinguish legitimate scanning from hostile reconnaissance.
- Treat sensor infrastructure as rebuildable Assume distributed honeypots and telemetry collectors will be fingerprinted or burned, and design for rapid teardown and redeployment instead of permanence.
Bottom line: Internet scan traffic is not just noise, because legitimate and hostile sources can look similar until teams apply governance and context.
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20/08/2026 6:25 pm
Internet scan telemetry is a governance problem because classification, not collection, is the hard part. The article shows that teams can often gather the data, but still struggle to decide what belongs in baseline noise and what deserves investigation. That makes telemetry policy, filtering criteria, and source trust just as important as sensor coverage. Practitioners should treat scan data as governed evidence, not raw exhaust.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do SOC teams decide which scan sources are acceptable background activity?
A: They should define criteria for expected sources, including legitimate crawling conventions, trusted research activity, and known infrastructure patterns. Anything that fails those criteria should stay visible for review. This creates an accountable boundary between tolerated internet noise and behaviour that deserves investigation.
👉 Read our full editorial: Internet scan telemetry is a governance problem, not background noise