What is the definition of an Alert?

An error message shown to an application user is a user-facing notification that may indicate an Incident has already occurred, which is not the same as an Alert generated by monitoring infrastructure at a threshold.

In ITIL Event Management, an Alert is defined as a warning that a threshold has been breached, a change has occurred, or an exception has been detected - it is generated automatically by monitoring tools. Alerts are a category of Event and serve as early warning signals that allow IT operations staff to investigate and act before the condition escalates into an Incident. This proactive nature distinguishes Alerts from Incidents, which represent actual unplanned service interruptions.

An Alert can precede or trigger an Incident record, but it is not classified as a type of Incident - Incidents are unplanned service interruptions, while Alerts are proactive warnings that may or may not lead to an Incident.

An audit report identifying areas where IT is not following agreed procedures describes a compliance finding from a governance activity, which is entirely separate from the real-time threshold-based definition of an Alert.