A method and apparatus for using a statistical process control to establish alarm criteria for backup processes in a storage management system. The method and apparatus accumulates sample parameters for a plurality of backup runs to build a statistical model of the backup process. The parameters collected from subsequent backup runs are compared to the norms within the model to determine whether the current backup fulfills those norms or is outside of those norms. If the current backup parameters are outside the norms, an alarm is triggered to indicate an abnormal situation.