The concept of burnout is not new in today's industries, but it has indeed reached a new height in terms of cybersecurity. There is a common phrase that "attackers never sleep", this rings so loud for the security teams in the current situations.
Working in cybersecurity is incredibly challenging; therefore, it is essential for security professionals to maintain and focus on their work-life balance; otherwise, there might be a risk of burnout. According to 2021 Global Incident Response Threat Report, 51% experienced extreme levels of stress and burnout during previous months, and 65% considered leaving their jobs due to burnout.
All industrial parts have their own level of pressure, but the demand for staff has significantly increased. Businesses of all sizes want a cybersecurity team who can help them secure and save the organization from ransomware, malware, phishing, and other cyber-attacks.
Reasons for Burnout
One of the most common reasons for a burnout is a shortage of talent within the cybersecurity industry and the overload of responsibilities on a small number of individuals. Shortage of talent in cybersecurity leaves the organization vulnerable to cyber-attacks which lead to unwanted disruptions. Usually, burnout occurs due to the following reasons:
- Professional's burnout is due to unrealistic and unhealthy expectations regarding the results and outcomes and the expectations set by employees and individual defenders.
- Fatigue and hassle to keep updated with the changing everyday environment from tactics, threats, new laws, technologies, regulations, standards, guidelines, and frameworks.
- The emotional factor and the fear of being exposed to the worst criminals and witnessing the cruelty they inflict on your company.
- Professional’s pride and constant fear of personal life failure for letting the organization and team down by missing only one single threat among thousands.
- Employees tend to experience burnout due to simmering frustrations with an insufficient budget, understaffing, undermine security effort and a lack of proper leadership.
- Another reason is exhausting schedules where security professionals are found to be complaining about being on the clock and job compounded by no actual downtime, long weeks, long hours and long weakened.
Consequences of Burnout
The cyber security industry has faced many new challenges as to how they work in the Covid-19 pandemic. This has forced many security centers to work remotely have to deal with new threats, which led to higher workloads and an increase in the amount of burnout staff. Security leaders recognize that burnout is a severe issue, and they must address it. To learn the earlier signs of burnout in an organization, it is essential to start recognizing the signs at an earlier stage because it does not happen at once but starts gradually.
Many security professionals of different businesses suggest that the security of an organization needs to be constantly on alert. Extra hours of work are required to keep the organization secure and safe from cyber-attacks. It would be great if the human recourse team and the senior managers could get involved in the activity for the encouragement of people so that they can take a break and make sure that they are not working overly long hours.
Prevention Steps
To make matters worse, attackers have increased their activity after the pandemic and continue to take advantage. To prevent people from burnout, some measures help to secure the system and make it safe without burnout.
Investing in training employees
It is important to realize how much of your time do you spend attempting to avoid data breaches caused by employee phishing link clicks? How much time do you spend responding and communicating? Is this the job you want to continue? With widespread training for everyone on the network, you can improve security, reduce reactive chores, and free up time for SecOps self-care and healing. Human factors are the most aggravating element of cybersecurity. We do not burn out because we cannot afford or construct tools to help; we burn out because people keep repeating the same mistakes repeatedly.
Hiring a SecOps therapist
When you are not making progress, it is easy to feel hopeless, and this may be a significant demotivator for intelligent, security-conscious folks. More attackers, better attack toolchains, increased system complexity, and an expanding attack surface is all things that may be accepted with the support of a mentor or trustworthy colleague. Even though these are not anyone’s "fault," we tend to absorb them.
Compliance in regulatory operations
IT teams make hundreds, if not thousands of infrastructure modifications daily. All these changes need a specific approach to tracking, confirming, and reporting. Unfortunately, due to detecting delay, it might be time-consuming and ineffective. Instead, assist your operations staff in implementing procedures that embed governance and policy into the tools they use on a regular basis, even for minor adjustments, so that it could reduce mistakes, simplify compliance, improve real-world security, and allow you to return to your passion for discovering emerging risks and adjusting security posture.
Experiencing from other company’s cyber perspectives
Great cybersecurity experts are confronted with a dilemma. They are always exploring new risks while also assisting companies in resolving the same basic concerns. When no one is listening, this quickly becomes tedious. Instead, reach out to people beyond your perspective to learn more about their problems. It is a great method to rekindle your creativity while also making new acquaintances.
Integrating of SaaS as a solution
Implementing the strategy of SaaS development optimizes the development cost. SaaS providers outsource as a cost-efficient alternative for hiring the in-house development team.
Companies avoid paying for in-house hardware and software licenses with perpetual ownership since there are no infrastructure or staff expenditures. They also do not require on-site IT personnel to maintain and support the app.
Conclusion
Anti-burnout techniques will increase your present information security staff's retention rates. Furthermore, if your department develops a great work culture, you should have an easier time recruiting new, competitive talent for future job opportunities. The study has concluded that to prevent security professionals from burnout, SaaS software development as a solution for a company is a better solution as it includes maintenance, cost, and mobility.
