Growing Job Pressures Increase Risk of Burnout for Cybersecurity Professionals

The task of constantly keeping up with new threats and regulatory requirements has made cybersecurity something of a high-pressure career field for technology professionals in recent years. There are no signs that will change anytime soon.

A global survey of 1,600 IT professionals by Trustwave shows that a majority of cybersecurity executives and practitioners believed they were under more pressure at their jobs in 2017 compared with the year before. They expect 2018 to be no different.

Trustwave has conducted the same survey for five consecutive years, and each time survey respondents have reported increased pressure over the previous year. If the trend persists, expect one of two things to happen, says Chris Schueler, senior vice president of managed security services at Trustwave.

Either the pressure will push people to improved performance or it is going to cause them to crash. "Pressure to perform creates an overwhelming feeling that causes people to turtle up or become burned out quickly," Schueler says.

In the latest survey, 54% of the respondents reported experiencing more security pressures in 2017 compared to 2016, and 55% expect 2018 to be worse than last year. More cybersecurity professionals in the US (61%) feel that way than professionals in any other country, the Trustwave survey showed.

Advanced malware and zero-day vulnerabilities are the top cause for the pressure that security people feel on the operational side of things, with 26% citing that as a reason. Other top concerns include budget constraints at 17% and a lack of security skills at 16%.

The Trustwave survey also showed that phishing attacks and social engineering became more of a pressure-inducer last year, with 13% identifying that as a stressor compared with 8% who said the same in 2016. Somewhat surprisingly (considering all the concern over data breaches and attacker dwell time), only 11% of the respondents in Trustwave's survey identified malicious activity detection and compromise detection as contributing to their stress levels.

For cybersecurity professionals, a lot of the pressure comes from the constant reminder that peer industries and major brands are being breached daily and that they need to improve to stay ahead, Schueler says. "It's the only job in IT where there are people who are constantly trying to make your day bad," he notes. It's daunting to wake up every day with the constant worry of not knowing if your efforts have been enough, he says.

Adding to the pressure is the fact that many organizations are moving to a governance model that puts more pressure on security leaders and measures their effectiveness at reducing organizational risk, Schueler says.

One welcome result from the survey is the relatively bigger role that those closest to the security function appear to be playing these days. Thirty-nine percent identified board members, directors, the CEO, the CIO and other C-level executives as putting the most pressure on them. But that proportion is actually smaller than the 46% who said the same in 2017 and the 69% in 2016.

At the same time, a bigger proportion of respondents (27%) in Trustwave's most recent survey said pressure from direct managers had increased compared with 2016 (18%). "This is a very positive view because it indicates that the board has made cybersecurity a priority year over year and has shifted the ownership more to the people who are closest" to the function, Schueler says.

A 2017 survey by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) and the Information Security Systems Association (ISSA) shows that burnout is becoming a problem in the cybersecurity field. The perpetual battle to keep the enterprise safe against a constant barrage of attacks using suboptimal resources is wearing security professionals down, according to the report.

ESG and ISSA surveyed a total of 343 cybersecurity professionals. Sixty-eight percent strongly agreed that a cybersecurity career could be taxing on the balance between an individual's professional and personal life. Thirty-eight percent said the skill shortage in the industry had resulted in high employee attrition rates and burnout. The situation is made worse by the fact that there are far more security jobs than there are people to take them, according to the ESG-ISSA report.

"If you're a C-level executive, you should be thinking about the pressures on your security team and how you are managing that pressure," Schueler notes. Among the things you need to consider is your security maturity level, the partners that you might have on board to help you, and how effective that help might be.