It’s Time to Prioritize Mental Health for Cybersecurity Teams

By 2025, global cybercrime costs are expectedOpens a new window to grow to $10.5 trillion annually, up from $3 trillion in 2015, according to Steve Morgan of Cybercrime Magazine. But behind cybercrime costs are cyber teams paying a much larger price, sacrificing their mental health as cyber-attacks grow and their team size, budget, and resources remain the same. With increased cybersecurity attacks and a lack of staff, cybersecurity teams are under immense pressure to stay on top of modern threat actors’ latest and greatest tactics, techniques, and procedures.

There’s too much work and not enough daily hours to handle it. SecOps professionals want to focus their talent on innovation and exploring new ideas, not just be at the frontline of parsing a daily onslaught of security alerts. 

All of this begs the question: How can we better defend against growing cyber threats while keeping defenders happy and healthy? 

Building a lasting business requires considering the ROI of maintaining a positive work environment while prioritizing employee happiness as a key metric for success.

The Lack of Mental Health Prioritization in Cybersecurity

It’s no secret that cybersecurity teams are frequently placed in high-stress environments, but industry leaders have often overlooked the discussion around mental health within cyber teams. Cyber teams must be reliable in protecting user data, but burnout is inevitable with rapid deadlines, a lack of staff, and a tight budget.

No time. No staff. No budget.

According to a recent study,Opens a new window the global cybersecurity workforce gap has increased to 13% or 4 million job openings over the past year. While this is great for professionals entering the job market, increasing job openings comes with more stress on already busy cyber teams due to increased cyber threats and a lack of staffing to keep up with them. 

As a result of the workforce gap, cyber teams often have to endure more work than typically allotted to make up for the lack of staffing. Since cyber employees have to endure consistently busy schedules, small teams are challenged with less focus time to mitigate security threats. 

Understaffed teams also often lack resources and a proper budget, making their rapid response jobs increasingly difficult. More than one-third of CISOs reported flat or shrinking cybersecurity budgets in their 2023 Security Budget. With increased demand and stagnant supply to meet this demand, cyber teams are left with a lack of threat response resources and feel unprioritized among the IT departments they reside within. 

Shifting the discussion around mental health

Mental health has been a taboo subject, especially in the workplace, for years. Still, as employee well-being positively affects workplace productivity, companies are changing their approach. With discussions surrounding mental health at well-known industry conferences such as RSA – where a psychiatrist called out the need to end the cybersecurity mental health stigma – it may seem as though the industry is prioritizing employee well-being, but this is just the start of a larger conversation surrounding mental health. 

Happy employees are better employees, but to create a safe and positive environment for employees, CISOs and HR departments need to ensure workplace wellness among cyber teams. This includes the push for more discussions and visibility on employee well-being. 

According to a February 2023 Gartner report, nearly half of the cybersecurity leaders will change jobs by 2025 entirely due to work-related stressors, displaying cyber teams’ actions to prioritize their well-being. Cyber employees feel forced to leave professions they enjoy and, even more importantly, jobs that protect others due to a lack of awareness of work-related stressors. As more employees leave their teams, the problem worsens for those left behind.

Mental Health Is a Wealth

Supporting mental health not only benefits employees but can also increase productivity within the workplace. The results are even science-based – with a 12% increase in productivity among happy employees, as reported by Warwick. But how can we ensure a happy environment in the workplace? The answer lies within the question itself. Asking employees for their input on improving the workplace environment is important. Ensuring mental health resources are available is also vital. Together, these can provide a positive work environment. This, in turn, results in increased productivity.

Prioritizing a safe work environment can significantly decrease burnout. A decrease in burnout can lead to benefits like higher employee retention. In addition, hiring may become easier, as professionals want to work at companies that treat them as people first and employees second.

But talking about mental health is not enough, and it’s difficult to ensure it is continuously prioritized. This calls for workflow advancements that prioritize employee well-being while simultaneously increasing productivity. 

Automation: A Cure For Burnout

Discussing mental health in the workplace alone is not enough to eliminate burnout. More needs to be done to effectively tackle mental health issues. One solution is to implement tools that streamline workflows and enable employees to concentrate on their main tasks.

This is where automation comes into play. Imagine ensuring your customers have access to your services 24/7 through website chatbots, being able to diagnose and prescribe patients accurate doses of medicine, or the relief of hopping in a driverless car after hours of searching for a ride-share driver. This is no longer a figment of our imaginations but rather a reality due to automation. 

Automation allows people to have reassurance with accurate and reliable technology. Rather than spending time training workers to do simple tasks, automation allows us to explore more challenging and thought-provoking tasks by allowing employees to pursue creative work within their professions. This stimulates creativity within the workplace, and leads to more experienced professionals, enabling employees to become well-versed in their practice. 

An increase in seasoned professionals and productivity due to the time saved on easy tasks also helps with employee retention. As professionals feel stimulated within their jobs, they are more inclined to stay at their company. This, in turn, increases the ROI for stakeholders as time and money. 75% of a worker’s annual salary, to be exact, as reported by Zippa – is saved on training new employees.

Most industries find themselves increasingly adopting automation within their workflows. The next big step is to address the lack of automated threat response for safeguarding and protecting data across industries.

Hyperautomation: The Future Investment For All Industries

From chatbots to threat response, automation simplifies lives while giving the time to focus on priorities. But as automation increases, so does the need for automated protection. All industries can benefit from automated threat response to ensure employee and customer data protection.

The current popular automation model is SOAR, or security, orchestration, automation, and response. The SOAR model detects security threats and provides recommended solutions. SOAR reacts against security threats by eliminating the stress from manual testing. Unfortunately, it’s not very proactive and is begging for innovation. 

Hyperautomation goes beyond the capabilities of SOAR by automating the response itself. It fills the gaps by automating all workflows, thus providing the fastest response model in the security industry. Compared to the current model, hyperautomation employs security automation ten times faster. This results in more time for security professionals to tackle more complex threats.

Hyperautomation can turn days of work into hours, allocating more time toward training and creative problem-solving. Employees are more inclined to continue their development within the industry, further addressing the ongoing workforce gap. IT departments can keep more budget for security and software if they don’t have to hire so many employees.

Ensuring employees have a comfortable work environment is difficult. With the right tools, cyber employees’ jobs can get much easier, curbing burnout in the industry. Cyber teams are begging leaders to address the industry’s ongoing issues. Investing in automation models can uplift employee well-being and deliver higher ROI. 

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