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CISOs are quitting : To balance work life
- By Faiz A Shaikh
Jun 28, 2019
14
In Europe IT Security leaders are considering quitting due to the stress they are suffering due to lots of uncertainties of evolving threats, compliance pressures, growing complexity and too many vendors to resolve issues
Symantec teamed up research consultancy Thread & Brauer of Goldsmiths, University of London, to evaluate high alert research based on interviews of 3000 plus Security decision makers across UK, Germany and France.
Some interesting facts based on outcomes
- 82% claimed they felt burnt out,
- nearly 2/3 (64%) expressed that they may leave jobs
- or quitting the Industry (~63%)
When revealed further to find out what's causing this , it was discovered that
- 86% admitted that GDPR and NIS Directives were no. 1 stress factor
- 40%(2/5) feared that they would be held responsible for breaches, whereas the cause are not just Technology, People or Processes instead decision making
- When distilled further a clear root causes emerged
A * 80% believed skill shortage affects them
B * 82% believed that IT complexities were key factors
C * Evolving Threat Vectors contributes to 82% which is top 10 concerns of Cybersecurity leaders
Director of Innovation from London University, Brauer expressed that these stress can have serious impacts on decision making
He further added , that it impairs memory, disrupting rational thinking which negatively impacts every cognitive function which we have. In an industry which requires focus, creative thinking, attention to details and rational decisions in high pressure scenarios, stress can be crippling agent.
Highly stressed professional are far more likely to be disengaged and ultimately they quit. In an Industry already suffering skills shortage, this kind of stress can present a significant risk.
It's interesting to know that Tool Bloat appeared to be major cause of this stress.
- 79% respondents claimed too many products/vendors is causing growing pressure at work
-68 % said they felt paralyzed by huge volume of threats alerts, a significant surge recently as per their deluging department's
Patch Management ranked up the charts, as there is abundant tools and deployment strategies which is creating more problems than it solves.
Symantec EMEA CTO , Darren Thomson points out - There's so much daily noise that's becoming impossible to work on it. What appears to be false positive and what maybe a stealth targeting is unclear. These overlaps and gaps between defense systems presents Hackers with new opportunities for further exploitation.
These findings are in sync with similar study from Nominet which revealed that CISOs from US and UK are 91% under High or Moderate stress.
Sharing more further analysis in an another post.
Hope you would have liked the post with truth behind those quitting in EU.