I start with a quote from an InfoSec Magazine feature from 6 Feb 2020 - "In April 2019, research from Symantec revealed that 82% of IT security leaders across Europe were suffering from mental and physical burnout, with nearly two-thirds thinking about leaving their job (64%) or quitting the industry altogether (63%) as a result.”
The feature goes on to state – “48% of CISOs said work stress has had a detrimental impact on their mental health, almost twice as high as last year, whilst 31% reported that stress had impacted their physical health.”
Those of us supporting CISO roles or their equivalents, know only too well the stresses and strains of the job, and the pressures created by the responsibility of protecting an organisation’s data, overcoming issues such as the ever growing number of threats, more vulnerabilities to deal with due to increased reliance on cloud based services and ‘Bring Your Own Device’ becoming common-place, not to mention more stringent regulations and legislation, and then along came coronavirus.
In my experience individuals in CISO roles generally move on from an organisation significantly quicker than their peers holding similarly senior positions, and ineffective support for the job they are doing from their organisations is often cited as a reason to leave.
Regular changes of the individual in the CISO role lead to other issues across organisations such as disruptive changes in strategy and preferred InfoSec service providers, not to mention impacts on the teams and individuals around them.
The InfoSec Magazine article goes on to encourage organisations’ Executive Boards to do more to address the issues and reduce the stress levels CISO’s face.
We are constantly reminded that the number of unfilled roles in the information security industry is already in the millions and constantly rising; we need to strive to ensure it is an industry that gifted individuals want to work in and remain in for a significant period of their career, and work to support our existing CISO’s and retain them in role for as long as we can.
If you are a CISO, or you work with a CISO or equivalent role, who is stressed and needs some help, why not turn to ukdatasecure for assistance, even if only in the short term, to help you break down some of the tasks and issues that you face which might be causing some of the issues in the InfoSec Magazine feature I refer to here.
If you’d like to talk to one of our team to just release the pressure and stress, and to find out what we might be able to help you with, please email stuart@ukdatasecure.com with the words COFFEE & CHAT in the subject line and we’ll get back to you immediately for a conversation.
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