With over one billion records stolen in data breaches last year and cyberattack methods constantly evolving, cybersecurity professionals face more pressure than ever.
Unfortunately, as organizations moved online in response to the rise of remote and hybrid work, many underestimated what resources they would need to secure their data when adopting new technologies and business models. As a result, cybersecurity professionals are dealing with excessive workloads and turning to overlearning to cope with the many tasks on their plate, which is leading to burnout.
Organizations need to address this growing mental health crisis among IT staff. Below, you’ll learn more about what’s happening, why, and what companies can do to better support their teams including partnering with a managed IT services provider to offload the burden.
Why Cybersecurity Work Is More Stressful Than Ever
Every day, cybercriminals are finding new ways to infiltrate your organization’s systems. These bad actors are leveraging the exact same advanced technology that your organization uses to drive your operations forward. Yet rather than contributing to the public good, they’re honing their tactics to make ransomware, phishing scams, and AI-driven attacks more sophisticated and harder to detect.
Organizations are also extremely digitally connected: we rely on cloud services, remote work, and an expanding network of devices to underpin our workflow and keep us productive. This increased dependence on digital infrastructure means we have more data to protect and a larger attack surface for bad actors to exploit.
Security professionals must juggle a growing list of tasks to properly secure every component of your IT infrastructure, while managing compliance requirements and engaging in more strategic work like incident response and disaster recovery.
What Is Overlearning and How Does It Affect Performance?
When dealing with such complex cybersecurity threats, many IT professionals cope by engaging in overlearning: the process of repetitively practicing a skill after you’ve mastered it to boost knowledge retention over the long-term.
Overlearning makes sense as a coping mechanism because it provides a sense of control and preparedness in an industry where threats evolve rapidly and unpredictably. Repeatedly drilling procedures, memorizing security protocols, and mastering every detail of their tools can create a feeling of stability.
While this habit may sound a little redundant or inefficient because you are simply reinforcing knowledge without improving, it’s not just wasted energy! The practice embeds information into a person’s long-term memory, helping someone lock in their expertise on a skill, increase efficiency, and decrease mental exertion – leading to smoother workflows, fewer errors and faster task completion.
From Overlearning to Overworking to Burnout
Overlearning may help you retain important knowledge, but the approach also has its drawbacks. Yes, practicing a skill repeatedly can help cement what you’ve learned! But you’re also likely to experience cognitive overload that makes it harder to take in new information.
And when cybersecurity experts continue practicing a skill long after they’ve mastered it, they often end up spending unnecessary time and energy on tasks that don’t add much value to your organization’s productivity.
They’re likelier to work longer hours to catch up on addressing critical tasks. As the workload intensifies, their adaptability and problem-solving skills begin to suffer, and these professionals start to feel trapped in a cycle of endless tasks. They end up constantly pushing themselves beyond what’s necessary, which affects their performance and well-being.
The Three Top Causes of Your Cybersecurity Team’s Burnout
When at least half of cybersecurity professionals expect to reach burnout within the next year or sooner, organizations need to take notice: when the mental health of employees declines, IT staff retention will suffer, too. Organizations will struggle to maintain a skilled workforce, increasing their vulnerability to security gaps.
While overlearning can lead to overworking, that’s not the only cause of burnout in cybersecurity professionals. If you want to make a difference and improve your workplace culture, you’ll need to understand them:
-
Lack of resources
Many internal IT departments lack the resources to fully protect their organizations from the sophisticated and modern threats in their current environment. Their security budgets haven’t kept pace with rising risks, meaning many organizations have holes in their defense. Cybersecurity professionals have to work overtime to cover those gaps and address and respond to threats effectively, especially during holidays or peak periods.
-
Limited Growth Opportunities
A lack of career progression can take a toll on mental health in IT and significantly impact cybersecurity professionals. People want room to grow! When individuals feel stuck in roles with no clear path for advancement, they’ll start to feel stuck and unchallenged.
Burnout is a natural consequence of feeling trapped in a high-pressure environment where expectations keep rising but their roles remain unchanged. They will just spend their days doing the same tasks to fend off evolving threats without the chance to expand their expertise or take on new challenges. Even the most motivated individuals would feel undervalued and exhausted in this scenario!
-
Poor Management and Culture
Let’s face it, no one wants to work in a hostile environment. Whether from a direct manager’s leadership style or an organization’s overall approach to employee well-being, it lowers morale across the board.
When IT professionals lack support, clear communication, and realistic expectations, stress in cybersecurity roles skyrockets. Many workspaces will prioritize urgency over sustainability yet lack proper team capacity planning. The resulting overwork and frustration will cause organizations to face higher turnover and struggle to safeguard their resources and stay productive overall.
Fortunately, addressing poor management practices and fostering a healthier workplace culture can significantly reduce burnout.
How To Create Work-Life Balance for Your Cybersecurity Team
When cybersecurity professionals have to focus on the intense demands of their job alongside their relationships, family responsibilities, and personal hobbies, it can start to feel like there’s never enough time to recharge.
Creating a culture that embraces work-life balance in tech roles will be the best way to reduce burnout in IT teams.
Your organization can support your cybersecurity employees by:
- Encouraging employees to take paid time off (PTO) and approving their requests when reasonable
- Working with your IT team to set realistic boundaries and expectations
- Creating channels for honest feedback and meaningful discussions
- Distributing workloads fairly
- Providing IT teams with regular training to help them feel valued
- Offloading certain tasks to third-party managed IT providers whose cybersecurity support services can allow internal teams to focus on higher-priority initiatives
Partner with designDATA for IT Support that Reduces Burnout
The individual team members who are struggling with cybersecurity burnout deserve support. And while protecting their well-being should be your biggest concern, you can also address your organization’s risk when you ease the pressure on workloads and invest in the right resources. An overworked IT department means more missed threats and slower response times that leave your data and productivity vulnerable.
If your team is stretched too thin, our cybersecurity experts are ready to help lighten the load. We provide industry-leading, comprehensive IT services to associations and nonprofits that will give your employees the breathing room they need to perform at their best.
Feeling the pressure? Let’s connect about how we can support your security team and reduce burnout across your organization.
