IT Burnout may be Putting Your Organization at Risk

The heavy responsibility of securing organizations against cyber-attacks is overwhelming and weighs heavier on security professionals, recent data shows. In fact, fifty-six percent of team members say their work stress grows yearly and there are no signs of slowing for 2023.

Obviously, this growing trend of work-related stress in IT security is not only a concern for employee well-being but for the health of the security infrastructure they’re responsible for.

Cybersecurity burnout makes businesses vulnerable to attacks. Security infrastructure doesn’t work without IT staff expertise and requires proper configuration and routine maintenance for optimal performance.

Symptoms of security burnout include anger, isolation, loss of focus, and general unhappiness with work. Here are some ways to spot potential burnout in your IT department and start fixing the underlying issues at hand.

Why IT burnout is prevalent right now

We’ve asked a lot from our IT departments in recent years—a switch to a hybrid or fully remote workforce, the increased threat of cyber-attacks with geo-political conflict, and a growing awareness around cybersecurity are all increasing the workload.

Of course, the increased burden doesn’t always correlate with an increase in staffing, budgets, or general respect for the profession. It’s no wonder the trend of workplace burnout is hitting the IT industry particularly hard.

An example of how this burnout can play out in an IT-pro’s day-today includes the need for repetitive manual tasks. Repetitive manual tasks, such as system monitoring, incident detection, and reporting, are significant factors in IT frustration.

Manual work causes team members to lose focus on the smaller details of these tasks due to sheer volume, as well as their mundane nature. Here are a few ways slip-ups in repetitive tasks can escalate to larger problems:

• After researching countless IP addresses, they may neglect to investigate suspicious IPs related to spam and malware. System logs from multiple systems help them piece together data and timestamps of attack-related events—but an overworked IT professional could easily overlook an anomaly if they’re overburdened.

• Teams escalate alerts to affected groups and team members who take part in identifying and neutralizing an attack. They send emails and slack messages to other teams, and often use ticketing systems to alert on-call security specialists. As security staff grow complacent, they may ignore alerts or assume false positives. Other groups remain ignorant of attacks as a result, and infections can spread.

• If teams get too far behind, they may neglect needed updates to systems and security controls. Outdated software is one of the easiest attack entry points for cybercriminals.

Solutions to help lighten the load for IT security

While the list of what-ifs is miles long, there are concrete solutions to IT burnout that your organization should implement as soon as possible to mitigate the risks, and potential consequence, of having an overburdened IT staff brings.

1. End-user education

End-user education enables employees to avoid social engineering attacks like phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC). No matter how robust your security systems are, a workforce not trained to recognize the signs of social engineering schemes will keep the door open for ransomware. Regularly drill your employees in social engineering tests, enforce good password policies, and use multi-factor authentication.

This practice not only guards your network against popular cyber-attacks, but it can also reduce the burden of your IT department from having to troubleshoot those consequences or train end-users themselves.

2. Increased funding

With additional security funding, organizations can increase the number of security professionals to share the load, ease frustration, and improve team effectiveness and morale. Security experts who work well together is as vital as having the right security tools.

Of course, with the looming US economic recession, many organizations are looking to reduce spending and unfortunately cybersecurity is on the list. For organizations looking to tighten their expenditures without sacrificing security, the good news is that many of the tech-based solutions around the most important cybersecurity steps don’t require a lot of spend, such as improving password security and implementing multi-factor authentication.

With cyber-attack costs for organizations up 80% in 2022, organizations can’t afford not to take these simple and cost-effective steps toward increased security.   

3. Automate fixes for recurring issues

Automation tools that remove manual efforts help workers stay fresh and focused and can relieve some of the burden that manual repetitive tasks bring to the job description. Take your IT teams’ advice and implement tech-based solutions wherever possible, even if it’s a time or money investment up front it can save you tenfold down the line.

One example of a repetitive and all-too-prevalent IT issue, especially in the world of hybrid-work, is end-user password resets. For IT helpdesks, a Onelogin study found that over 37% of companies spent more than 6 hours a week on password resets. That is time a helpdesk employee could be focused on other more critical tasks and reduce the repetitive manual work of resetting a frustrated employee’s password.

The best way for an organization to alleviate this recurring issue from their IT department is to empower the users with a self-serve password reset solution. Specops uReset offers a variety of features to allow users to reset their passwords from anywhere, with any device, without the need for a time-consuming and potentially expensive IT helpdesk call.

Plus, the added layer of security eases the IT pros’ cyberattack worries a little more.

Sponsored and written by Specops Software

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