Burnout among cybersecurity specialists: a growing problem

According to a new study conducted by Bitdefender, burnout has become a serious threat to cybersecurity professionals. Over 70% of respondents reported that they often have to work on weekends to solve critical problems in their organizations. This heavy workload translates into widespread job dissatisfaction, with 64% of the 1,200 professionals interviewed indicating an intention to look for a new job within the next 12 months. The situation is particularly critical in the United Kingdom, where 81% of professionals regularly work at weekends and 71% say they are ready to look for new job opportunities. In Germany, 77.1% work on weekends and 76.6% are thinking of changing jobs. In the United States, approximately 70% of specialists work on weekends and 62.2% plan to change jobs.

Security threats and the impact of AI

Cyber security skills remain essential, despite cuts to dedicated teams. The report highlights that 57% of organizations have experienced a data breach in the past year, an increase of 6% from the previous year. The top threats identified by respondents are phishing and social engineering (33%), software vulnerabilities and zero-day breaches (32.2%), and ransomware (29.3%). Additionally, 96% of experts expressed concern about how AI could impact the cyber threat landscape, increasing the complexity of the challenges faced.

The challenges of cloud services

Bitdefender's report also highlights the difficulties associated with cloud services. 43.6% of respondents cited data breaches as a top concern, followed by unauthorized access to cloud services (42.7%) and storage misconfiguration (42.2%). Among the greatest difficulties in managing the cloud are identity and access management (38.7%), maintaining cloud security (38%) and shadow IT (35.9%). Despite these concerns, 94% of respondents have confidence in their organization's ability to thwart threats such as ransomware, phishing and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Investments and security solutions

It's clear that organizations are aware of the importance of cybersecurity and are willing to invest. However, 71% of respondents believe that current security solutions are not living up to expectations, a significant increase from 54% the previous year. Encouragingly, 93% of professionals expect an increase in investment in proactive security measures such as risk assessments, penetration tests and attack simulation exercises. To maintain a skilled workforce and ensure effective protection, companies must review workload management, improve working conditions and continuously implement innovative and proactive security solutions.