According to a new Cyble report, nearly all Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are under tremendous stress at work.
Beyond the personal consequences, the company notes that in many companies, this stress hampers the performance of the CISO, putting the entire organization at risk.
Cyble’s report “Implications of Stress on CISO 2023,” based on interviews with CISOs working in small and medium-sized companies with IT teams of up to five people, says that 94% of them are very stressed at work. As a result, two-thirds (65%) are not doing as well as they would like.
Change of job
Stress also causes people to quit – and three-quarters (74%) of respondents had at least one team member quit their job in the past 12 months, while half (47%) had several people walk out the door. Stress also makes hiring difficult. More than four in five (83%) have had to compromise on personnel just to fill gaps and keep the company going.
More than a third of the CISOs surveyed for the report said they were looking for a new employer themselves.
Board members, on the other hand, seem to misunderstand the matter. Four out of five (79%) CISOs said they had received complaints from management about not doing their job properly. Almost everyone (93%) would like to be able to spend more time on strategic than tactical work. In fact, more than a quarter say they spend their working day almost exclusively on tactical/operational tasks.
What’s more – when they work – they seem to never stop, as 84% have had to cancel holidays, 64% have missed a private party and 90% work more than 40 hours a week – non-stop.
To solve this problem, the vote is unanimous – they need more resources. They need more talent, more tools and more automation.
“One of the most eye-opening insights from the report was that over 50% of the CISOs we surveyed said that consolidating multiple security technologies (opens in a new tab) on one platform would lower their work-related stress,” said Eyal Gruner, co-founder and CEO of Cynet.