Leonid Belkind, co-founder and CTO of Torq, discusses the reasons behind the immense levels of burnout felt by cybersecurity professionals and how hyperautomation can provide a solution to this widespread industry obstacle.
With a sophisticated threat landscape, the stakes are higher than ever for cybersecurity professionals to have the proper skills, time, and resources as defenders. This has proven to be a relentless feat with record levels of burnout, stress, and skills shortages across the industry. According to Gartner, 25% of security leaders will pursue different roles entirely due to workplace stress by 2025, and lack of talent or human failure will be responsible for over half of significant cyber incidents by the same year. It’s clear the current approach to cybersecurity isn’t working for those on the frontline, and leaders must address this issue before it’s too late and recognize that hyperautomation can be the key to a healthy and happy security team.
The Burnout Epidemic in Cybersecurity
The constant pressure to anticipate attackers’ every move and to analyze any slightest signal that might indicate malicious activity has led to an epidemic of burnout and fatigue for cyber teams everywhere. Demanding work schedules, the pressure to be constantly on alert, the need to continuously adapt skills to the modern threat landscape, and more factors have created a perfect storm for professionals in this fast-paced industry.
1. Increasing cyberattacks and skills shortages
Adversaries have not only become increasingly sophisticated and complex in their attacks, they’re also well-funded and relentless in their search for information that causes the most disruption. In response, cybersecurity professionals are under constant pressure to learn new skills, adapting to adversaries’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). However, the industry is facing a shortage of talent to begin with, and those who do have the skills are being asked to stretch themselves thinly. The demand for skilled talent coupled with the seasoned skillset of attackers provides an unending battle for cybersecurity professionals and takes a toll on mental and emotional well-being.
2. High stress, long hours
Cybersecurity is a 24/7 job. Threat actors often purposefully seek to attack when security teams may be distracted, off-duty, or preoccupied. They also understand security tools generate large volumes of alerts, which forces professionals to sort through false positives rather than manage legitimate threats. This means defenders are often on-call or working irregular hours to identify, respond, and mitigate these attacks, which is not only time-consuming but also mentally exhausting.
3. Keeping up with the regulations
In 2021, the Biden Administration established an executive order that made cybersecurity a major priority on the federal level, and many government bodies at both the federal and state levels have passed cyber regulations seeking to standardize practices across industries. With the refocused government priority on cybersecurity and the introduction of these regulations, compliance has become an added layer of complexity for cyber teams already struggling to keep up with their current workload.
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Current State Of Automation In The Industry
The industry is currently focused on the SOAR model, which stands for security orchestration, automation, and response. SOAR incorporates fully or partially automated responses to a range of events (mostly security incidents) to alleviate the strain on IT teams. However, it constantly falls short in the face of a threat landscape bolstered by fast-evolving TTPs, targeting the dynamic attack surface of modern enterprises leveraging hybrid cloud technologies. It was built to be reactive rather than proactive, with antiquated legacy tools not equipped to handle modern threats. Leaders need to recognize that a shift towards hyperautomation can be the key to the next evolution of cybersecurity.
Hyperautomation provides a solution to the widespread issues experienced by security teams and can provide an array of benefits to organizations that choose to adopt it. It combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation to proactively and rapidly identify, vet, integrate, and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperautomation has the potential to ensure that tedious tasks become a worry of the past.
Hyperautomation As The Solution
One of the most promising aspects of hyperautomation is its ability to handle the overwhelming number of alerts generated by security systems and reduce the alert fatigue cyber teams constantly face. Automation assisted by AI and machine learning algorithms can sift through alerts, identify false positives, and prioritize, categorize and enrich genuine threats, allowing humans to focus on threats needing human attention. Hyperautomation can also streamline routine, repetitive, manual tasks that consume the daily workload.
This approach not only helps control the long hours cyber teams experience but also prioritizes threats better than ever before, which can lead to quicker response and mitigation, potentially thwarting serious attacks before attackers gain access to business-critical data. By automating this part of their jobs, cyber teams can find a better work-life balance, feel as though they don’t have to stretch themselves across multiple projects at a time, and relieve the mental exhaustion of being on guard 24/7.
Another benefit of hyperautomation is that AI-driven systems can proactively and continuously monitor systems to detect threats caused by unusual patterns or behaviors. This relieves the pressure to be on-call constantly to mitigate threats before they escalate. This proactive approach to cybersecurity not only gives cyber teams further peace of mind and time to recoup but also stops attacks quicker than ever before.
Hyperautomation ensures compliance with complex regulations at every turn. Because this technology automates compliance checks and generates reports– reducing the risk of costly violations– organizations can worry less about keeping up with the latest regulations and more about thwarting attacks. Furthermore, initial organizational investments in hyperautomation serve long-term cost savings benefits through reduced workloads, fewer system breaches, and increased efficiency, all leading to a healthier bottom line.
Hyperautomation Is The Future of Cybersecurity
Although hyperautomation can’t replace human expertise, it can hone it. In the future, cyber teams will work in tandem with AI tools, combining human intelligence with machine-driven analysis to create an efficient and effective defense against future threats. Automated incident response will dramatically reduce the time to detect and mitigate threats, allowing cyber teams to manage their time more efficiently and the agility to address cyberattacks happening in real-time.
Hyperautomation tools will widely have the ability to predict potential threats based on historical data and emerging trends and provide scalability across an enterprise quickly. As the threat landscape evolves, so will these solutions, allowing organizations to proactively bolster their defenses and adapt as business needs do. These capabilities will curb burnout within the industry, and organizations will likely retain their existing talent more diligently, lessening the need to constantly recruit and train new experts.
Don’t Hold Back on Adoption
The industry is at a crossroads: adapt to ensure cyber teams can keep up with modern threats or continue down the path of burnout and exhaustion. With the adoption of hyperautomation, organizations can not only alleviate these issues but revolutionize the way we approach cybersecurity as a whole.
As every industry moves towards an automated future, cybersecurity must do the same and embrace hyperautomation, not just as a technology but as a fundamental approach to their cyber strategy. By utilizing the best in human ability along with the best in technological ability, organizations can stay ahead of any threat coming their way and ensure the doors of their business stay open in the face of sophisticated and agile attackers.
How are you battling the burnout epidemic that has the cybersecurity industry in its grip? How would hyperautomation help? Share with us on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
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