On National Stress Awareness Day 2022, it’s not unimaginable to think that healthcare cybersecurity professionals are experiencing higher-than-usual stress levels, potentially increasing their mental health risks.
The stress caused by ongoing attack threats is now having a major impact on the entire cybersecurity workforce. Preliminary results on cyber professional burnout from Australia-based mental health support organization Cybermindz, released this week, show a worrying trend, according to the group’s organizational and behavioral research. Director and lead researcher Dr. Andrew Reeves said. .
In an update to his research, he explained that on a key burnout indicator of professional effectiveness, cyber professionals surveyed so far score significantly worse than the general population.
“We also compared their burnout rates on this metric to another highly burnout industry, the frontline health worker industry, and found that cyber professionals scored significantly better than this group on this metric. We found it to be low,” he added.
The waterfall effect of cyber worker stress
Such deterioration in the mental health of cyber workers who protect the operations of critical services such as water, energy, telecommunications, healthcare, financial services, food distribution and transportation will affect the entire population, the organization suggests. I’m here.
Cybermindz founder and industry veteran Peter Coroneos said:
“Pandemics, floods and wildfires have shown us that we cannot take the systems we depend on for granted. I don’t see any endpoints that can be used,” he said in the announcement.
Coroneos defined the stressors experienced by cybersecurity professionals as:
- A single failure from a cyber breach that could affect millions of people makes headlines.
- A fast-evolving, constant attack environment hinders cyber workers’ sense of job accomplishment.
- Cyber professionals live with the idea that even one successful attack could end their career.
- Cyber professionals are primarily mission-driven, but are not oblivious to the despair that can be caused by constant threats of attack.
“We need to build a strong and resilient cyber workforce,” he urged in a research update. “If they go down, we all go down.”
Ransomware Increases Resignations
Mimecast’s latest State of Ransomware global survey of 1,100 cybersecurity decision makers, conducted in July, also illustrates the severity of these concerns.
According to the company’s blog last week, burnout and turnover rates are on the rise as ransomware continues to rise in 2022.
“Among the many consequences of this siege, the cybersecurity professionals we surveyed see serious consequences, including everything from burnout and absenteeism, staff turnover, and diminished confidence in an organization’s ability to fend off attacks. A full third were thinking of leaving the role within the next two years due to stress,” said Mimecast’s head of data scientists for threat intelligence. Dr. Kiri Addison writes:
Approximately 54% of Mimecast respondents reported negative effects on their mental health. Such metrics can predict resignation intentions.
“I think we are seeing early signs of professional groups questioning their own effectiveness and concluding that their efforts are futile. We lose so much knowledge and expertise that we should all be concerned about the psychological factor in burnout,” Reeves concluded.
Regular training in cybersecurity incident response is necessary to keep patients safe, but it can also strengthen healthcare cybersecurity professionals. Healthcare IT News Last month in a discussion about building a cybersecurity muscle memory.
Knowing what to do builds confidence through regular healthcare cybersecurity incident response training, they say.
Andrea Fox is senior editor for Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.
