New Delhi Post-Covid: The rise in cyberattacks has been a source of concern for cyber security professionals in India, forcing many to change jobs and take up new roles, with 49% expressing intent to move jobs, While around 25% intended to choose completely different roles, according to a report published last week by market research firm Gartner.
“Cybersecurity professionals face an uncertain level of stress,” said Deepti Gopal, director analyst at Gartner. Its impact directly affects the quality of decisions and the performance of cyber security leaders and their teams,” he said.
An IBM Security report in October found that 77% of cyber security incident responders in India experienced extreme or considerable mental stress as a result of responding to a major cyber security incident.
They not only suffer from insomnia and burnout but it also affects their social life and relationships. “Many a times, security policies and procedures are unclear and there is insufficient training,” said Suresh A Shan, cyber security expert and head-innovation and technology, Mahindra Finance.
“Often security personnel complete an activity thinking they are acting within the scope of their job responsibilities, only to find later that they are being held accountable for a situation they were not trained to handle or where they had no control over the outcome, adding to the stress,” he said.
Security operations center professionals are among the most stressed and exhausted, said Prateek Bhajanka, APJ Field CISO at cybersecurity company SentinelOne. The always-on culture and the sheer volume of alerts coming from digital surfaces throughout the organization is extremely challenging, he said. Besides, their “demands are not met because security is still not considered as a boardroom issue by many companies”, Bhajanka said.
“Burnout and voluntary conflict are the results of a bad organizational culture,” said Gopal.
“Eliminating stress may be an unrealistic goal, but people can manage incredibly challenging and stressful jobs in cultures where they are supported,” he said.
Mumbai-based psychologist Kumkum Jagdish said firms should lay emphasis on workplace culture. “Communication should be two-way. People should take breaks from time to time, take time off and also learn to say ‘no’ where necessary.” Burnout doesn’t happen.
Notably, India is one of the leading targets for cybercriminals with over 75% of Indian firms vulnerable to ransomware attacks since 2019, according to a report by cyber security firm Trend Micro published in September 2022 .
Given these dynamics as well as the massive market opportunities for cyber security professionals, talent churn poses a significant threat to security teams. For example, according to global IT association ISACA’s eighth annual cyber security survey published in March last year, in India, 60% of organizations have open cyber security positions and 42% reported that their organization’s cyber security team There is shortage of staff.
Munira Loliwala, business head at staffing firm TeamLease Digital, said the COVID-19 pandemic has created a huge talent shortage in the cyber security sector, even as the demand for security engineers, cyber security analysts and risk and data privacy professionals continues to rise. Increasing. “Due to this huge demand-supply gap, there has been an increase in appointments to the posts available on contract basis,” he added.
A TeamLease report released in November 2022 also states that retention is a challenge in cyber security, as organizations lose 40%-45% of their talent within 3 to 6 months of hiring.
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