Over 70% of cybersecurity professionals often have to work weekends to address security concerns at their organization, according to a new report by Bitdefender.

This intense workload appears to correlate strongly with job dissatisfaction, with around two-thirds (64%) of the 1200 cyber professionals surveyed stating that they are planning on looking for a new job in the next 12 months.

The issue of burnout and job dissatisfaction was particularly profound among UK respondents, with 81% often working weekends and 71% looking for a new job.

  • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    970·
    5 months ago

    And ~100% of cybersecurity pros work ad hoc 100% of the time…

    They probably put in 2-10 hours of actual work in a given week. Just like any desk job that doesn’t sit on zoom calls all day.

    Edit: 100% of people downvoting this should first Google “ad hoc.” Or are just envious that I have a cybersec job making good money doing nothing all day. Sucks to suck. 🤷‍♂️

    Kinda how ~100% of IT salaried positions work. If you’re confused, you’re probably hourly.

    • Neato@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      492·
      5 months ago

      If you’re paying someone to always be on call then they are always working. Just because you don’t always need them doesn’t mean they aren’t working. You’re paying for their availability.

      • sunzu@kbin.run
        718·
        5 months ago

        I agree with this but I think point is that yes they are on call all the time but in exchange they get a lot of down time to live their lives.

        Not sure it is fair I don’t work like that and I don’t think I can.

        Nurse model seems to make more sense where there is on call list and you get paid for that time.

        • Moghul@lemmy.worldEnglish
          17·
          5 months ago

          IMO sitting at my desk, watching logs or waiting for something to come in isn’t living my life. I can’t do my hobbies, I can’t play video games, drink a beer, watch a movie, hang out with my friends, etc. Browsing lemmy or youtube isn’t exactly living my life. As long as I’m at that desk, I’m working.

          • sunzu@kbin.run
            32·
            5 months ago

            All fair points and agree… If I am on the clock, I am working. Work flow is management issue

        • RubberDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          51·
          5 months ago

          That could work, if you had a large pool of these people to put on the on call list. Most companies do not. And only having every other weekend off is not living.

          • sunzu@kbin.run
            2·
            5 months ago

            Sounds like a management issue IMHO

            Maybe people should organize and deny these leaders cheap labour?

            • RubberDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              5 months ago

              100% but in general there are too few people that possess the skills for this work. So they are hard to find and expensive.

              • sunzu@kbin.run
                2·
                5 months ago

                Sounds like the sort of challenging market conditions executives get paid big money to solve…

                I know god forbid these people have to do any work lol

    • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      20·
      5 months ago

      Since we’re telling people to Google things, try “anecdotal fallacy” and let us know if it helps you to understand the source of the downvotes.

      The OP is about survey data that directly contradicts your position. It’s fantastic that you’ve found a position where you have work/life balance that works so well for you, but it simply doesn’t match the experience of many commenting in this thread or those who were surveyed.

      Be as obstinate as you like, it won’t change the lived experiences of others in the industry.

    • thejml@lemm.eeEnglish
      202·
      5 months ago

      If your cybersecurity and/or SecOps team isn’t working 40 hrs a week, you’re either WAY over staffed or you’re missing out on a lot of proactive security work. Ours has a massive backlog of tickets and is working proactively on protecting and preventing incursions and security incidents.

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        5 months ago

        Lol he’s got 5 people for 700 users. Way overstaffed. Or well-staffed at a minimum.

        700 users is a business group in my world.

      • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        110·
        5 months ago

        No, SOAR tools make life pretty easy. 5 person SOC team + boss, 700 person org. Not overstaffed.

        I get a few alerts every few hours. Investigate, determine if false positive, and go back to gaming. Unless it’s the off chance it’s not a false positive. Then I do an hour of work or so. Then back to gaming.

    • RubberDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      131·
      5 months ago

      You are one of these people that also thinks the utility companies sit on their ass while they are not performing a break-fix aren’t you?

      If anything security means ploughing through logs, checking up on monitoring alerts. And most importantly constant lobbying with the devs and deployment projects to actually take security serious… yes we know it is easier to deploy without ssl, single sign on, firewall, monitoring suite and not using our template but your own custom OS install etc… but this means everything is fucked if something happens and noone will be able to tell why. And No you cannot just deploy the database cluster in the DMZ so that it is easier to access.

        • RubberDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          71·
          5 months ago

          You are the one that said these people do 2-10 hours of work a week and I tried to tell you that there is so much more to the domain of security.

          So you kinda told us a lot about yourself with your denigrating remark.