Nearly half of CISOs will change jobs by 2025 due to stress caused by the risk of being breached while trying to retain staff, according to the Gartner report, Predicts 2023: Cybersecurity Industry Focuses on the Human Deal. The research firm found that the stressors of the cybersecurity world make the job of a cybersecurity professional unsustainable. This includes the knowledge that there are only two possible outcomes: get hacked or don’t. “The psychological impact of this is profound, directly affecting decision quality and performance of cybersecurity leaders and their teams,” found Gartner.
Although burnout is nothing new, it did become more visible and common during and after COVID-19. For CISOs it is worse as more than 50% are challenged with work demands that lead to a poor work-life balance at least once a month. A leader recovering from the stress of a data breach could last less than five years on the job — the average tenure of a cybersecurity leader according to a 2020 Gartner research report.