Cybersecurity professionals are no strangers to burnout; they’re overworked, understaffed, and overstimulated as their attention is pulled from one security vulnerability to the next. It’s no surprise that one in three cybersecurity professionals are considering quitting in the next two years, but what could this mean for their future career prospects, their employers, and the ever-widening skills gap?
Those who do decide to stay are condemning themselves to roles where they spend more time on repetitive mundane tasks than the business-critical ones they were hired to focus on. It’s these professionals that will join the 85% of organizations whose cybersecurity teams simply cannot keep up with securing and maintaining their perimeter due to the shortages in skills, manpower, and budgets.
Speaking of budgets, it’s important to remember that all of this is happening in tandem with one of the biggest global tech layoffs in recent history. No role is safe as the world’s tech giants – from Twitter to Meta, Salesforce to Google – drastically cut down on their personnel in a bid to combat lingering financial struggles caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
All things considered, it’s a challenging time for organizations and their cybersecurity teams. With evolving threats and cybercrimes, things will undoubtedly get worse before they get better. This is leaving many cybersecurity professionals to consider new and innovative ways of improving productivity, reducing burnout, and combatting the cybersecurity skills gap.
Your cyber enemies are automated; why aren’t you?
Just as threat actors are harnessing automation to deliver attacks that are better, faster, and more robust, it is time organizations realized the power of automation to improve their cyber defenses. By automating routine cybersecurity tasks, they can begin to fight back against the skills gap as they reduce the burden on their cybersecurity staff, allowing them to focus on more fulfilling work that utilizes their talents and skillset.
Automate Threat Intel
One automated solution that many organizations are utilizing is threat intelligence, which is increasingly purchased via a threat intelligence subscription service that provides timely security information, including IP address reputation feeds that identify the addresses of known malicious actors in near real time. Cyber threat intel analyses threat actor motives and behavior in real time, helping you make smarter decisions to combat external threats specific to your organization or industry – before they even attempt an attack. Your IT security teams can receive intelligence in a modular format, giving you a straightforward way to confront external cyberthreats and manage their digital risk.
Eliminate Password Reset Calls at the Help Desk
Another solution that can help to alleviate the cybersecurity skills gap is a self-service password reset solution, which allows organizations to eliminate password reset calls to the IT service desk. Instead, Specops uReset is an enterprise self-service password reset solution that enables active directory users to securely reset their passwords from anywhere, at any time, using any device. User can update their local cached credentials, even when they are off VPN and they can initiate the password reset process right from the Windows logon screen on their workstations with real-time password policy feedback.
Continuous Pen Testing for Efficiency
Pen testing is often conducted periodically, which results in a “security sprint” every time a new test is scheduled. When conducted late in the release cycle, pen testing can be disruptive. To improve time management and workflows web application security testing needs to be continuous. PTaaS can build a shared understanding of security issues and their impact and give development the opportunity to test their code for vulnerabilities and fix them before they reach production. Outpost24’s PTaaS solutions provides real-time insight of vulnerabilities with direct access to pen testers who can provide remediation advice.
By automating these tasks, you can alleviate the IT security team from time consuming tasks and putting out fires, in turn leaving them time to focus on more important tasks. This can have a critical impact on response times, enabling security teams to focus on their controls and quickly react to events before they escalate into full-blown crises.
Ultimately, the sheer volume of cyber threats in today’s digital world is simply too much for human security teams to handle, and it is high time organizations started fighting fire with fire. Automation is a powerful tool that can be used to address the cybersecurity skills gap, finally granting security professionals the breathing room needed to focus on more fulfilling work, improve response times and dedicate themselves to mission-critical tasks.
