70% of Cybersecurity Pros Often Work Weekends

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.

In Germany, 77.1% often work weekends and over three-quarters (76.6%) will be looking for a new job in the next 12 months.

In the US, the figures were 70.2% (work weekends) and 62.2% (looking for a new job), respectively.

Cyber Skills Gap Reaches 4 Million, Layoffs Hit Security Teams

Cybersecurity Professionals Facing Increasing Threats

Over half (57%) of respondents said their organizations experienced a data breach or leak in the past 12 months, a 6% rise compared to Bitdefender’s Cybersecurity Assessment Report 2023.

The top three cyber-threats highlighted by the respondents were phishing/social engineering (33%), software vulnerabilities and/or zero-days (32.2%) and ransomware (29.3%).

Almost all (96%) of cybersecurity professionals stated they were concerned about AI’s impact on the threat landscape.

Security challenges associated with cloud computing services was also highlighted in the report, with data breaches or leaks (43.6%) cited as the top concern for security professionals.

This was followed by unauthorized access to cloud services (42.7%), misconfigured cloud storage (42.2%) and insecure APIs (37.9%).

The top three security concerns when managing cloud environments were identity and access management (38.7%), maintaining cloud compliance (38%) and shadow IT (35.9%).

Increasing Investment in Cybersecurity Measures

Despite the concerns expressed, 94% of respondents were very confident about their organizations’ ability to respond to threats like ransomware, phishing and zero-days.

Yet over two-thirds (71%) felt like their security solutions have not lived up to their promised hype, a significant increase from 54% last year.

Encouragingly, 93% of cybersecurity professionals said it was likely their organization would soon increase investment in proactive security measures such as risk assessment, penetration testing and red teaming exercises.