Your security team are amongst your most valuable and critical employees. If they fail, the risk of a damaging or catastrophic business failure increases.
And if you fail, and they break, the risks are also high. With a critical global shortage in security professionals, who will replace them?
That’s what PsyberResilience means. Making sure that your overworked and highly-stressed security team can bend with the stress and not break. And making sure that you’re taking their PsyberResilience into account in your risk management calculations. Which means you’re recognizing, acknowledging, and managing that risk.
If studies are accurate, that nearly two thirds of security professionals consider not just quitting their job but quitting the profession entirely, you’re going to need a plan to reduce that risk.
The costs of ignoring PsyberResilience could be significant
- If key security team members quit, who’s going to replace them? With a critical global shortage in cybersecurity professionals, filling any security role is a constant challenge.
- A stressed-out or burnt-out security employee could be a gift to a competitor, if that competitor recognizes and supports employee mental wellness better than you do.
- A stressed-out or burnt-out security employee could be a gift to an attacker, with growing evidence that attackers recognize and exploit the heightened and dangerous stress and fatigue levels their adversaries face.
- Stress can lead to costly mistakes, poor decision making, poor judgement, inability to react in a crisis, moodiness, and even physical health problems.
- Mental wellness issues can cost money in lots of other ways, including absenteeism, presenteeism, poor productivity, and higher healthcare costs.
Two of the main goals of the PsyberResilience project are to (a) develop strategies for individuals to recognize, embrace, and manage their own stress and mental wellness, and (b) give employers the tools to build and maintain the high levels of psyber resilience and security employee mental health.
Out Of A Crisis, An Opportunity
- By recognizing and investing in the mental and emotional wellness of your security team (like any other employees), you’re simply maximizing the value of your greatest security investment.
- Security employees who are mentally healthy and supported are far less likely to make mistakes that will cost your organization.
- Security employees who are mentally healthy and supported are far less likely to quit.
- Numerous studies have shown that every dollar invested in employee mental wellness generates returns of $3-$5. And most mental wellness solutions are free.
- Looking to recruit? A culture of sincere mental health support for your security team could be a key differentiator and powerful recruitment tool.