Burnout is breaking cybersecurity teams. This post explores the causes and what needs to change to make defense sustainable again.
June 26, 2025
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Cybersecurity Burnout: The Hidden Crisis That No One Is Fixing
It’s not just stress. It’s not just long hours. It’s a system that wears people down and calls it resilience.
Across the industry, cybersecurity pros are running on fumes. Not because they’re disorganized, but because the job never ends. Threats evolve by the hour. Attackers move faster than ever. And for many teams, the work feels less like a career and more like an emergency room shift where no one is adding more staff.
This isn’t new. Back in 2023, Gartner predicted that by 2025, nearly half of all cybersecurity leaders would change jobs, with a quarter leaving the field entirely due to stress and burnout. Now, in 2025, that prediction is playing out in real time. Security leaders are walking away—not just from roles, but from the industry altogether.
Burnout in cybersecurity isn’t about individuals struggling to keep up. It’s the natural outcome of a system that demands constant vigilance, ignores human limits, and then acts surprised when people hit a wall.
This is a crisis. And companies can’t keep pretending it’ll fix itself.
This post examines what’s driving burnout, why the industry’s current approach is broken, and what needs to change before more people walk away for good.
Cybersecurity is high-pressure, and it’s built around constant urgency. And that’s exactly the problem.
Most security professionals operate in a state of permanent readiness. On-call rotations blur into daily duties. Incident response doesn’t pause for evenings, weekends, or holidays. In many SOCs, analysts sift through tens of thousands of alerts daily, mostly false positives. Even with that noise, they’re expected to catch the one real threat that slips through.
Meanwhile, teams are shrinking while client loads grow. It’s not unusual for a single analyst to manage security for a dozen or more clients simultaneously, often during solo shifts. The hours stack up: 50, 60, sometimes more, with no sign of relief. And no matter how many hours you put in, there’s a sense that it’s never enough.
That’s because the stakes are enormous. A single oversight could lead to millions in damages. Many internalize that pressure, pushing themselves harder, trying to be the person who catches everything, fixes everything, and prevents the next disaster. Burnout becomes a badge of honor until it breaks them.
Automation is often presented as the cure, but in practice, it’s just another layer. Tools help, but they don’t solve the deeper issues: understaffed teams, lack of transparent processes, and unrealistic expectations from leadership. In some cases, automation creates more complexity, not less.
Underneath it all is a culture of fear and self-sacrifice. If something goes wrong, security is first in the firing line. If everything goes right, no one notices. That’s the paradox: when cybersecurity works, it’s invisible. And when it fails, it’s front-page news.
The exits are getting crowded.
More and more cybersecurity professionals are walking away from their jobs, the industry, and the burnout that’s become synonymous with both. For many, it starts with feeling drained. Then detached. Eventually, even the idea of staying feels unbearable.
It’s not just junior staff burning out. Mid-career pros with years of experience are leaving because they simply don’t want to live like this anymore.
The stories vary, but the themes are strikingly similar. Constant firefighting with no executive support. Zero documentation. Inherited infrastructure is so chaotic that it borders on sabotage. Leadership that treats burnout as a personal weakness instead of a structural failure. Teams that do their best to improve things, only to be ignored or undercut until they give up and move on.
Some are pivoting into new corners of tech such as cloud security, consulting, and GRC. Others are leaving tech entirely, trading dashboards for baristas’ aprons, martial arts schools, or trades work. The common thread? A desire to feel human again.
Burnout tends to hit hardest between years three and seven - the point where experience builds, but the disillusionment peaks. And by then, many have realized that the money, while good, doesn’t come close to offsetting the stress, the insomnia, the back pain, or the sense that the job will never stop asking for more.
What does it say about an industry when so many people would rather give up six-figure salaries than keep going?
This isn’t just a talent issue. It’s a warning siren. The work is meaningful, but the way it’s structured is driving some of the most skilled professionals out before they even hit their stride.
And they’re not looking back.
Most organizations say they care about cybersecurity. Few are willing to fund it like they mean it. And almost none recognize how their own systems and leadership failures are driving their teams into the ground.
The “do more with less” mindset is a major culprit. Cyber teams are shrinking, budgets are tight, but the threats keep multiplying. This forces a handful of people to carry the load of entire departments. That’s unsustainable and dangerous.
Even worse, when a breach happens, security is the first scapegoat. It doesn’t matter if the team flagged the risk months ago or begged for resources that never came. The blame lands squarely on their shoulders. That pressure, with its high stakes and lack of control, is one of the fastest tracks to burnout.
Leadership is often absent until it’s too late. Many CISOs step into roles that are doomed from day one, handed responsibility without authority, and expected to deliver miracles with broken tools, undertrained teams, and no support from the top. The moment something goes wrong, they're the fall guy.
Add to that the lack of mental health support, and the culture gets even more toxic. Instead of acknowledging stress, the message is often “tough it out.” Burnout becomes a weakness, not a symptom of a broken system. And in many cases, those who need time off the most feel the least safe asking for it.
There’s also the monotony. Much of the job involves repetitive tasks - patching, alert triage, compliance work, with little room for growth or creative problem solving. When tools don’t talk to each other and processes are a mess, the job becomes not just hard, but mind-numbing.
And then there’s isolation. Remote work has amplified the sense of disconnection. Security teams, often siloed from the rest of the business, are left to carry invisible weight with little recognition. The lack of collaboration across departments doesn’t just slow productivity—it erodes morale.
Unrealistic expectations, limited resources, poor leadership, and a cultural silence around mental health are quietly undermining both individual well-being and the resilience of the industry. And the worst part? Most companies don’t even see it happening.
Burnout isn’t just a people problem; it’s a big security risk.
Exhausted defenders make mistakes. They miss critical alerts. They skip over small anomalies that snowball into major breaches. They silence alarms just to get through the day. This is what happens when people are pushed beyond their limits.
A staggering 83% of IT security professionals acknowledge that burnout has led to errors causing security breaches within their departments. These aren’t isolated incidents; they represent a systemic vulnerability where exhausted defenders become the weakest link in the security chain.
When talented cybersecurity professionals burn out and leave, companies lose headcount, expertise, context, and continuity. Institutional knowledge walks out the door, and replacements are hard to find. The talent pipeline isn’t keeping up. Those who stay behind are left scrambling, overworked, and often undertrained.
The talent pipeline is also under siege. Around 85% of cybersecurity professionals anticipate leaving their roles due to burnout, with 24% considering exiting the field entirely. This attrition exacerbates the existing skills gap, leaving organizations more vulnerable as experienced defenders depart.
Moreover, the human cost is profound. Approximately 74% of cybersecurity professionals have taken time off due to work-related mental health issues, averaging 3.4 sick days annually. This not only affects individual well-being but also disrupts team dynamics and project continuity.
This cycle weakens security posture in ways that aren’t always visible, until it’s too late. Burnout leads to higher turnover, lower engagement, and worse outcomes across the board. Compliance suffers. Response times slow down. Risk escalates.
And it all costs money. Recruiting new talent is expensive. Training takes time. Breaches and downtime cost even more. Yet most companies still treat burnout as an HR issue, not an operational or financial one.
If the security team is burning out, the business is exposed. It’s that simple.
Until companies treat burnout like the strategic risk it is, they’ll keep paying the price quietly..
The cybersecurity burnout crisis isn’t inevitable; it’s the result of structural decisions. And that means it’s fixable. But surface-level perks and vague “wellness” initiatives won’t cut it. What’s needed is a full reset of how cybersecurity work is structured, led, and valued.
1. Rethink SOC roles and rotations
Expecting people to function at full alert 24/7 is a recipe for collapse. Security Operations Centers need to move toward rotational shifts, where analysts can step away regularly without guilt or disruption. Companies build redundancy into their infrastructure. Why not into people?
2. Hold leadership accountable for culture, not just outcomes
Leadership sets the tone. Burnout thrives under managers who reward overwork, ignore stress signals, or treat every incident like a personal failure. Organizations need to prioritize emotional intelligence, team wellbeing, and communication in leadership roles, not just technical acumen. If someone consistently drives talent away, it’s a leadership failure, not a staffing issue.
3. Make rest non-negotiable
“Unlimited PTO” is meaningless if no one feels safe using it. Companies should enforce mandatory downtime, especially after high-intensity periods like incident response. Encourage real disconnection - no Slack pings, no weekend check-ins, no guilt.
4. Invest in real mental health support
That means more than an EAP hotline buried in the company wiki. It means managers are trained to recognize burnout. It means access to therapy and counseling without stigma. It means building policies around human sustainability, not just productivity.
5. Redefine what success in cybersecurity looks like
Cybersecurity pros are not human firewalls. Their value isn’t in how long they can keep grinding. It’s in their judgment, creativity, and ability to adapt. Stop celebrating the ones who work until 2 a.m. Start supporting the ones who build systems that don’t require that.
Solving burnout isn’t about resilience training. It’s about redesigning the environment so people don’t need to “tough it out” just to survive.
If you are feeling burned out, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone. The exhaustion, the frustration, the pressure that never lets up - it is not a personal failing. It reflects how the industry is structured.
Right now, cybersecurity functions like an emergency response team, but without the staffing, resources, or systems that setup requires. The entire system leans on professionals sacrificing their well-being just to keep operations running. And as more people choose to leave, the cost is becoming impossible to ignore.
This work is important. But the way it is done needs to change.
Burnout is not just a problem for individuals. It affects business performance, weakens security, and worsens the talent shortage. If organizations want to keep good people, stay protected, and build long-term resilience, they need to treat burnout as a serious operational risk.
That means setting realistic expectations. Designing roles that are actually manageable. Supporting leadership that cares about people, not just metrics. And creating a work culture where employees do not have to choose between their job and their health.
The push for change is already underway. Some of it looks like quiet shifts in policy. Some of it looks like people walking away entirely.
Cybersecurity can be a sustainable field. It can be a place where people build careers they are proud of.
But that will only happen if companies are willing to fix what is broken.
