Attention! Alert fatigue can result in severe burnout

Sometimes there is just so much work to do that we lose focus and begin to miss some crucial details, leading to a degradation in efficiency, performance, and output – resulting in a complete burnout. This is especially true for IT jobs, where burnout rates are high due to an insurmountable amount of tasks.

In cybersecurity, alert fatigue is one major sign of burnout, which can enormously influence the state of a business's cybersecurity. Knowing about the symptoms and ways to ameliorate any possibility of it happening is paramount for the continuing well-being of your business and employees.

Alert fatigue is a sign of many things, but mostly, it is a sign of an incoming burnout. Be it because of complex interfaces, faulty security software rife with false positives, or low bandwidth to handle incoming alerts, especially in cybersecurity, it is easy to become overwhelmed.

Solutions like Extended Detection and Response (XDR) can be helpful but can also be very demanding, as they require trained eyes to operate. Likewise, Security Information Event Management (SIEM) is very useful, but it can be hard to discern what is or isn’t important, and the incoming traffic of logs can overwhelm even the most skilled professional.

What this results in is a constant demand for one’s attention, increased levels of stress, and a possible distaste for more in-depth investigation of incidents due to the number of reports, which, coupled with other calls for attention at work, can heavily increase one’s workload. Imagine it as a constant need to be alert and attentive. Repeat this several times and, voilá, burnout is achieved.

Curiously, a question can be raised whether it is truly the workload that drives alert fatigue, or if it is the result of cybersecurity tools not being up to the task of lightening the human touch.

A case can be made for the need to lower the burden on business IT generalists (staff), since they often also fill in other roles as (aside from having to protect the company from external threats) they also manage the networks and devices used by the employees, among other tasks.

It is not usually a single person managing all the previously mentioned tasks, but that doesn’t mean that individuals in a team cannot suffer burnout; the demands can be high, their bandwidth low, and working on repetitive chores is one way to waste time and achieve insanity. On the flip side, excessive boredom at work can also lead to the same result.

For IT specialists, a bane of their existence is bad, buggy, or overly complex software that makes work many times harder. This is why the current trend is to simplify user interfaces and graphics, or add a bit of automation to highlight only the most relevant points.

This is easy to see when looking at the evolution of operating systems or widely used apps – during the 2010s, most companies decided to simplify and make interactions with their prospective parts easier than before (a good example is the iOS 7 update or Windows 11 compared to previous releases). ESET did the same with the ESET PROTECT Platform, introducing a simple and easy-to-use dashboard for ESET PROTECT to make the work of IT security operators more manageable.

What’s more, this design philosophy has driven the company to design features such as the ESET AI Advisor or ESET Vulnerability and Patch Management, addressing the elephant in the room – complex security doesn’t need to be a burden as, believe it or not, being frustrated with security is a great way to weaken it.

There is always some way to make work easier, and there always are solutions that exist as an answer to some deficiencies or weak points of others. For example, overburdened or small business IT teams can opt to outsource their security to managed security service providers (MSSPs), lowering the chance of fatigue as a result of cybersecurity-related work.

Cannot cope with the number of detections coming from your extensive business infrastructure? Look for a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution that can help any business leverage the added skills and knowledge of an experienced cybersecurity vendor, upscaling their quality and state of protection.

Not every business can afford to increase the size of their IT teams, especially during times when there is a lack of professionals, and those that are available can be very expensive to hire. And if the current specialists are already struggling, why lose them because of burnout?

Apart from outsourcing, there are also some techniques individuals can use to ward off alert fatigue or burnout in general:

• Take breaks: Overworking yourself is a surefire way to experience burnout sooner rather than later, so try to space yourself and take breaks. 15 minutes every two hours is the recommended amount for office workers, with 8 hours of sleep, of course.
• Automate some tasks: Oftentimes, people do not know about specific tools that can make their lives easier by employing automation. For example, ESET PROTECT lets admins automate certain tasks, such as OS and product updates, scanning, computer shutdowns, freeing up the bandwidth of security admins. Likewise, the AI-native power of ESET PROTECT’s modules, including ESET AI Advisor in ESET Inspect, can ensure fewer capacity-induced stressors, increasing productivity and efficiency.
• Look for comprehensive simplicity: Having an easy-to-use interface presenting lots of important data on a single pane of glass is a great way to make IT work more effective, so look for products that, instead of overwhelming you, offer comprehensive protection with simple usage patterns.
• Learn to delegate: A common complaint of senior IT professionals is that delegating work is hard, as they cannot be sure of the quality of their peers’ work, so they opt to do it instead of focusing on more high-level tasks. However, everyone has a limited bandwidth, and not delegating tasks to others can overwhelm even the best senior employee.
• Outsource: Cannot cope with all those IT tasks? Consider outsourcing at least your IT security to an MSSP, offloading the IT teams’ burden at least partially, making it harder to burn out. Alternatively, supercharge your current security with an MDR service that can also aid your compliance-related requirements.

As a side note, burnout does not strictly need to be caused by work; there can be many additional factors, such as anxiety from human interaction, depression, or anything coming from the external environment that can have an impact on the human psyche. In those cases, also consider coaching as it might help cope with some problems that not even a job change might solve.