In a recent article in the New York Times, it states that the demands on medical professionals have escalated relentlessly in the past few decades, without a commensurate expansion of time and resources.
For starters, patients are sicker these days.
The medical complexity per patient — the number and severity of chronic conditions — has increased steadily, meaning that medical encounters are becoming ever more involved.
They typically include more illnesses to treat, more medications to administer, more complications to handle — all in the same-length, office or hospital visit.
The above are all causes for burnout amongst the medical fraternity.
In the world of cybersecurity, we are facing the same exact mirror issues that the medical doctors are facing. Cyber attacks are increasing in pace and frequency. Attacks against organisations are increasing in their complexities. Existing cybersecurity professionals are inadequate to handle the increasing complexities of new cyber breaches and attacks.
Soon, we can foresee burnout amongst existing cybersecurity professionals like what is happening to the medical fraternity in the west now.
Should we be taking steps by firstly getting the leadership in each organisation to identify potential causes and what are the possible steps that they should take to minimise burnout from flaring into a big issue? As in the medical fraternity, the losers of the burnout is not addressed properly would be the patients and in the cybersecurity space, the organisations are and would be the losers.