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70% of Cybersecurity Pros Often Work Weekends (www.infosecurity-magazine.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[+] [email protected] 104 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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[-] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

I mean, as long as its on-call hours paid according only, sign me up.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Change Windows. You can't take shit down during the work day.

Everywhere I've worked (many very large companies, banks, telecom, outsourced IT, etc) teams have coverage schedules, so I suspect this article is misleading.

Someone has to mind things 24/7, this is done via scheduling.

And the more critical you are, the more on-call you are. I had one role where I was on call 24/7. Things rarely broke enough for me to be called, but I never once resented when I was called. I'd rather get woken up at 2am because my help is needed than have the risk that our systems aren't ready for the day.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

And the more critical you are, the more on-call you are.

This shows a really low Bus Factor which should be remedied. If you're on call 24/7 because you're the only person who can fix things then your employer is running the risk of you being unavailable due to injury or disease and then they're up shit creek sans paddle.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

There are no bad employees only bad managers, or some karate kid nonsense like that. I had a job where I was "on call" 24/7 with no one else as alternates. I kept getting in trouble for not being available on the weekend when they called me. Most of the other employees I worked with in similar positions admitted to drinking every night that way they couldn't get called in after hours. I quit that job quick.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That wouldn't be cybersecurity though, right? That sounds more like a (dev)OPs role.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not to mention that lots of malicious attacks occur late at night or on weekends in an attempt to delay getting noticed. My company has rotating on-call schedules for our security, devops, and even engineering teams. I’ve had to hop on late at night or on weekends to help mitigate attacks. Luckily my employer is really good about letting folks take a day or two off after such events.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

While I nominally agree, there are some situations and contexts in which an on-call rotation is not only appropriate, but the responsible thing to do.

That said, on-call people should get special compensation/rewards/perks, because being on call sucks.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

At the very least, we need to codify comp time as policy, overtime as law.

[-] [email protected] 81 points 1 year ago

High availability and security are the bane of IT infrastructure jobs. It makes me anxious to think about my MSP days when I'd sit on my couch on a Saturday fully aware that I'm one phone call away from having my day, weekend or even the next two weeks ruined because some customer CEO has full domain admin rights and would give them to anyone who'd ask on the phone or via email.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It's not just security that ruins an IT person's life. I had a customer decide to do a massive data migration from their primary data storage to a new system during the busiest time of day. It destroyed the primary, secondary, and backup systems as well as corrupting the destination system. It was a one-in-a-million bug/glitch that cost me 2 weeks of 16 hour days.

It's idiots in charge of IT that are the true source of our pain.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

My company doesn't work weekends unless you're on call or something. I could see it happen with incident response or security operations, but other things aren't so critical that we need to have our staff working outside of normal business hours.

I may be lucky as well because I work within GRC, and we have a huge focus on work-life balance.

This 70% number seems high. I'm in leadership.

[-] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago

No shit

this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024

271 points (97.9% liked)

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