CISOs motivated by being guardians of their businesses

What gets CISOs out of bed in the morning is knowing that they are keeping their organizations safe, according to a new study from privileged access management company Thycotic.

The study of more than 550 IT security decision-makers globally finds being the 'business bodyguard' and the knowledge that they are keeping their organization safe is the top motivator (29 percent), closely followed by being the upholder of ethics (25 percent).

On the negative side when asked about the most stressful aspect of the job, more people (42 percent) cited meeting the growing number of compliance and regulatory demands than lengthy shifts and the need for out of hours availability (33 percent).

"CISOs are on call 24 hours a day seven days a week so they don't have time when they get extra rest, and most cyber attacks, when they do occur aren't at 11am on a Monday morning when you're all sorted after two cups of coffee," says Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at Thycotic. "They occur typically on Friday night at midnight or on the weekends. The criminals tend to operate from different time zones so they don't really facilitate your time and your attack can happen any time of day, most likely when you're asleep. So, it becomes a very high pressure, very high focused position. One of the things that CISOs can do is strive to find a balance, your mind is always on the job, and doesn't get a break, which definitely is one of the areas of leads to mental health challenges."

The biggest issues surrounding retaining security team members are seen as burnout and stress from long hours and pressures at work (45 percent), lack of support from senior leaders in how to train, appraise and develop staff (40 percent) and lack of opportunity to express themselves in challenging/interesting projects (28 percent).

Carson believes that to address this the industry needs to develop a more positive image, "We tend to focus on threats and fear because that's what that's what drives us for what we do. But sometimes we do have to think about how do we target talent and how do we market to them, how do we make the industry much more attractive for them to decide that this is a career that they want to do? We have to somewhat change the message to talk more about the positive areas talk more about the good things and successes and the people in order to try and change perceptions."

The full report is available from the Thycotic site.

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