Curated from Latest from TechRadar US in News,opinion — Here’s what matters right now:
Picture the scene. The head of IT security at a major business has just managed their team through several weeks of grueling work in containment and recovery after the latest ransomware attack. Their critical systems are back online, but after constant crunch time and sleepless nights, the team is visibly fraying; morale is low, anxiety is high, and there is more than one empty desk where senior personnel have taken extended sick leave. This kind of scenario rarely gets attention in the press, where the focus of cyberattacks is on profit and loss, the impact on customers and the bottom line. But serious attacks take their toll on security teams too, and the aftermath can persist for months, leaving the organization even more vulnerable to future threats. True cyber resilience, then, cannot be measured solely by systems restored or data decrypted - it must also factor in the people whose well-being determines not just how swiftly an organization recovers but whether it can withstand the next digital onslaught. The hidden internal impact of an attack The impact of an attack is typically weighed by system downtime, lost business, and potential reputational, legal and regulatory damage. Successful cyber strategies are measured in terms of key metrics like mean time to detect and respond to incidents. But when the smoke clears and systems are back online, the human cost to personnel dealing with the attack is rarely tallied in stakeholder reports. A landmark RUSI and University of Kent study found that cybersecurity personnel frequently experience PTSD-like symptoms, from panic attacks to insomnia, long after a crisis has been resolved. This results in a second wave of disruption as sick leave and diminished morale ripples through the department and goes on to impact the rest of the company. Burnt-out IT and security teams will struggle to keep up the company’s baseline security , further increasing its risk exposure. One major financial services firm in the University of Kent’s study reflected that placing its exhausted engineers on gardening leave immediately after a ransomware crisis could have averted “months and months” of subsequent sickness absence and spared the organization the hidden costs of burnout. In short, serious attacks like ransomware don’t just hold data hostage; they also trap people in a cycle of exhaustion and fear. If organizations treat staff wellbeing as an afterthought rather than a key element in the front-line defense, they risk allowing human capital to become the weakest link in their cyber-resilience strategy. The growing cyber leadership crisis While the personnel on the frontline of incident response and containment are suffering from stress and overwork, things are often even worse higher up the chain. CISOs and other senior security leaders are usually held ultimately accountable for any failure to prevent or contain a breach, and it’s a responsibility that weighs heavily. Leaders may be held personally responsible f
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Original reporting: Latest from TechRadar US in News,opinion