Navigating the High-Stakes World of Cybersecurity: How SASE Empowers CISOs to Combat Stress and Burnout
A recent study by ISC2 reveals that 73% of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) in the US reported experiencing burnout over the past year. According to this Voice of the CISO report 61% of CISOs said they face excessive expectations from their employers. Additionally, owing to the cybersecurity skills gap, many CISOs must continue to defend their companies with incredibly stretched resources and a mounting list of tasks that fall at the CISO’s feet.
High Expectations and Limited Resources
A lack of resources and skills was highlighted in our latest research report: ‘Why SASE is the Blueprint for Future-proofing Your Network in 2025 and Beyond’ which polled 700 organisations that had already implemented a SASE solution. Our findings showed that 82% of respondents struggle to find, recruit, and retain specialized security skills to counter new and growing network threats. This shortage adds pressure to already strained security teams and CISOs.
The Pressure of Personal Liability for Cybersecurity Leaders
To add to this, growing regulation and legislation means cybersecurity leaders are becoming more concerned about personal liability, particularly since the criminal case against Uber Technologies’ former security chief. Uber Technologies was involved in several criminal cases, including a data breach and a former Chief Security Officer’s conviction for obstructing a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation.
Hacks on companies’ IT systems often come with business disruptions, reputational damage, regulatory investigations and lawsuits. CISOs must manage cybersecurity risks while educating C-suite colleagues on the legal ramifications. Gartner even anticipates that 50% of CISOs may change jobs by 2025 due to these pressures.
Complex IT Environments Amplify CISO Stress
Burnout is also driven by relentless change. Complex IT environments and architectures mean more threats and require unique strategies, objectives, and plans to manage. The “work from anywhere” model adds to this complexity and expands the threat surface. CISOs now need to ensure that remote employees can access systems securely, just as they would in the office.
The Expanding Attack Surface with Remote Work
In addition, criminal tactics are increasingly sophisticated, and cloud and multi-cloud environments present new challenges for CISOs. Threat actors only need to succeed once, while CISOs must constantly protect data. Advances in AI, especially generative AI, make the threat landscape even more challenging. In Deloitte’s 8th NASCIO Cybersecurity Study, the expanding attack surface and emerging threats were highlighted as substantial risks to organizations’ data security. Returning to Xalient’s research, a staggering 99% of organizations surveyed experienced an attack in the last 12 months, with 44% saying a breach originated via a remote or hybrid worker. CISOs can never let their guard down if they are to protect corporate assets.
Translating Cybersecurity into Business Impact
Talking in the right language
CISOs also face the challenge of translating technical security information into business terms. CEOs increasingly request updates, and demonstrating ROI on security spending is essential. CISOs who can communicate ROI effectively on key projects and initiatives are better equipped to navigate budget decisions.
Facing Regulatory Demands and Skills Shortages
Skills shortages also add pressure on CISOs. Security teams often operate on tight budgets, making it hard to hire skilled specialists at all levels. At the same time, new regulations, like those from the SEC, EU NIS2, and DORA, raise expectations for cybersecurity performance and transparency. Meeting these standards involves increased auditing and reporting, requiring both more skills and resources.
How SASE solutions reduce pressure on CISOs
With these regulatory obligations and government oversight of cybersecurity on the rise, CISOs need vendors and partners they can trust and who can provide solutions to all these challenges. This is one of the reasons we are seeing a marked uptake in the adoption of SASE. In fact, according to its 2024 CIO and Technology Executive Survey, Gartner expects that 60% of enterprises will have clear-cut strategies to adopt SASE by 2025. Why is this the case?
SASE creates a single network for all an organisation’s data centres, offices, and remote workers. It simplifies access rights by utilising unique user identities and policy definitions. A secure network infrastructure typically requires multiple different solutions and can become unmanageable, due to significant administrative overhead which can result in poor performance. SASE provides robust security features in a simple package that doesn’t impact the speed of the network and is a natural progression of security for a workforce that’s ever more geographically distributed, where traditional network infrastructures struggle to manage increasing numbers of remote workers. From the security team’s perspective, key drivers for adoption that respondents from our research cited included secure remote access, fear of breach – including the regulatory, reputational and financial impacts – and the rising costs of traditional network infrastructure.
SASE as a Tool for Simplifying Remote and Hybrid Work Security
While SASE certainly isn’t the silver bullet to alleviate all the pressures CISOs are under right now, it can help to overcome some of the stresses around skills, lack of resources, costs and performance while providing a more secure environment. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Gartner is predicting such impressive market adoption in 2025 and beyond.
SASE as a Path to Resilience for CISOs and Security Teams
In conclusion, SASE brings CISOs innovation and resilience. It’s cutting-edge technology that protects data and safeguards the well-being of those on the front lines of cyber defense, while enabling organisations to improve network performance and reap the benefits of cloud. As the digital battlefield intensifies, SASE offers a path to both enhanced security and reduced burnout for CISOs.
