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Mental Health in Cyber Security

 mentalhealthincybersecurity

This paper aims to bring to light current industry working practices, support resources and eventually provide a charter of actionable aims that can be employed across the sector. Crucially, it hopes to challenge the way the industry deals with burnout, stress, and mental health problems.

The paper states that "until any new research indicates what is required, we believe that the following actions are necessary as a matter of urgency, if the profession is to not lose it’s most valued and experienced members:

  1. Governments should recognise the problems of basing their national cyber security resilience strategies on enterprise cyber security teams and establish an assessment of the impacts of doing so.
  2. Professional and certifying bodies should include the awareness of the importance of mental health and stress issues into their knowledge domains, certifications, standards, frameworks and best practices.
  3. Governments, professional and certifying bodies should make funding available for research on mental health in cyber security.
  4. Enterprises should actively include mental health in their strategic planning & measurable outcomes.
  5. Cyber security professionals should speak out about stress, raise awareness and identifying signs and symptoms of stress in themselves and their colleagues, and explore ways to support their teams to address the root cause."

 

You can download this paper after 11.00am on 15th May by clicking the link here: Mental Health in Cyber Security (794.63 KB)

Investigation and Reporting Group Members:

  • Group Chair & Editor: Sarb Sembhi, CTO, Virtually Informed Limited.
  • Member: Peter Olivier, Head of Security Delivery, Admiral Group.
  • Member: Paul Simms, Director of Cyber Security & Compliance, Lumanity.

Peer Reviewers:

  • Jane Frankland
  • Thom Langford
  • Paul Watts

 

Biographies are available in the document.

A follow-up to this paper will be our Charter that organisations that wish to show their support for caring for their cyber security professionals.

In the meantime, please visit the Mental Health Awareness Week website.