The world’s first mental health and wellness program for cybersecurity professionals, Cybermindz.org, which most recently launched with great success in the United Kingdom, is holding three online information sessions for companies wishing to partner with this incredibly good initiative.
Peter Coroneos is the founder of Cybermindz.org, the world’s first mental wellness program for cyber security professionals. At his Linkedin page, Peter states: “It’s time to defend our defenders with scalable, evidence based, easy-to-apply mental health interventions to prevent and address burnout.”
I learned about Cybermindz in early 2022, and covered its Sydney launch here, its Melbourne launch here, its US launch here, its UK launch here, last year’s Gala Fundraising dinner here, and I did interviews with two US CISOs on the US launch here, with the Cybermindz TV YouTube channel here, featuring highlights from the UK launch and plenty more.
This Friday, November 3 2023, Cybermindz is holding three online information sessions about partnering with it, with each free to attend – just register via the links below:
The registration page for the first session, from 9-10am, is here.
The second session is from 12-1pm, here.
The third session is from 4-5pm, here.
Over at his LinkedIn page, Peter posted the following on the 31st of October:
Whether it’s to bring our burnout prevention programs to your teams – or to support us as a volunteer, our message is the same … Mental wellbeing goes hand in hand with a career in cyber. You can have both.
Today (31 October 2023) marks the end of both mental health and cybersecurity awareness month for 2023. As someone who’s merged the two areas into a full-time mission, allow me to share my takeouts for the month.
1. Within our profession there is rarely any lack of awareness of the mental health challenges facing cyber teams.
2. Generally, people outside of cyber don’t pause to think that the profession should be any more stressed than anyone else. Our research says otherwise.
3. In a sense, we don’t need to show that cyber people are more stressed than anyone else to justify a special intervention. It’s enough to appreciate that it’s the criticality of the roles and the downstream multiplier effects that matter.
4. Our capacity to deliver *peer-informed* mental health into organisations is being hampered by silos. Specifically, some P&C/HR leadership are not yet convinced that cyber deserves special attention beyond the general employee. They rely on EAPs or generic offerings with their inherent limitations. There are some notable exceptions to this general observation. We thank those HR leaders we’ve worked with who see the special need.
5. This general attitude stems from a lack of direct understanding of the neurological drivers acting on some roles within cyber, eg SOC teams who face a constant daily barrage of incoming alerts which subverts their otherwise innate capacity to switch off at the end of the day. This is likely due to neurological changes. Incident responders, CISOs and just about anyone we talk to carry a sense of dread about what tomorrow will bring, in this seemingly unwinnable war.
6. This is exacerbated by the asymmetry between risk consequence (a single breach) and multiple daily wins which are invisible to the org. When no one can see the results of your efforts and see you as a cost centre or a brake on business, you retreat into a sense of isolation.
7. This under-appreciation is driving imposter syndrome and *general lack of self efficacy*. Our research shows this exceeds that of frontline healthcare workers and, within the trifecta of Maslach burnout drivers, is *the one that predicts resignation intent*. This has implications for organisational and national security, worsening a skills shortage with a loss of experience which can’t be grown overnight.
8. Now for some good news. This month we released the results of our first 10 pilot programs covering 150 cyber professionals. We measured ten stress metrics across the cohort and saw an average reduction of 28% in stress drivers over 8 weeks, with some measures as high as 36-50%. The qualitative responses were equally encouraging with an appreciation of care and dedicated time out during the working week.
You can find Peter’s LinkedIn post about the three webinars here.
