Cyber Exodus: Burnout Symptoms, Exit Intention, and Peer Response in Online Cybersecurity Communities
Text analysis of 354,861 security practitioner posts shows burnout symptoms differ in causes, and mental distance predicts exit intention peers respond to least.
Researchers adapted the Burnout Assessment Tool into a text annotation scheme, reaching macro F1 of 0.75 across four symptoms and 0.98 for detecting any burnout signal. They applied it to 354,861 posts and 296,442 replies from five online cybersecurity practitioner communities. The four symptoms point to distinct workplace problems; mental distance is the only symptom unrelated to operational issues and co-occurs with stated intention to leave roughly twice as often as other symptoms. When posters mention leaving, peer replies shift toward career advice, but this shift is smallest for mental distance.
- Annotated 354,861 posts and 296,442 replies from five online cybersecurity practitioner communities.
- Annotation scheme reaches macro F1 0.75 across four symptoms, 0.98 for any signal.
- Mental distance is the only symptom unrelated to operational problems like staffing or workload.
- Mental-distance posts state exit intention roughly twice as often as other single symptoms.
- Peer replies shift toward career advice when leaving is mentioned, least for mental distance.
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgSecurity practitioners burn out at high rates, and the resulting attrition is itself a security problem. This workforce is hard to study: security operations centers are closed to outside researchers, studies that reach practitioners recruit through employers, and those who have disengaged most may have the least reason to answer an employer's survey.
By Nadia Mehjabin · arxiv.org
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.