Cyber security can involve routine and repetitive tasks. A shift to remote work due to the coronavirus pandemic has further blurred the lines between working and personal time. Hence a report on ‘Managing your IT security team’ arising from a survey of more than 5,200 people in IT and cyber security, in 31 countries in June 2020, by the cyber firm Kaspersky.
It found that most IT security staff engage in leisure activities during working hours, whether reading the news (42pc), watching videos on YouTube (37pc), and watching films or TV series (34pc); or physical exercise (31pc) or reading professional literature (33pc).
Almost half (46pc) of IT security employees believe that their colleagues left a job because of these workloads, while 41pc of employees across all departments shared this opinion. This may seem contradictory, with working time being spent on leisure, but 48pc actually explained their distractions from work were due to a need for a break between tasks, rather than because of boredom or a lack of work. When working from home, some duties and meetings may now be scheduled outside the standard 9am to 5pm workday, Kaspersky points out.
Andrey Evdokimov, Head of Information Security at Kaspersky said: “I don’t think that it’s an issue that employees are distracted from work. There should be control over task performance, not how many working hours are spent on a hobby. Also, it may be normal for people to watch videos, as it may give insights into how to solve a problem. All in all, if work is not interesting for someone and there is a lack of task management, an employee will find a way to do something different, even from the office.”
And Sergey Soldatov, Head of Security Operations Center (SOC) at Kaspersky said: “Employees should have goals, KPIs, objectives and metrics that characterise the quality and speed of their work. If performance is not affected, there are no problems with the fact that a person is distracted from work. If efficiency has fallen or differs from colleagues, it should be paid attention to. The aim of the manager is to inform employees about poor productivity as early as possible so they can find ways to solve the issue.”
Among the company’s recommendations on how to manage IT security teams:
Ensure that your company is fully equipped with IT security staff. Optimal numbers can be estimated as one cybersecurity employee for every ten in IT;
For round the clock SOC operation, there should be at least five employees responsible for monitoring. Organise shift work to avoid overworking;
Outsource typical IT security tasks. It grants in-house employees more time to focus on company-specific requirements and the protection of legacy IT infrastructure; and
Ensure that you give employees different, non-standard tasks so they are not stuck in a rut.
