52% of Analysts Have Considered Leaving the Cybersecurity Sector Due to Stress
66% of organisations have suffered a data breach in the last year and 46% end up spending more time maintaining tools than protecting them, according to a study by Splunk.
Cybersecurity tasks are a headache for many organisations. According to the global State of Security 2025 report by Splunk, a Cisco company, 66% suffered data breaches in the last year. This is now the most frequent incident.
In addition, 46% admit that they spend more time maintaining their tools than on protection issues.
In fact, 59% consider tool maintenance to be the main cause of inefficiencies.
Maintenance, data silos and alert fatigue are slowing down work in Security Operations Centres (SOCs). According to the study, 55% of analysts are forced to deal with an excessive number of false positives.
In addition, 78% of those surveyed report that their security tools are scattered and disconnected. For 69%, this disconnection poses a moderate or significant challenge.
This means that SOCs have challenges to solve, and artificial intelligence (AI) has yet to expand. Only 11% of respondents completely trust AI for critical tasks.
The key, for Splunk, is to shape a SOC that combines this technological advancement with human expertise.
‘Organisations are increasingly relying on AI for critical tasks such as threat detection and analysis, but we don’t see this technology completely replacing the SOC, and rightly so,’ says Michael Fanning, CISO at Splunk.
‘Human oversight remains critical to effective cybersecurity,’ he notes, “and AI should complement and enhance our capabilities where it really matters: in defending the organisation.”
Generative AI can help with security data queries, analysis, and policy writing.
Sharing information between security and monitoring teams is also not a widespread practice, although those who do so achieve improvements in incident detection and resolution.
Currently, analysts are under a high level of pressure related to staff shortages and burnout. Fifty-two per cent say their team is overworked.
The same figure, 52%, has considered leaving the cybersecurity sector due to stress. Forty-three per cent point to unrealistic expectations from management.
