More permanent remote workers, requirements for protecting health data, and a more dangerous threat landscape await security teams as the COVID crisis ends.

CISOs will have to manage new security challenges in a post-pandemic world. Reconfigured workplaces and employee health considerations, as well as increased threats, have been foisted on organizations just as many security workers are feeling tired and stressed out, according to experts speaking at last week’s RSA Conference.

“When COVID first hit, we jumped in like ‘we do insecurity all the time.’ We went into firefight mode, and we’re good at it, and we practice it,” Helen Patton, advisory CISO of Cisco Secure and former CISO at Ohio State University, said. “We’re hitting the cadence of this going on for so long. You can feel the stress; you can feel the overworked-ness.”

More focus on work-life balance

“We’ve been running our folks way over 100% for 18 months, and there’s no end in sight to that,” Patton continued. “I think we have to get better at planning for the unexpected, which means planning for the team so that we’re not burning them out.”

The increased workload did have some upsides, Patton said. “I do think that as a result, we saw some good things coming out of it, which is just an appreciation for that work-life balance.”

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