14 DAY TRIAL // British security experts are incredibly stressed out these days, a recent survey indicates, and it’s all because of Heartbleed and its security implications.
The OpenSSL vulnerability isn’t the only cause of stress, of course, since the list also includes the discontinuation of support for Windows XP by Microsoft.
As if the IT industry weren’t stressful enough already, these recent events have made things even harder for employees in this sector. In fact, 68 percent of the IT staff in the United Kingdom are currently considering leaving their current role due to job-related stress.
For the third time in a year, high levels of work stress are contributing to high job dissatisfaction among people working in IT. Despite some budget pressure reductions, these levels were only slightly reduced over 2013.
The study conducted by Opinion Matters takes into account the thoughts of 200 British administrators in companies of 10 or more people and it sought to gauge the respondents’ stress levels at work, while also trying to locate their main stressors.
Key findings of the survey indicate that 36 percent of IT workers have missed social functions or cut down on family time due to issues they had to handle at work. Another 28 percent have admitted to regularly losing sleep over work pressure and 19 percent to even falling ill due to high stress levels. A quarter of all those interviewed felt that they were by far the most stressed person in their social or family group.
It’s also become a habit for IT staffers to frequently work overtime, often without additional pay, as well as during the weekends.
“IT is renowned for being one of the most stressful white-collar jobs to undertake, now more so than ever given the critical role IT plays in everything from ecommerce to facilities management. There is a lot that organisations can do to reduce the burden – and with it the stress levels – carried by IT staff. Providing realistic IT budgets and staffing levels helps a lot, but there are productivity changes that can also significantly de-stress the IT department, such as investing in technology to automate personnel-intensive activities like deploying software updates and managing sprawling Wi-Fi networks and the myriad of mobile devices that users are bringing to work,” said Sergio Galindo, general manager of the infrastructure business unit at GFI Software.
While this paints a pretty sad picture, things over in the United States seem to be even worse. According to data, 78.5 percent of US IT staff are already looking for a new job.