Your CISO Is Running on Sleep Debt
The security industry has a burnout problem, and most companies are doing next to nothing about it. Steve Shelton, founder of Green Shoe Consulting, has the data. His research found that 41% of CISOs are operating at severe burnout levels.
On the latest episode of the Truth in Cyber podcast, Oscar Minks and Mel Kolinski sat down with Steve to dig into what’s really going on. Spoiler: that 41% is probably low.
CISOs are trained to keep quiet about stress, so they lowball it. One Fortune 100 CISO rated himself a 6 out of 10. Then he mentioned sleeping three hours a night, working from 3:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., and being on his third marriage. Steve’s verdict? More like a 15.
“We talk a lot in cybersecurity about technical debt. At Green Shoe, we talk about sleep debt.”
Steve Shelton, Green Shoe Consulting
That debt compounds. Run on empty long enough and your decisions, patience, and communication all take the hit. Those are the exact skills a security leader needs when things go sideways.
Burnout lives in the system
Being tired doesn’t automatically mean you’re burned out. The research defines it as three things stacked together: exhaustion, cynicism, and the sense that your work doesn’t matter. Thirty years of studies point to the same culprit, too. How an organization is built, from workload to resources to whether people feel safe speaking up, drives burnout far more than any individual weakness. A yoga app won’t fix a broken org chart.
Steal this move
Steve’s favorite check-in takes ten seconds. Ask your team, “On a scale of 1 to 5, where’s your energy right now?” If someone says 3, ask what’s draining them. Then ask what you can do to get them to a 4. The catch: if you ask and don’t follow through, you’ve opened a wound and walked away.
Oscar backs this up at FRSecure. He forces people to take PTO, spends most of his one-on-ones on how people are actually doing, and runs a monthly mental health bingo card with a gift card as the prize.
AI won’t save you
Think AI will lighten the load? Steve isn’t buying it. Any time AI frees up gets filled with more work, and it piles on a new stressor: the fear of becoming irrelevant.
Burnout is an industry problem with real fixes. Leaders just have to go first.
Catch the full episode to hear the rest.
