Decision fatigue can undermine your cybersecurity

We cybersecurity professionals know that we continously face a constant barrage of decisions: from triaging alerts to assessing risks.
But did you also know that the sheer volume of these decisions can lead to something called decision fatigue?

This phenomenon can subtly degrade your security posture even though it was thorough and well thought from the beginning.

Decision fatigue is the mental exhaustion that results from making too many decisions in a short period.
Already now my guess is that you see where this is going? As you make more decisions during a day, your ability to weigh options and make sound choices simply diminishes.This can lead to poorer judgment, impulsive decisions, and even a tendency to avoid making decisions altogether.

In our field of cybersecurity, where constant decision-making is the norm, decision fatigue can undermine your ability to respond effectively to threats, leading to increased risk for your organization. Therefore recognizing and managing decision fatigue is crucial for maintaining a strong security posture and this is why I wrote this blogpost.


Let’s explore how decision fatigue affects cybersecurity and, more importantly, how to mitigate its risks.

• Alert overload and impulse actions:
  Fatigue from constant alerts can lead us to miss critical threats and make hasty decisions, prioritizing convenience over security in the situation.
  
  
• Oversimplification and inconsistent enforcement:
  Mental exhaustion may result us to in oversimplify protocols and do inconsistent policy application, creating security vulnerabilities.
  
  
• Burnout and 'good enough' mindset:
  Persistent fatigue can lead to burnout, reducing our vigilance and causing us to settle for suboptimal security solutions, increasing risk exposure.
  
  

Luckily there are some very practical things we can do to prevent the risk of risks of decision fatigue making us make bad decisions.
Here are a few:

• Automate and prioritize:
  Automate any routine tasks possible, such as filtering low-level alerts, to free up mental energy for more complex decisions. Prioritize your tasks to focus on high-impact decisions first, so you reduce the burden of less critical ones.
  
  
• Establish simple processes and collaborate:
  Develop simple, step-by-step processes for common security tasks, ensuring consistency even when fatigue sets in. (read more on why simplicity is key in this blogpost)
  Encourage team collaboration to distribute your cognitive load. This can also foster diverse perspectives and prevent burnout.
  
  
• Remember to take breaks and keep an eye out for each others:
  If you schedule regular breaks throughout your day to you get the chance to recharge and maintain that critical decision-making quality.
  Remember and remind each others to recognize when you’re fatigued and maybe even delay critical decisions if it’s possible to ensure better judgment.

As you can see decision fatigue is a real challenge in our field, where it is so easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of threats, logs and alarms.
But by recognizing its effects and implementing strategies to mitigate decision fatigue, you can maintain a robust security posture even in the face of all the relentless demands we face in our field.