We like to highlight perspectives by experts who can add value to your work as a cybersecurity professional. This post, by Dr. Louiza Livschitz , concerns issues and remedies for CTO judgment under pressure. How Chronic Pressure Quietly Undermines Technical Judgment and  What You Can Do  About That Technical leaders are trained for clear thinking under duress, having built their careers solving complex problems in environments defined by high risk, urgency, and material consequences. For this reason, it can be deeply unsettling when judgment begins to feel less sharp. Under chronic pressure, many CTOs and technical executives observe subtle, yet impactful, shifts. Decisions feel heavier, options narrow more quickly, and familiar solutions become disproportionately more appealing than exploring new possibilities. The mind instinctively moves toward certainty sooner than it used to. This phenomenon is not a failure of intelligence or experience; it is a predictable, systemic eff...

Albert Einstein never actually said that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting something different ( source ). But it's a really smart thing to understand, because if your attempts at dealing with burnout feel like, well, insanity, then read on. Brendan kicked us off with burnout so let's pick up from there. What is 'burnout' (or burn-out)? According to a 2019 World Health Organization report ( here ), burnout is: "[A] syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy. Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life." The part that matters from an ...

Recently I have seen mentions in different outlets of the problem of burnout in an alarming number of cybersecurity programs. The Wall Street Journal had such a piece in which a number of CISOs complained that the programs they oversee are understaffed and what staff they have are burning out under the weight of the ever-growing deluge of cyber attacks of various kinds. The problem described in the piece resonated with me. The tone and thrust of the CISO's complaints did not. Before I talk about the problems to which I think I have useful input I want to outline the problem to which I think I do not have useful input: the burnout problem. I keep seeing the following dynamic in cybersecurity groups: there is a surge of cyber attacks and mission-driven employees that we are, the cybersecurity folks respond by working more hours to deal with these particular crises. But the surge turns into the new normal, so while we wait for the cavalry to arrive, we fall into working late on weekni...

Ah, Bhushan is back out on the speaking circuit. (Does the man have a day job?) His latest Substack post focuses on BS, which, just to set it straight now, he admits are his initials. Not that Bhushan Sethi doesn't focus on Bhushan Sethi. His target in the post is organizational BS. And that does not refer to buffalo sunning. The nub of Bhushan's post is about remarks on the future of work by Jamie Dimon , CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, made at the Davos meeting this year (video here ). His topics ranged from the impact of AI on organizations as well as no-nonsense leadership. Apparently these remarks affected Bhushan more than he initially thought they might, as they resounded in his February presentation  that I attended as well as this post in March.  Here are Dimon's themes as Bhushan has processed them: *Operationalizing "the cost of honesty" (Bhushan's term) as what you're going to pay as a leader to get honesty in the AI age. Bhushan summarized the Di...

Our executive coach guru, Scott Eblin, is at it again. In his latest post, "From March Madness to March Mastery: A Leader’s Guide to Managing Energy When the Pressure is On," Scott discusses how the concept of "March Madness" -- the single-elimination basketball tournaments that lead to crowing the best collegiate teams in the US -- can be seen by leaders as a means to create better teams. Scott calls it "March Mastery." He starts by discussing how March is the month where it finally, actually feels like we're done with winter -- for example, the winter of '25-'26 was the third-snowiest on record in the Boston area -- and now the year can blossom. He continues (quoting at length): Here’s what I’ve learned in 25 years of coaching executives: the leaders who navigate March successfully aren’t the ones who grind the hardest. They’re the ones who manage their energy – personal, team, and organizational – intentionally so that they can lead for both...

Our focus at Pythia Cyber is behavioral cybersecurity. That means we bring the best in behavioral science and organizational behavior practice to the realm of cybersecurity. We recently wrote about what it means to make the shift to a talent-based culture.  Starting out as a talent-based culture has several components, but one of the most obvious pathways is through assessing new employees for talent. As part of our mission, we have developed three assessments of cybersecurity talent -- front-line, manager, leader -- for the purpose of assessing talents related to effective cybersecurity performance. Talent assessment is entirely a 'normal course of business' in the behavioral science and organizational behavior realms. An organization that tests for talent has to become used to saying 'no' to candidates that it used to hire. There's nothing wrong with those people. But they lack the new talent that is required to be successful. A normal human response on the part o...