In security, a good day usually looks like nothing at all. The alert got closed before it turned into anything, the patch went in on time, and the phishing email got reported instead of clicked. Nobody outside the team notices, and a lot of the time nobody inside the team says anything either. We just move on to the next ticket. I’ve come to think that quiet costs us more good people than we realize.
A group in the Netherlands recently looked at what’s connected to stress and to cyber folks thinking about leaving. The Municipality of The Hague teamed up with a firm called MultiTeam Solutions, surveyed 86 security professionals, and also ran three focus groups. One person said something I haven’t been able to shake: “The absence of something bad is not the same as the presence of something good.” I can picture that person. It’s the analyst on night shift who did everything right and went home without anyone noticing.
It’s a small study, so I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, and it only tells us how likely people said they were to leave, not who actually did. But what they found sounds a lot like what I’ve seen over the years. The folks who felt good at their jobs and felt backed by their direct boss were the ones who reported less stress and were less likely to say they’d leave. Both of those come largely down to the leader.
The bigger picture points the same way. ISACA’s 2026 State of Cybersecurity survey, which heard from more than 1,800 security professionals around the world, found that 55 percent of organizations have trouble keeping qualified people. High work stress was the top reason people leave, cited by 52 percent, followed by limited chances for promotion and development at 47 percent. Pay matters, but it isn’t the whole story.
The Hague report suggests a few skills any leader can practice:
- Name the pressure. Write down the two or three things that keep you and your team under constant strain, and sort out which ones you can actually do something about.
- Give feedback that looks forward. Pick one decision or moment and coach toward next time. The report says good feedback is genuine, specific, and timely, and that under pressure it’s often delayed, softened, or skipped.
- Acknowledge progress out loud. Walk back through a recent project, find the good calls nobody mentioned, and then mention them.
Ken Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager is built around catching people doing things right. In security, most of what people do right is invisible, so we have to go looking for it on purpose. This week, find one person whose good work kept something bad from happening, and tell them exactly what they did and why it mattered. It takes a minute, and it might be part of the reason they’re still on your team next year.
Links: the Hague report (https://thehague.com/cybersecurity/sites/thcb_cybersecurity/files/2026-10/Research%20Report_Retaining%20Talent%20is%20a%20Leadership%20Capability_October%202026_0.pdf) and ISACA’s article (https://www.isaca.org/resources/news-and-trends/newsletters/atisaca/2026/volume-19/isaca-state-of-cybersecurity-report-tracks-ais-growing-influence-on-security-landscape).
