Burnout Is a Security Issue Too

Originally published on my old blog on 14 November 2013, just after my ignite talk on burnout at DevOpsDays London. Lightly edited.

If we define security using the CIA triad of confidentiality, integrity and availability, and apply it to the staff in your organisation, then burnout is a failure of at least integrity and availability.

If people work through burnout, their work will be sub-optimal – which you can reasonably call an integrity issue.

If they leave, any domain knowledge, and any knowledge of how the company's own processes work, goes with them. You don't have access to it any more, so it is an availability issue.

Security issues are (mostly) taken seriously, but human issues that affect the business seldom are. We need to change this.

2026 note: The longer write-up of the talk and what followed it is in Burnout: The Elephant in the Room.