Tony Kirtley has spent 26 years responding to some of the worst cyber incidents on the planet. He leads incident response for IBM X-Force. And right now he’s more worried about the people doing the work than the machines accelerating the attacks.

AI-driven threats jumped 56% last year. They added roughly $1 million to the average cost of a data breach. Yet Kirtley argues the real vulnerability sits inside overstretched teams that already juggle multiple crises at once. Human endurance, not silicon speed, may determine who wins the next round of digital conflict.

The numbers paint a stark picture. According to IBM research cited in Fortune, 68% of incident responders routinely handle two or more attacks simultaneously. Another 67% report daily stress or anxiety tied directly to their work. Ransomware has made things worse. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed said rising ransomware activity heightened the psychological demands of the job.

Engagements drag on. In the U.S., one-third of responders worked more than 12 hours a day during peak periods. Many incidents stretch four to six weeks. Kirtley has lived it. He’s missed family events because attackers strike on holidays. He’s watched colleagues step away to recover after brutal incidents. Relationships strain. Sleep evaporates. Focus erodes.

But burnout isn’t simply a wellness issue. It becomes an operational weakness. Exhausted analysts miss subtle signals. They escalate slowly. Judgment suffers. In a world of machine-speed attacks, that delay can prove decisive.

Recent coverage echoes the alarm. A Bloomberg investigation from late August detailed how AI-powered hacking campaigns target hospitals and banks, pushing defenders to exhaustion. One former security engineer described the clarity of purpose that once defined the work. Now the volume threatens to break people before technology does.

Industry data keeps piling up. Red Canary’s survey of 550 security leaders, reported by Cybersecurity Dive in September, found three-quarters lacked enough skilled staff for intrusion detection. Nearly as many reported skills shortages in incident response. The time required to resolve intrusions has grown. Eighty-five percent fear being overwhelmed by threat volume without AI assistance.

Yet those same leaders approach automation warily. Three-quarters worry AI will dull their problem-solving skills. Forty-three percent said their organizations already suffered a cyber incident involving AI tools. The technology promises relief from drudgery. It also risks making humans less sharp exactly when sharpness matters most.

So the conversation must expand. Kirtley calls for equal focus on workforce resilience, operational design and conditions that let defenders excel. In an October 8 piece for TokenPost, he urged leaders to discuss burnout alongside adversarial AI and autonomous agents.

Other voices reinforce the point. At the Billington Cybersecurity Summit, Debbie Sallis, executive director of The Cyber Guild Foundation, told TechTarget that burnout represents operational readiness and resilience. It is mission-critical. ISC2 data cited in the same coverage shows 48% of cybersecurity professionals feel exhausted keeping up with threats and new technologies. Forty-seven percent report frequent overwhelm from workloads.

Gartner, in a September report, went further. It labeled CISO burnout a critical operational risk. Artificial intelligence, expected to deliver productivity gains, instead amplifies workloads for many leaders. The research firm advised sharing AI governance responsibilities while scaling security innovations sustainably.

These warnings arrive as organizations race to adopt AI everywhere. Proofpoint’s latest Voice of the CISO survey, covered by Cybersecurity Dive on October 8, revealed 85% of CISOs now rank safe use of AI assistants and automation among their top two-year priorities. Eight in 10 feel pressure to deliver without matching increases in resources or expertise. Human behavior remains the biggest vulnerability, cited by 80% of respondents, up sharply from the prior year.

Swimlane’s fresh data, also released October 8 and reported in Cybersecurity Dive, offers a glimmer of optimism from the front lines. Sixty-two percent of SOC workers say AI helps them build new skills. Ninety-two percent of that group report higher job satisfaction. Even among those who feel AI limits skill development, satisfaction rises. Yet nearly half predict SOC analyst careers will grow harder to enter as automation claims repetitive tasks.

The tension is clear. AI can reduce alert fatigue and handle routine triage. It cannot replace the seasoned judgment required when attacks blend novel techniques with speed. Nor can it fix broken shift schedules, unrealistic stakeholder expectations or cultures that reward heroic all-nighters.

Kirtley has seen too many talented responders burn out after one incident too many. He knows the pattern. Weeks of around-the-clock effort. Strained personal lives. Diminished capacity that carries over into the next crisis. Multiply that across global teams facing 56% more AI-augmented attacks and the math grows ugly.

Organizations that treat defender wellbeing as a side issue invite failure. Those that redesign operations, set realistic boundaries, invest in mental health resources and use AI to augment rather than replace human insight stand a better chance.

The threats won’t slow. Attackers already deploy autonomous agents and machine-speed campaigns. Defenders must match that pace without sacrificing the one advantage that still matters most. Clear thinking under pressure. Sound decisions when seconds count. The ability to connect disparate clues that no algorithm has seen before.

After more than two decades in the trenches, Kirtley believes the industry has reached a fork. It can keep celebrating technical breakthroughs while quietly losing its best people. Or it can confront the human cost head-on and build systems that sustain both technology and talent.

The choice, he suggests, will shape security outcomes for years to come. Burnout doesn’t announce itself with fanfare. It creeps in through missed alerts, delayed responses and quiet resignations. By the time leaders notice the gap, adversaries may already be inside.