Abstract

The modern workspace puts Cybersecurity professionals under immense pressure. There are relentless cognitive and emotional demands on them in the discharge of their responsibilities, such as monitoring alerts, responding to incidents, and maintaining vigilance against ever-evolving threats. Therefore, adequate rest, which includes sufficient sleep, mental breaks, and downtime, is crucial for them to maintain the much-needed high levels of attention, decision-making, and creative problem-solving that this role demands. Conversely, rest deprivation precipitates cybersecurity fatigue, which leads to an increase in error rates, thereby undermining incident response and accelerating burnout and turnover. 
This article reviews the importance of rest for sustaining cyber-defence capabilities. Additionally, it outlines the human-factors mechanisms by which fatigue degrades performance and proposes organizational strategies to embed recovery into security operations.