Staffing for Security: Don't Optimize

Abstract

Security threats are irregular, sometimes very sophisticated, and difficult to measure in an economic sense. Much published data about them comes from either anecdotes or surveys and is often either not quantified or not quantified in a way that's comparable across organizations. It's hard even to separate the increase in actual danger from year to year from the increase in the perception of danger from year to year. Staffing to meet these threats is still more a matter of judgment than science, and in particular, optimizing staff allocation will likely leave your organization vulnerable at the worst times.