Congress pledges mental health support after Cyber Command suicides

Congress pledged to get the required mental health services to the affected personnel and their families following a Sept. 3 briefing by U.S. Cyber Command to the House Armed Services Committee about a “suicide cluster” in a cybersecurity unit at Fort Meade, Maryland.

According to Bloomberg and other industry reports, the so-called cluster affected a specific unit in which five service members and/or affiliated personnel died by suicide over five weeks between early June and July this summer.

Critics contend that faced with a wartime footing, cyber units experience continuous “deployed in place” scenarios spanning multiple shifts, as well as chronic shortages of qualified cybersecurity personnel.

This news comes on the heels of reported incidents earlier this summer on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East in which crew members were reported to have jumped overboard.

A spokesperson for Rep. Sarah Elfreth, D-Md., whose district includes  many of the people who work at Fort Meade, said the lawmaker was continuing to work alongside U.S. Cyber Command to bring in additional mental health resources to Fort Meade.

The spokesperson said in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Elfreth specifically secured a provision requiring U.S. Cyber Command and the Cyber Mission Force to hire mental health professionals with security clearances at each of their operating locations.

“Her amendment also requires quarterly briefings on the status of the initiative, validating the clearances, challenges carrying out the initiative, and efforts to improve awareness to troops on the cleared physicians,” said the spokesperson.

Moving forward, Elfreth has been working to include mental health funding in the House's defense appropriations bill.

Reality check: Given that it’s an election year, the results of the November midterms will more than likely determine whether the defense bill actually gets to a floor vote this year.

Cybersecurity: high-stress profession

Security pros were largely silent on this news out of U.S. Cyber Command, citing that it was a sensitive topic, so most refused comment.  

“Security is a high-stress profession, so for team leads and managers that means realistic staffing, genuine rotations out of high-intensity roles, protected recovery time after major incidents, and better prioritization of what requires immediate action so teams are not stuck in a constant cycle of firefighting,” said Matan Shavit, GM, North America for Hadrian.

Shavit said AI makes this more important: it can remove repetitive work and help analysts process information faster, but it’s also accelerating both attack and defense.

“We should not allow the productivity gains from AI to become an expectation that teams, workloads and pressure can simply scale with the volume of attacks,” said Shavat.

Kevin Surace, chief executive officer at TokenCore, admitted that cybersecurity has become an incredibly high-stress job. Surace said these workers need support from the industry.

“Suicide is nothing to take lightly, and when the stress has become that great we have to be there to help them,” said Surace. “People strive for perfection but it’s unachievable. As humans we are imperfect and this shows the most when attacks are successful. While failure isn’t an option it’s also inevitable — even if occasionally — in cybersecurity.”