Disclosure: This article is based on publicly available information about Intezer’s SOC Burnout Index. I have no professional relationship, partnership, or collaboration with Intezer. This analysis represents my independent perspective on their methodology and its potential benefits for security teams.

Security Operations Centre (SOC) teams face a relentless barrage of threats every day. As cyber attacks grow in both sophistication and frequency, the analysts tasked with defending organizations often find themselves pushed to their limits. Alert fatigue, constant vigilance requirements, and repetitive tasks can take a significant toll on even the most dedicated security professionals.

Behind many security breaches lies an overlooked factor: human burnout. SOC analysts form the front line of defense for organizations worldwide, but the pressure they face has real consequences. Exhausted analysts make mistakes, miss critical alerts, and eventually seek employment elsewhere, creating a dangerous cycle of vulnerability and knowledge loss.

According to industry research cited by Intezer, security analysts should spend no more than 4-6 hours per day on intensive triage work to maintain productivity and avoid burnout. Yet many SOC teams routinely exceed these thresholds, creating an unsustainable environment that threatens both individual wellbeing and organizational security.

The SOC Burnout Index

Recognizing this critical issue, cybersecurity company Intezer has developed a practical method to quantify analyst burnout risk. In their recently published framework, “Intezer’s SOC Burnout Index”, they outline a structured approach to measuring the impact of excessive workloads on security teams.

As Itai Tevet, Co-founder and CEO of Intezer explains in the article published on March 11, 2025, the index provides security leaders with “a simple yet powerful tool to better measure, understand, and manage burnout.”

How the SOC Burnout Index works

The SOC Burnout Index quantifies how much a security team exceeds or falls below a sustainable triage workload. The calculation follows four straightforward steps:

  1. Define Your Triage Threshold: Determine a realistic, sustainable workload threshold for your SOC team. The example used by Intezer assumes 6 hours per analyst per day across a team of 8 analysts, resulting in 960 hours per month (8 analysts × 6 hours/day × 20 workdays).

  2. Calculate Actual Triage Hours: Track your team’s actual alert triage hours per month, both before and after implementing automation solutions.

  3. Measure Excess Load: Calculate how much your team exceeded the threshold: 
    Excess Load = max(0, Actual Triage Hours - Team Threshold)
  4. Calculate The SOC Burnout Index: Divide excess load by team threshold and multiply by 100 to get a percentage: 
    SOC Burnout Index (%) = (Excess Load ÷ Team Threshold) × 100

Real-World impact

Intezer provides a compelling example of how this index works in practice. In their case study, a team’s burnout index dropped from 92.1% before automation to 0% after implementing their Autonomous SOC solution, with actual triage hours decreasing from 1,844 to just 397 hours per month.

This dramatic reduction doesn’t just improve analyst wellbeing—it directly impacts the organization’s security posture. As Intezer notes in their article, burnout leads to:

  • Higher Error Rates: Exhausted analysts are more likely to miss threats or make incorrect triage decisions
  • Increased Turnover: Constant stress drives valuable talent out the door
  • Lower Productivity: Overworked teams have less capacity for proactive threat hunting and process improvement

More than just numbers

What makes the SOC Burnout Index particularly valuable is how it transforms a human issue into quantifiable metrics that can be communicated to executives and budget holders. Security leaders can use these numbers to:

  • Demonstrate clear ROI for automation investments
  • Make data-driven decisions about team staffing and workload
  • Proactively address burnout before it leads to turnover or security incidents
  • Justify technology investments based on their impact on human performance

If you’re leading a security team, consider implementing the SOC Burnout Index as part of your operational metrics. Start by:

  1. Establishing your team’s sustainable triage threshold
  2. Tracking actual hours spent on alert investigation
  3. Calculating your current burnout index
  4. Exploring solutions—whether technological or organizational—that can bring that number down

The cybersecurity industry has long focused on technical metrics while sometimes neglecting the human element of security operations. With tools like the SOC Burnout Index, we can begin to address both sides of the equation, creating security teams that are not only more effective but also more sustainable in the long run.