A new report from Tines shows 99% of SOCs are now using AI, yet manual workloads continue to impact teams and cause burnout. Why is this?
The research surveyed over 1,800 global security leaders and practitioners to understand how work is evolving in the age of AI. It found that security teams are enthusiastic about AI’s impact on their workflows and processes, but many are still facing barriers that prevent them from unlocking its true value.
Below are three major challenges uncovered by the Voice of Security 2026 report, along with what security professionals need to do now to overcome them.
Challenge 1: Lack of alignment
Today, almost half of respondents (43%) say their security function is viewed as a strategic enabler within their organization. Executive oversight is rising, with the vast majority of security professionals (87%) reporting an increase in board-level attention to cybersecurity over the last 12 months.
Despite this increased visibility, however, 52% say it’s very or extremely challenging to align security priorities with business objectives. Some 34% of senior security leaders report competing business and risk goals as the biggest barrier to alignment between security and leadership, while resource constraints and changing business priorities also rank highly.
Practitioners feel this strain, too, just slightly differently. For 35%, frequent priority changes make it difficult to connect their work to wider business goals, while one in four (24%) say too much manual work prevents alignment.
The takeaway? Security has a crucial strategic role to play, but without clear communication, visibility, and alignment to demonstrate how their work contributes to broader objectives, this impact may go overlooked.
Challenge 2: Manual workloads
Four out of five respondents (81%) say their security team’s workloads have increased in the last 12 months. Much of this is manual work: on average, security teams are spending 44% of their time on tasks that could be automated. That’s the equivalent of roughly 3.5 hours of an average 8-hour workday.
Consequently, more than three-quarters of security professionals (76%) report experiencing burnout in the last year, with heavy workloads cited as the number-one cause. Repetitive tasks and insufficient resources are also contributing factors.
Manual work and burnout don’t just create a negative work-life balance. They also increase risk in the form of compounding human errors and reduced team capacity to respond to urgent threats.
Security professionals already know that AI can reshape their workloads and take care of many of these tasks. They rate AI as “highly effective” at handling security jobs like threat intelligence, identity and access monitoring, compliance, and workflow automation. But without deeper adoption and orchestration of AI, teams are unable to reap these benefits.
Challenge 3: Operational blockers
The research revealed that the main barriers to effective automation are foundational: security or compliance concerns (35%), budget and resource constraints (32%), integration gaps between tools (31%), and outdated systems (30%) are all slowing down progress.
Many teams aren’t feeling the full impact of AI because it’s slotting into an already-broken system. Security tech stacks continue to grow, but on a shaky foundation, creating challenges like high maintenance costs, limited automation, and poor integration.
To get real results, teams need to rethink the foundation of how work gets done. The research suggests intelligent workflows are the missing layer. They unite automation, AI, and humans to move work smoothly across systems and people, combining core workflow types (rules-based automation, agentic AI, and human-in-the-loop) to let teams flexibly apply the right approach to each task.
Respondents say intelligent workflows provide benefits like higher productivity, faster response times, better data accuracy, and stronger compliance – so it’s perhaps no surprise that 92% rank an intelligent workflow platform as extremely or very valuable.
What teams need to do next
To address these challenges and set their teams up for success, security professionals should:
- Align with business priorities. Connect security KPIs to organizational objectives (like improving operational efficiency or reducing costs) to demonstrate value and strategic impact.
- Establish a formal AI policy. Pair adoption with strong governance and clear guardrails to responsibly implement and scale AI.
- Reduce manual work. Automate time-consuming tasks to protect team capacity, reduce burnout, and free practitioners to focus on high-impact work.
- Implement intelligent workflows. Start with pre-built templates to build confidence and accelerate results.
Want to dive deeper? Get even more insights and actionable tips by downloading the full report now.
