Defensive security is a challenging job. The individuals on the front lines of this defense—blue teams and Security Operations Center (SOC) engineers— shoulder the critical responsibilities of cataloging and protecting systems and devices, managing vulnerabilities, continuously monitoring, and responding to endless threats.
There’s always more to do for each defensive security engineer than one person can handle, and the job requires them to be available on-call, so they can never disconnect. This demand can take a toll and lead to burnout, which has become a major concern in the industry. In this article, we explore the main challenges that defensive cybersecurity teams face and consider potential solutions to these challenges.
The 6 Main Challenges for Blue Team Practitioners
1. Tool Overload and Integration Nightmares
According to the 2024 CDW Cybersecurity Report, 68% of organizations juggle from 10 up to 49 security tools, each designed to address different security challenges at different levels. This abundance of platforms might seem beneficial on the surface, as they should allow organizations to protect themselves on very different levels. But in fact, blue teams often struggle to manage and integrate these tools, resulting in a fragmented security tech stack and data silos.
There is also a discrepancy between vendor promises and actual platform performance, which adds to the frustration. The time and resources spent on deploying and figuring out how to integrate the tools could be better allocated to actual threat prevention efforts.
To at least partially resolve this problem, many organizations are now pursuing vendor consolidation (reducing the number of security suppliers) to minimize integration issues and avoid conflicts between different systems from different vendors.
Large security solution providers understand the importance of this shift as well. They’ve started working towards platformization—creating platforms that consolidate multiple security functions into a single interface, so there’s no need for disparate tools.
Another strategy that can help organizations avoid a fragmented tool stack is choosing security platforms specifically designed to simplify integration with other solutions, offering a wide range of pre-built third-party integrations. Some vendors even offer custom development services to tailor integrations to their clients' specific environments, which can be a worthwhile investment for streamlining security operations.
2. Alert Fatigue and Duplication Across Platforms
Aside from the integration challenge, a fragmented tech stack can lead to alert fatigue, as blue teams are often bombarded with redundant alerts of low quality. Specifically, security professionals are overwhelmed by false positives and duplicates that waste valuable time and resources—SOC teams receive more than 4,000 alerts per day and spend up to three hours manually analyzing them.
Platform consolidation can help combat alert fatigue since the volume of alerts is significantly reduced when multiple security functions are integrated into a unified system to provide a single source of truth for alerts. However, regardless of their platform approach, organizations should opt for security solutions that generate highly accurate and contextualized security alerts.
3. Lack of Recognition from the Management Team
Another challenge that has been plaguing blue teams since their very inception is that they are often perceived more as a cost center rather than a value-adding function. This mindset stems from the fact that the team’s success is measured by the absence of security incidents, a gauge that is not very visible to management.
The reality is that security teams face criticisms whether an incident occurs or not. They face unrealistic expectations coupled with limited resources—management often expects comprehensive protection and rapid incident response without providing adequate budget and tools. Defensive security practitioners are further disheartened by the fact that red teams are often praised and recognized more than blue teams.
To address the lack of recognition, blue team leaders have to effectively communicate their value to the management team through clear and concise reporting of security activities, the current status of the organization’s attack surface, and the potential risks mitigated by current security efforts. Blue teams must be able to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) in security tools and personnel, which entails quantifying the impact of security incidents prevented.
4. Understaffing
Security teams are not growing at the same pace as attack surfaces—as an organization’s attack surface expands, its security team is most likely to become understaffed and overstretched.
They are responsible not only for day-to-day monitoring and incident response but also for continuously learning and adapting to new attack techniques and trends. As highlighted by Reddit users in the r/AskNetsec community, the expectation often extends beyond traditional 9-to-5 hours because attackers don’t stick to a schedule, so blue teams are expected to stay on duty until everything is protected—an unattainable goal without sufficient resources.
Automating repetitive tasks can significantly reduce the workload on understaffed teams, freeing up their time to focus on what’s really important—proactive threat hunting, vulnerability management, security architecture and design, and incident analysis, to name a few critical and strategic activities blue teams should prioritize.
5. Shadow IT and Poor Visibility
According to Gartner, 75% of employees will implement technology outside of IT’s visibility by 2027 (up from 41% in 2022). The rise of shadow IT—the use of unapproved devices, software, and services—has become a significant challenge for security teams.
When employees or departments use technology solutions without the oversight of the IT or security teams, it creates blind spots in the organization’s attack surface. After all, it’s very difficult to secure assets that security teams don’t even know exist.
A proactive approach to asset discovery and management is crucial to cope with shadow IT. Organizations should use attack surface management tools to continuously discover digital assets and build and maintain their asset inventory.
6. Vulnerability Management Difficulties
Another source of burnout for security teams is the balancing act required in managing vulnerabilities. They need the vulnerabilities to be promptly patched to avoid exploitation, and at the same time, they have to ensure business continuity, which can be very tricky since applying patches can sometimes require system downtime. Patches can also introduce compatibility issues. Therefore, business units that prioritize uninterrupted operations may resist, causing delays in critical software updates and leaving the organization exposed.
To improve vulnerability management, security teams have to clearly communicate the severity and potential impact of identified vulnerabilities so that all stakeholders understand the risk involved.
Conclusion
Blue team and SOC analysts face a lot of difficult problems. Some, like understaffing and difficulties in explaining the value of cybersecurity, aren’t likely to go away soon. However, with others, security leaders can help by implementing well-integrated tools, enriching alerts with context, automating everything that’s possible, and balancing management expectations with a strong security posture.