Stress and frustration continue to plague the security operations center (SOC): nearly 70% report understaffed teams, and 60% say their workloads have spiked over the past year.

The new study, published by security automation platform vendor Tines, polled 468 SOC analysts at organizations with 500 or more employees. Burnout was a major theme of the findings, with 71% of SOC analysts saying they felt burned out on the job. That's become a common theme as the cybersecurity threat landscape has expanded while headcount for security positions has lagged behind job openings.

Some 64% of SOC analysts say manual work eats up more than half of their time, and reporting and monitoring are their least favorite parts of the job. More than 65% say half of their security tasks could be automated, leaving them time to do deeper security work. And 64% are considering leaving the organization for a new position somewhere else.

"While understaffing and low budgets do hold teams back, what's dragging them under is repetitive, manual tasks, which in turn keep them from working on higher-impact projects that contribute to their organization's overall security posture," Thomas Kinsella, COO and co-founder of Tines, said in a statement about the report.