83 percent of system security professionals say their time is wasted fixing other IT problems at work, according to a survey.

80 percent also revealed that fixing other IT problems took up more than one hour of their working week, “which in a year could equate to more than $88,000,” according to Beta News.

“For organizations, eight percent of professionals surveyed helping colleagues out five hours a week or more could be costing over $400,000,” Beta News reported. “Organizations are potentially paying qualified security professionals salaries upwards of $100,000 a year and seeing up to 12.5 percent of that investment being spent on non-security related activities.”

Bleeping Computer explained on Friday that security professionals are often being used for functions other than their expertise.

“This mostly happens because security professionals are often mistaken for system administrators. In reality, security professionals go through a much lengthier and more complex training process, mainly because they have to deal with very specialized and sensitive problems,” they explained. “As such, their salaries are much higher than your regular IT geek that fixes your display driver or changes your faulty networking cable.”

“According to another survey carried out by Indeed, the average salary of a security professional is $114,388 per year or around $55 per hour,” Bleeping Computer continued. “If a security pro is wasting one hour per week doing non-security work, that means the company is wasting his talents, and effectively losing money.”

Michael Callahan, the CMO of FireMon, who conducted the survey, concluded in the survey that security professionals are often “expected by colleagues” to fix other, more simple issues.

“Not only are modern IT security professionals faced with a growing complexity and skills gap and keeping up with technology investments and advancements, but they are also expected by colleagues to help them sort out their personal computing woes,” he proclaimed. “IT personnel are usually the helpful, go-to people for sorting out issues, but it’s only when you start to cost it out that you realize how much money it equates to. This is on top of a very demanding job where they often juggle many different workstreams and projects, oftentimes relying on strictly manual processes and workflows.”

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.