“Foreign governments” are now the No. 1 cybersecurity concern for US public sector IT professionals, reports SolarWinds, itself rebuilding after a 2020 hack blamed on Russia.
In its seventh annual Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey Report released this morning, SolarWinds found that a majority of education organizations surveyed have not improved their cybersecurity detection or resolution capabilities even as attacks against schools have skyrocketed during the pandemic.
By Brandon Shopp
Jul 09, 2021
As cyberattacks become more sophisticated across ever-expanding attack surfaces, it’s easy to assume the security team will take care of risk management and mitigation. But security is everyone’s responsibility.
Indeed, employees both within the agency and across the contractor community are one of the greatest risks to the government’s security postures. According to the latest SolarWinds Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey, careless and untrained insiders are the largest source (52%) of security threats, a trend that has remained steady for more than five years.
Just as changes must be made at the organizational level, government agencies must improve their security posture at the individual level as well. That’s not pointing the finger at the user, but because of the unprecedented levels of access and privilege users have (even if they don’t know it), they become a prime target for attackers.