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The cybersecurity skills shortage continues to plague organizations across regions, markets and sectors.
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The keys to making a unified platform work are AI and automation technologies.
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Government agencies are experiencing more cyberattacks than ever before, at a time when the nation is facing a 40% cybersecurity skills talent shortage..
The cybersecurity skills shortage continues to plague organizations across regions, markets and sectors, and the government sector is no exception. According to (ISC)2, there are only enough cybersecurity pros to fill about 60% of the jobs that are currently open -- which means the workforce will need to grow by roughly 145% to just meet the current global demand.
The Government Accountability Office states that the federal government needs a qualified, well-trained cybersecurity workforce to protect vital IT systems, and one senior cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security has described the talent gap as a national security issue. The scarcity of such workers is one reason why securing federal systems is on GAO’s High Risk list.
Learn more: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IN CYBER SECURITY MARKET NEXT BIG THING BAE SYSTEMS.
Results of our survey, “Making Tough Choices: How CISOs Manage Escalating Threats and Limited Resources” show that CISOs currently devote 36% of their budgets to response and 33% to prevention.
~ CISCO
However, as security needs change, many CISOs are looking to shift budget away from prevention without reducing its effectiveness. An optimal budget would reduce spend on prevention and increase spending on detection and response to 33% and 40% of the security budget, respectively. This shift would give security teams the speed and flexibility they need to react quickly in the face of a threat from cybercriminals who are outpacing agencies’ defensive capabilities. When breaches are inevitable, it is important to stop as many as possible at the point of intrusion, but it is even more important to detect and respond to them before they can do serious damage.
AI-driven solutions frees security teams to work on more strategic problems, develop threat intelligence or focus on more difficult tasks such as detecting unknown threats.
~ IT teams
Federal agencies deal with a number of challenges unique to the public sector, including the age and complexity of IT systems as well as the challenges of the government budget cycle. IT teams for government agencies aren’t just protecting intellectual property or credit card numbers; they are also tasked with protecting citizens’ sensitive data and national security secrets..
Charged with this duty but constrained by limited resources, IT leaders must weigh the risks of cyber threats against the daily demands of keeping networks up and running. This balancing act becomes more difficult as agencies migrate to the cloud, adopt internet-of-things devices and transition to software-defined networks that have no perimeter. These changes mean government networks are expanding their attack surface with no additional -- or even fewer—defensive resources. It’s part of the reason why the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that government agencies were subjected to more security incidents and more breaches than any other sector last year.
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CYBERSECURITY MUST BE EMBEDDED IN EVERY ASPECT OF GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY