Government organizations lag behind in implementing latest security practices

Cyber attacks are becoming more complex and intense. In addition, many hackers are interested in the types of sensitive data held by government bodies. Yet a new study shows that these organizations are lagging behind in dealing with IT risks.

The study by data visibility platform Netwrix reveals that while 57 percent of government entities focus on endpoint protection, 72 percent experienced security incidents in 2016, the most common reasons being human errors and insider misuse.

It's not surprising then that 100 percent of respondents from the government sector see employees as the biggest threat to security. In addition, 75 percent of government entities lack visibility into BYOD, 67 percent lack insight into shadow IT, and 60 percent have no visibility into their cloud infrastructures.

Only 14 percent of government organizations consider themselves to be well prepared to beat IT risks. IT departments are mainly constrained by lack of time (57 percent), insufficient budget (43 percent), and IT infrastructure complexity (43 percent). They are, however, willing to invest in protection against intellectual property theft (43 percent), data breaches (29 percent) and fraud (14 percent).

"Government entities have to embrace the new cyber security reality. While they continue to focus on the traditional perimeter-defense approach, the world has changed, and they are not prepared for new threats," says Michael Fimin, CEO and co-founder of Netwrix. "Government agencies need to gain visibility into what is happening across all of their critical assets -- both outside and inside the perimeter. With user behavior analytics at their fingertips they can stay on top of abnormal activity caused by human errors, malicious insiders and outside attackers."

You can read more about the report's findings on the Netwrix blog.

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