SolarWinds, a Triple ‘ASTORS’ Award Winner in the 2021 AST Homeland Security Awards Program, has released the findings of their seventh Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey Report.

This survey includes responses from 400 IT operations and security decision-makers, which includes 200 federal, 100 state and local, and 100 education respondents.

“These results demonstrate that while IT security threats have increased—primarily from the general hacking community and foreign governments—the ability to detect and remediate such threats has not increased at the same rate, leaving public sector organizations vulnerable,” explains Brandon Shopp, Group Vice President, Product Strategy, SolarWinds.

“But the data also shows an increased awareness and adoption of zero trust, as well as a commitment to invest in IT solutions and adopt cybersecurity best practices outlined in the Administration’s Cybersecurity Executive Order.”

“It’s through these steps that public sector organizations can enhance their cybersecurity posture and fight the rising tide of external threats.”

 

2021 Key Findings Include:

• The general hacking community (56%) is the largest source of security threats at public sector organizations, followed closely by careless/untrained insiders (52%) and foreign governments (47%).

• For the first time in five years, careless insiders were not listed as the top security threat.

  • State and local governments (63%) are significantly more likely than other public sector groups to be concerned about the threat of the general hacking community.

  • Federal civilian agency respondents (58%) are more likely to indicate careless insiders as a threat compared to the defense community (41%).

 

• Cybersecurity threats from foreign governments (56%) are responsible for the greatest increase in concern among public sector respondents.

  • Defense respondents (68%) are the most likely to note foreign governments as a cybersecurity threat, compared to civilian (53%), state and local government (46%), and education (25%) respondents.

 

• When asked about specific types of security breaches, the public sector’s level of concern over ransomware (66%), malware (65%), and phishing (63%) has increased the most over the last year.

• Time to detection and resolution have not improved at the rate of increased IT security threats and breach concerns.

  • About 60% of respondents noted both the time to detection and time to resolution remained the same or worsened between 2020 and 2021.

 

• Lack of training (40%), low budgets and resources (37%), and the expanded perimeter (32%) as a result of increased remote work continue to plague public sector security pros.

  • Respondents also pointed to insufficient data collection and monitoring as a key impediment to threat detection (31%).

  • State government respondents (50%) indicate more so than local governments (25%) that budget constraints are an obstacle to maintaining or improving IT security.

  • Education respondents are the most likely to struggle to identify the root cause of security issues, hampering their ability to both detect and remediate such threats.

 

• Public sector respondents suggest improving investigative and remediation capabilities, as well as reducing barriers to sharing threat information between public and private sectors, as the top priorities for compliance with the Cybersecurity Executive Order.

  • Among SLED organizations, 86% are likely to adopt cybersecurity best practices and activities from the Cybersecurity Executive Order, including almost 100% of respondents from K-12 schools.

 

• More than 75% of public sector respondents note their organizations rely on a formal or informal zero-trust approach.

  • A majority of public sector respondents are familiar with the principle of least privilege (PoLP), and 70% of respondents are either already implementing PoLP or will implement PoLP within the next 12 months.

 

• The majority of public sector respondents realize the importance of IT security solutions and prioritize their investments highly in the next 12 months, with network security software (77%) being the top priority.

  • IT modernization investment priority leans toward replacing legacy applications (60%) and migrating systems to the cloud (60%).

  • When it comes to customer experience, IT services management (59%) holds investment priority.

  • And for digital transformation, implementing stakeholder platforms and portals (57%) is key.

 

“Public sector organizations are increasingly concerned about the threats from foreign governments,” added Tim Brown, CISO and Vice President of Security, SolarWinds.

“In looking at the survey data, it’s encouraging that a majority of the public sector is actively seeking to follow the roadmap outlined in the Administration’s Cybersecurity Executive Order, including enhanced data sharing between public and private sectors.”

“This is a key pillar of the SolarWinds Secure by Design approach, which encourages government and industry to present a united front against criminals and foreign cyberactors.”

To view the SolarWinds 2021 Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey Report in its entirety, please click here.

SolarWinds is a leading provider of simple, powerful, and secure IT management software.

The company’s solutions give organizations worldwide, regardless of type, size, or complexity, the power to accelerate business transformation in today’s hybrid IT environments.

SolarWinds continuously engages with technology professionals (IT service and operations professionals, DevOps and SecOps professionals, and database administrators), to understand the challenges they face in maintaining high-performing and highly available IT infrastructures, applications, and environments.

The insights the company gains from them, in places like their THWACK community, allow them to address customers’ needs now, and in the future.

(THWACKcamp is a free, annual, two-day, digital IT learning event brought to you by SolarWinds. Now in its 10th year, THWACKcamp features expert speakers, interactive sessions, prizes, and much more. Join thousands of tech professionals from all disciplines, along with industry leaders, product experts, and SolarWinds customers, for our 10th annual THWACKcamp! This lively, interactive event is about people, technology, industry insights, productivity, and fresh perspectives and explores the evolving roles we play in today’s shifting IT landscape. Register now at https://slrwnds.com/TC22-Registration. Courtesy of SolarWinds and YouTube.)

Their focus on the user and commitment to excellence in end-to-end hybrid IT management has established SolarWinds as a worldwide leader in solutions for observability, IT service management, application performance, and database management.

To Learn More, please visit www.solarwinds.com.

 

SolarWinds a Triple ‘ASTORS’ Winner in 2021 Homeland Security Awards Program

American Security Today’s Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards is the preeminent U.S. Homeland Security Awards Program, and now in its Sixth Year, continues to recognize industry leaders of Physical and Border Security, Cybersecurity, Emergency Preparedness – Management and Response, Law Enforcement, First Responders, as well as federal, state and municipal government agencies in the acknowledgment of their outstanding efforts to Keep our Nation Secure.

 

SolarWinds Worldwide (First of Three)

• Best Security Incident & Event Management (SIEM)

  • • SolarWinds Security Event Manager

• Threats to IT networks continue to accelerate and evolve and while enterprising hackers from external sources test the robustness of network security parameters, internal threats in the form of careless and malicious insiders remain a major and ongoing concern.

• It is critical that agencies take steps to combat these threats—and SolarWinds® Security Event Manager (SEM), formerly Log & Event Manager is a powerful weapon. This comprehensive SIEM solution delivers dynamic, real-time log collection and analysis for immediate and actionable threat intelligence.

(See a brief, high-level overview of the capabilities of SolarWinds Security Event Manager and how you can use the SIEM tool to detect threats, quickly respond to cyber incidents, and report compliance from a consolidated interface. Courtesy of Solarwinds Worldwide and YouTube.)

• SEM can capture and analyze log data in real-time from multiple sources and specific incidents, allowing users to quickly identify and remediate threats, uncover policy violations, and resolve vital network issues, and users can quickly shut down breached systems, block IP addresses, kill unexpected processes, and disable user accounts.

• SEM includes an easy-to-use, point-and-click interface and data visualization tools to quickly search log data, perform event forensics, and identify the cause of security incidents or network problems.

• Like all SolarWinds software, SEM is built to scale and can support IT environments of all sizes, and employs a node-based license model that allows users to stay within their planned budgets as they deploy and expand their IT infrastructures across multiple data centers and geographies. 

• SolarWinds SEM is used by nearly every U.S. federal civilian agency, DoD branch, and intelligence agency. It is available on the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule and other contract vehicles.

 

SolarWinds Worldwide (Second of Three)

• Best Network Security Solution

• • • SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager

• Successful threat mitigation requires continuous real-time monitoring of network configuration changes and potential policy violations, and alerts for automated detection and remediation of harmful security violations is essential.

• SolarWinds® Network Configuration Manager (NCM) offers compliance auditing and leverages baselines and differential viewers to help ensure that devices are configured correctly, with an automated change control workflow, bulk configuration updates, and automatic vulnerability assessments to help teams efficiently identify and fix vulnerabilities – all in a single solution.

• NCM offers several unique and powerful features to help agency IT professionals protect against vulnerabilities and prevent unauthorized network configuration changes, and uses Cisco® IOS® and ASA vulnerability scanning and NIST FISMA, DISA STIGs, and DSS PCI compliance assessments to improve network security.

• The software itself features hundreds of built-in compliance reports to help meet major auditing authority requirements, including DISA STIGs, NIST FISMA, and more, and THWACK®, SolarWinds’ online user community, provides a number of free report templates that can be used to prepare for an inspection.

• NCM is built for IT environments of all sizes and can easily scale to meet growing infrastructure needs. Licensing depends on the total number of devices an IT pro manages, including firewalls, routers, switches, or any other device that supports remote access and a command line interface.

(Increase visibility to your network devices with SolarWinds® Network Configuration Manager. Save time and improve network reliability by automating network configuration and change management to reduce configuration errors, recover quickly from downtime, and improve security and compliance. Courtesy of SolarWinds and YouTube.)

 

SolarWinds Worldwide (Third of Three)

• Best IT Access Control & Authentication System

• • • SolarWinds Access Rights Manager

• SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) is designed to assist IT and security admins to understand and act on high-risk access and minimize the impact of insider threats.

• SolarWinds ARM enhances security by monitoring, analyzing, and auditing Active Directory®, Azure AD, Exchange™, SharePoint, OneDrive, and file servers to see what changes have been made, by whom, and when those changes occurred, and customized reports can be generated to demonstrate compliance with most regulatory requirements.

• The solution also provisions and deprovisions users using role-specific templates to help assure conformity of access privilege delegation in alignment with security policies.

• ARM helps prevent data leaks and unauthorized changes to sensitive files and data through visualization of permissions on file servers. 

• SolarWinds ARM reduces IT workload through a web-based self-service portal, put access rights of data in the hands of data owners instead of admins.

(SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) helps IT and Security Admins meet compliance requirements with centralized provisioning, de-provisioning, management, and audit of user permissions and access to systems, data, and files while protecting their organizations from internal security breaches. Courtesy of SolarWinds and YouTube.)

• *SolarWinds has now been recognized with Multiple Awards in all Six Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards Programs.

 

AST strives to meet a 3 STAR trustworthiness rating, based on the following criteria:

• Provides named sources
• Reported by more than one notable outlet
• Includes supporting video, direct statements, or photos

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