Jane Edwards
A new SolarWinds survey has found that 60 percent of public sector information technology decision-makers said they consider foreign governments as the top source of security threats to their organizations, while 58 percent and 52 percent of respondents cited untrained insiders and the general hacking community as primary threat sources, respectively.
The software company said Tuesday the annual Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey Report included responses from 400 IT security leaders and professionals from U.S. federal, state and local government agencies and the education sector polled by market research firm Market Connections in January.
“The threat foreign governments pose to the security of government IT systems has steadily increased throughout the years,” said Brandon Shopp, group vice president of product strategy at SolarWinds.
Respondents said spam, trojans and ransomware are the top three IT security threats facing their public sector organizations.
Sixty-six percent of public sector respondents said their IT environments are extremely or very complex to manage and more than 50 percent reported that they are moderately concerned with their software supply chain security.
Nearly 67 percent of respondents said they believe vendor attestations are extremely or very important. Two-thirds of IT security professionals from the public sector said they have either started requesting or are planning to seek software bills of materials from vendors.
The study also found that 90 percent of respondents stated that they see the importance of zero trust implementation.
“However, it is reassuring to see this year’s data showing public sector organizations continue to recognize top security threats, adopt zero-trust strategies, and seek vendor attestations and SBOMs to better secure the software supply chain – all of which are crucial to maintaining a high standard of security across federal and state government, as well as in the education and defense sectors,” added Shopp.
