CIOs See Cybersecurity as Greatest Challenge
Chief Information Officers at various federal agencies believe that cybersecurity is the greatest long-term challenge that they face, according to a survey conducted by TechAmerica. The IT infrastructure and IT workforce also remain areas of greater concern.
In the survey, several CIOs reported that they see millions of attempts per day to attack their networks. While the majority are so-called “recreational hackers,” there have been increasing attempts by espionage agencies and cyber criminals seeking economic gain.
“CIOs described to us a set of threats that are increasing at an alarming rate, maintaining and sometimes widening the gapbetween the current and the desired security state,” the report states. “This has happened despite a great deal of funding and attention invested in trying to close the gap.”
One of the more difficult challenges the CIOs face is convincing all users on the network to take security more seriously. The CIOs also highlighted the difficulty in attracting and retaining the top IT talent to help keep the networks secure. They are also experiencing issues with balancing privacy and security as well as security with ensuring that individuals have access to the information they need.
One CIO plans to implement a system that will “…avoid the death spiral mode of patching exploited security holes and instead move to active monitoring that anticipates and identifies threats before they occur and that has ready counter responses.”
While the CIOs see a downward trend in the scale of attacks, the number of attacks appears to be increasing.
The survey report can be accessed here
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