Gov’t IT Decision Makers See Cybersecurity as Primary Obstacle: Survey

According to a new study commissioned by IBM, a solid majority of current and former US government IT decision makers feel that security is the main obstacle that stands in the way of modernizing government systems.

The study — titled “Government Index for IT Modernization” — saw nearly 70 percent of respondents answer that security risks are the main barrier to the migration of government IT systems to modern cloud platforms. The same study also found that security now ranks above the reduction of costs as the top reason to modernize IT infrastructures.

Conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, the study surveyed more that 500 current and former IT government decision makers based in the US.

As a response to a spate of recent cybersecurity threats that have been increasing in both their severity and frequency, President Biden issued an executive order that encourages federal agencies to modernize their data to further protect it from future threats.

“With the President’s executive orders, the U.S. Federal market is facing a massive transformation to its cybersecurity strategy which requires a great deal of technological modernization,” said Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform. “While this is a priority for government IT decisions makers, our survey found that they view security as both a driver and barrier to modernization,” he added.

The past several months have seen a large increase in the number of people online at any given time, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic and the various physical distancing measures and lockdowns that have been implemented throughout the world in order to help slow the spread of the virus.

Many security experts agree that this growth in online traffic has resulted in a near proportionate rise in cybercriminal activity, with hackers and scammers looking to take advantage of the increase in digital transactions.

Among some of the other findings of the study was that “between 64 percent and 82 percent of respondents believe their current or former agency is very prepared or somewhat prepared for a wide range of current and future threats – from ransomware to post-quantum attacks.”

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July 16, 2021 — by Tony Bitzionis