Forty-four percent of federal information technology leaders surveyed by Vormetric said talent shortage prevents their agencies from adopting modern data protection tools and 43 percent cited budgetary issues as a data security barrier.
Vormetric said Thursday it collaborated with 451 Research to poll more than 100 senior security executives in the federal government about IT security challenges that their agencies face.
One out of five respondents reported encountering a breach at their agencies over the past year.
Ninety percent of federal IT executives said they believe their organizations are vulnerable to data security threats and 76 percent pointed to cyber criminals as their agencies’ top external threat actor, while 64 percent identified privileged users as key internal threat actor.
The report indicated concerns remain that adoption of cloud computing, Internet of Things and big data technologies may affect security of government data.
“More attention must be paid to techniques that protect critical information even when peripheral security has failed, and data-at-rest security controls such as encryption, access control, tokenization and monitoring of data access patterns are some of the best ways to achieve this,” said Tina Stewart, vice president of marketing at Vormetric.
Fifty-eight percent of respondents plan to increase spending on programs to secure sensitive information at their agencies and 48 percent look to adopt private-sector data security strategies.