Hiring Alone Will Not Solve Government’s Security Problems

Protecting government data requires significant investments in talent and technology, but a new survey indicates that hiring more staff will not be enough.

Bob Osborn of Service, writes that most data breaches occur because of a failure to patch known vulnerabilities, yet many government agencies struggle with the basic hygiene of patching because they use manual processes that cannot scale, and they cannot prioritize what needs to be patched. But rather than invest in automation tools, most government IT professionals are planning to hire new employees whose main purpose will be patching security vulnerabilities.

He says the survey results were especially alarming because more than half of the respondents spend more time navigating manual processes than responding to vulnerabilities. In fact, more than half said manual processes put them at a disadvantage when patching vulnerabilities, and their team was spending 50 hours or more a week managing the vulnerability response process.