Ramona Adams
A new report by Thales says 57 percent of U.S. federal government respondents claimed their agencies experienced a data breach over the past year.
The figure in the “2018 Thales Data Threat Report, Federal Edition” shows a 23-percent increase from the 2017 report, which revealed that 34 percent of respondents encountered a breach, Thales said Thursday.
The report was released in collaboration with analyst firm 451 Research and includes responses from 100 information technology professionals across the government.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents said they are “very” or “extremely” vulnerable to data breaches, an increase from 48 percent in the 2017 survey.
The 2018 report also found that 45 percent of federal IT officials entered deals with more than five infrastructure-as-a-service vendors and 48 percent used more than 100 software-as-a-service applications.
Increased vulnerabilities from shared infrastructures topped the list of cybersecurity concerns at 72 percent, followed by cloud security breaches at 68 percent and encryption key custodianship at 62 percent.
In 2018, 93 percent of respondents will increase spending on cloud security; 56 percent will allocate most funds for endpoint security; 48 percent will spend heaviest on network security; and 19 percent will focus on data-centric security tools like encryption and tokenization.
Nick Jovanovic, vice president of Thales’ eSecurity federal unit, said agencies can begin using encryption “by selecting encryption and key management technologies that offer a smart, centralized approach and work across clouds, on-premises and in data centers.”
