Managed security service provider LevelBlue has released the 2024 LevelBlue Futures Report: Cyber Resilience in U.S. State and Local Government and Higher Education (SLED), exploring the state of cyber resilience in U.S. SLED institutions. The report shows a prominent push toward innovation, pressing gaps in cyber defenses, and insights into how SLED organizations approach and handle security.
U.S. SLED organizations today find it difficult to pursue digital innovation and ensure security at the same time, and the report reveals that many leaders prioritize adopting emerging technologies. The SLED sector is a particularly appealing target for bad actors to attack using tactics that are only growing more advanced and sophisticated over time. It is more important than ever for SLED leaders to take steps to maintain a balance between technological innovations and cyber resilience.
State of Cyber Resilience in SLED
Cyber resilience is an area of extreme importance to SLED institutions, as they are often targeted in cyberattacks “due to their vast, complex infrastructures, limited budgets, and lack of in-house security expertise,” according to Adam Khan, VP of Security Operations at Barracuda. These organizations also tend to handle vast amounts of sensitive information, and a cyberattack that exposes SLED data or disrupts operations could cause a great deal of damage.
As SLED organizations attempt to adopt innovative technologies to streamline their operations, new security vulnerabilities crop up. Many security strategies struggle to keep up with evolving threats and account for the risks of integrating new technologies. Digital innovation can improve operations, offer new functions, and increase productivity and efficiency, but it comes with growing risks such as data breaches, malware attacks, and more. While 86% of survey respondents recognize that dynamic computing can increase their exposure to risk, 74% say that the advantages of this innovation outweigh the growing threats, highlighting the crucial need for new technologies to be adopted and managed securely.
Key Barriers to Cyber Resilience
There are a number of obstacles standing in the way of SLED institutions maintaining security and cyber resilience while adopting innovative new technologies. According to the LevelBlue report, 70% of SLED leaders state that their organizations view cybersecurity as an afterthought rather than a priority, and 67% say that security operations and efforts are often siloed. Respondents also cited that security efforts struggle from a failure to prioritize cybersecurity (59%) and a lack of board-level understanding (55%) and governance team understanding (68%) of cybersecurity.
The issues with governance speak to a fundamental struggle to allocate cybersecurity efforts and resources and establish responsibilities. “What’s troubling is that there is confusion about who is responsible for cybersecurity within their organization,” says Gary Barlet, Public Sector CTO at Illumio. “For SLED organizations to improve their security practices, there needs to be a focus on ownership and accountability.” According to the security framework of the Nationwide Cybersecurity Review, governance falls under the Identify category, which “tends to be one of the lowest-rated functions for many organizations.”
Trends in Cybersecurity Measures
The LevelBlue report also explores the cybersecurity measures that SLED organizations are using and what these trends mean for cyber resilience in the SLED sector. Almost four-fifths (79%) of those surveyed expect cybersecurity to be included in earlier stages of computing projects, illustrating that SLED leaders intend to focus on the proactive inclusion of cybersecurity measures. The SLED sector also shows a widespread reliance on external resources, 15% more than other industries. Nearly half of survey respondents (47%) use Cybersecurity-as-a-Service (CSaaS) to benefit from expertise and skills that they do not possess in-house.
One promising trend revealed in the report is that 63% of SLED leaders surveyed stated that they were cautious or late adopters of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This is one of the main areas of technological growth that organizations across all sectors are attempting to capitalize on and benefit from, but it comes with both operational and security risks. While simply ignoring AI can mean missing out on opportunities for improvement, exercising care and caution when adopting innovative tools is of the utmost importance.
Steps to Achieve Cyber Resilience
Establishing and maintaining cyber resilience takes continuous work in multiple areas, and the report details LevelBlue’s five key recommendations for securing future cyber resilience.
- Identify Barriers: Discover what obstacles are keeping your organization from achieving cyber resilience, including external factors and internal challenges.
- Be Secure by Design: Ensure that security is built into products and operations on a foundational level.
- Align Investments with Business Needs: Adopt security technologies and policies that help the organization toward achieving business goals.
- Build a Support Ecosystem: Foster relationships with stakeholders, partners, government bodies, and users to improve security for all involved.
- Transform Cybersecurity Strategies: Evaluating existing security strategies for effectiveness against evolving threats and adopting measures to bolster cyber resilience.
Improve Cyber Resilience
The SLED sector is particularly vulnerable to attacks, but organizations across all industries must fortify their defenses to ensure viability in the long run. Security strategies should be designed to address evolving threats and adapt to shifting needs over time as risks and technological progress move faster than organizations’ security teams can catch up. Cyber resilience in the U.S. SLED sector is crucial, and some of the statistics from the LevelBlue report indicate an increasing awareness and focus on security for these organizations. Hopefully, organizations can continue to incorporate innovative technologies into their operations while building up cyber resilience.
