Since agencies give priority to modernization and efficiency, the adoption of the cloud becomes quickly throughout the local and state government level and the federal government. A new report issued by an ICIT Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT), which was conducted by the Wiza Cyberrisk Alliance, which is sponsored by Wiz, dives into the facts of this transformation.
According to the inputs of 154 information technology and cybersecurity professionals across federal agencies and government agencies, the results draw a clear picture: the era of the cloud here, but security and complexity are still major concerns. This shift opens the door to faster operations, but also provides new challenges in securing complex environments.
The agencies are transferred to the cloud – and fast
84 % of the respondents said that their agency began to migrate to the cloud, with 15 % already after migration. Top driver? Cooperation with partners. 65 % was killed by a better alignment with the program partners as a major benefit for the cloud.
The possible effect goes beyond internal efficiency. The adoption of the cloud agencies can help provide services more quickly and reliably – which increases expectations from the public and improves the results of the task.
But adoption is not without friction.
Security concerns slow the momentum
Nearly half (49 %) of the respondents called data security as the largest challenge to the cloud. With the rise of advanced threats-harmful programs, the supply chain, and representatives in the nation-state-government leaders are searching for stronger security strategies, not just tools.
These security challenges are exacerbated by the cloud complexity. 58 % of agencies use six cloud providers or more, and nearly a third of the use of ten or more. This fragmentation makes the vision difficult, and risk management is more difficult.
Agencies need reliable partners – not more noise
The report reveals what public sector leaders are really looking for in cloud security partners:
51 % of data security and privacy were martyred as a top priority
39 % referred to employee and resources restrictions
34 % of compliance and organizational pressure called
They are looking for platforms that help to meet compliance requirements, reduce complexity, automation of disclosure and response, and stay at the forefront of emerging threats such as behavior-working attacks-without adding more public expenditures.
Cloud safety is not only related to protection – it is related to flexibility
Electronic threats are more advanced, and public sector organizations are high -value goals. ICit calls for a transformation towards digital flexibility, based on “4 rupees”: resources, exercise, recovery, and response. It is not only a matter of protecting attacks, but rather preparing when it happens – if this happens.
In Wiz, we believe that flexibility begins with vision and context. We realize that governmental teams need visibility in the actual time, without the agent in their cloud environments, which facilitates the discovery of misfortunes, open assets, and amazing weakness before the attackers do. But these risk indicators cannot be thrown into another compliance report – they must be analyzed in exchange for how to connect the work burden and cloud resources, unveiled toxic groups, and allow the teams to determine the priorities of treatment based on the most important problems within their cloud environments.
The presence of one solution to lead this treatment based on context increases efficiency, which reduces the need for multiple tool groups, and automated the required analysis of the teams to understand the greatest risks on the operating environment. These same competencies can be expanded to help agencies understand how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence interact with their current environments – facilitating risk, surface context, and building implementable paths forward.
Help the meeting agencies at this moment
The cloud changes how the government works. Public sector leaders adopt the transformation. But the update is not something that should target technologies and operations, but also the measures used to measure security.
The NIST (RMF) framework emphasizes a priority for treatment based on the effect on the system's secrecy, its safety and availability (CIA). By focusing on risks in proportion to their potential effect, agencies can exceed isolated weakness and focus instead on toxic groups of risk. This approach reduces noise and alert by gathering relevant issues in a single risk scenario – the teams that focus on the most important.
WIZ helps agencies to put RMF into practice by providing a deep vision in cloud environments and clarifying these toxic groups of risks. Instead of overwhelming teams with preliminary results, WIZ has weaknesses, poor formations, entitlements, and exposure paths to highlight the effect on the CIA. This context helps the difference in giving priority to treatment based on the effect of the real world-lowering fatigue on alert, improving flexibility, and supporting the NIST guidance.
Wiz is obligated to support federal, state and local agencies while moving to the cloud – which remains graceful, flexible and safe in every step.
Download the full report here. To learn more about how to support Wiz for government agencies on their cloud journey, please visit: Wiz for the government
