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Security Awareness Checklist for State Government

Security and government have always gone hand in hand. But as state government has digitized its services and embraced new technologies, cybersecurity incident prevention has become a growing issue.

State governments in the U.S. have to manage public services. In providing a modern 21st-century government, state governments now have to digitally transform their IT infrastructure. This includes offering digital platforms for citizen services, increasingly using Cloud and mobile computing and using data aggregation and analytics. This opens up the attack surface for cybercriminals who always look for ways to steal government and citizen data.

In 2016, the U.S government spent $28 billion on cybersecurity. This figure is likely to grow as attacks across all sectors, including government, also increase. And one of the issues that the government faces (that perhaps other sectors face less frequently) is targeted attacks by other state actors.

The Cybersecurity Scorecard, which looks at the how well each industry is performing in tackling cybersecurity threats, places government as the third-worst performer. State governments are more frequently requiring our personal citizen data to give us the service convenience we expect. They act as the guardians of citizen data while trying to ensure that their ever-constrained budgets can provide value for money. This can lead, and has lead, to government data breaches.

One way to keep on top of security incidents is to understand what you are up against and how to best mitigate the risks. Below is a checklist to help you work out where to focus your efforts in managing the cybersecurity issues in state government.

Governing Your Security Awareness

There are certain baseline requirements you can put in place to create a successful security awareness program in government. Here’s a checklist showing some of the most important:

1. Know Your Wider (Read more...)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from InfoSec Resources authored by Susan Morrow. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infosecResources/~3/6ESaImzv1Xw/