Government

Governments are prime targets for cyber attacks due to the wealth of sensitive information they possess, ranging from classified intelligence to critical infrastructure systems. Election interference alone can largely influence the course of a country’s economic stature, business venture, and even warfare. The public office is constantly at risk for malicious insiders abusing their information access for personal gain. The impacts of ransomware attacks leave government entities expending enormous amounts of money through payment of the ransom demand or emergency remediation.

People play an essential role in cybersecurity. With the demands attributed to the nature of their job, government workers are often overworked. They generally lack time to attend to administrative tasks outside their primary responsibilities and, as a result, make a common target for common data security attacks such as Phishing, Business Email Compromise (BEC), and Social Engineering. In addition, their staff’s lack of education and awareness leaves the public sector defenseless to damaging breaches.

Governments that run on bureaucratic policies have difficulty updating their systems because of the multilayered approval approach. To add, tight budget constraints are also a common cause of delays in infrastructure modernization. These challenges keep government systems outdated and, as a result, exposed to several vulnerabilities. Unpatched systems on mobile devices, laptops, and servers pose a significant risk of being infiltrated by several types of malware.