Nearly a quarter of all federal agencies lost data to a cyber incident in the period between May 2016 and May 2017, according to a survey of federal information technology (IT) managers.
MeriTalk, which reports news and conducts governmental IT analysis, released their annual federal insider threat report, Insider Job: The Sequel, on May 15. The report details the consistent presence of insider threats to federal agencies.
Forty-two percent of federal agencies in 2017 experienced cyber incidents perpetrated by insiders, a rate that fell slightly from 45 percent in 2015, according to the report which surveyed 150 federal IT cyber security officials. However, 75 percent of those who participated in survey believed it is harder now to identify and handle insider threats than it was in 2016.
The report, compiled by MeriTalk and software company Symantec [SYMC], identified that 59 percent of those surveyed found the increasing number of cloud-based systems has made insider threats more difficult to detect. Less than 50 percent of agencies have increased their encryption efforts, enabled real-time activity monitoring or enforced separation of duties policies, according to the report.
Within agencies, 64 percent of those surveyed say they need additional IT security staff and resources to monitor future threats perpetrated by insiders due to the implementation of new cloud systems.
Investments in user behavioral analytics, commercial threat intelligence and anomaly detection along with multi-factor authentication were identified as top priorities, according to the report.