From: Help Net Security
A report by MeriTalk and NetApp examines the state of cyber security at Federal agencies and looks at whether the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) is hurting or helping agencies improve cyber security and protect data.
According to the report, Federal cyber security professionals lack confidence in FISMA, and do not believe their agencies’ current cyber security solutions are sufficient and sustainable.
Federal agencies face cyber threats from every angle. In the past 12 months, agencies defended against insider threats or leaks (64 percent), non-state actors (60 percent), and state-sponsored threats (48 percent). Given the growing number and increasing sophistication of the attacks, just one in five (22 percent) cyber security professionals rate their agency’s cyber security solutions as sufficient and sustainable.
Although FISMA is designed to aid agencies in addressing these threats, it may be doing more harm than good. Just 53 percent of Federal cyber security professionals say FISMA has improved security at their agency, while 86 percent report that FISMA compliance increases costs. In addition, 28 percent view FISMA as encouraging compliance rather than risk identification and assessment, 21 percent believe it is insufficient in dealing with today’s cyber threat landscape, and 11 percent believe it is an antiquated law.
“FISMA’s compliance model is not keeping up with the evolving security landscape or the security demands,” said Mark Weber, president of NetApp U.S. Public Sector. “There is a shift in the industry from compliance to continuous monitoring, and a vast number of new technologies exist to support this change. Our Federal cyber professionals should be given the resources, regulation, and management support to take advantage of these technologies to help thwart cyber security attacks.”
Agencies’ current network speed and capacity limits also hinder security efforts. More than half of cyber security professionals (55 percent) say their agency is either overloaded or cannot keep up with the amount of data already crossing their network. The data deluge is not ending anytime soon – cyber security professionals expect the total amount of data their agency must protect to grow by 47 percent by 2015. As a result of the growing amount of data, cyber security professionals say users experience slower network connections (35 percent), agencies experience challenges in handling large amounts of data in real time (32 percent), and the network and security monitoring infrastructure cannot keep up with the network itself (18 percent).
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