Public Sector Trying to Defend Itself in Cyber Environment

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Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber attacks are a serious problem threatening companies and organizations across the globe. While weaponized data attacks on the public sector have seen a modest decrease in quantity, their quality did not change. According to fifthdomain.com, the U.S. public sector entities experienced fewer attacks in the first part of 2017, down 10 percent from the latter half of 2016.

However, it’s taking them longer to detect and respond to the attacks. In addition, malware triggered during these DDoS attacks is up by 20 percent (with ransomware and customer data loss experienced in concert with DDoS also rising significantly), according to a recent report.

The rate of attack on the U.S. public sector versus the global public sector is virtually the same; yet U.S. entities are far more likely to experience repeat attacks and are typically more likely to need additional time (a minimum of three hours) to detect and respond to the threat, compared to global cybersecurity counterparts.

Outside notifications of attacks have increased by 15 percent, making it harder for the government to keep news of attacks from going public. This has triggered a steady increase in investments for DDoS defenses, which already jumped eight percent in 2017.

The information was gathered from 33 U.S. public sector and 22 non-U.S. public sector organizations that responded a survey.