New Research: 57% of federal cybersecurity leaders report experiencing multiple data breaches over the past two years
SAN FRANCISCO–Zettaset, a leading provider of data protection solutions, in partnership with MeriTalk, the leading Government IT news provider, today released research findings that explore data protection utilization, best practices and challenges in the federal space. The research, “Guarding Citizen Privacy: Using Encryption to Protect Federal Data,” confirms that federal cybersecurity leaders have been the victim of multiple data breaches over the past two years, and many have an urgent need for better data protection measures.
“Our findings point to a reassuring new development in federal data protection strategies”
Data compliance in the federal space is finally receiving the attention it deserves. This heightened awareness can be attributed to the Biden Administration’s 2021 Executive Order on Cybersecurity, which included a set of guidelines on building zero trust architectures to improve our nation’s cybersecurity efforts for both the public and private sectors. According to Zettaset’s findings, 86% of survey respondents confirmed a correlation between the 2021 Cyber Executive Order (EO) and an increased focus on zero trust principles. The Cyber EO outlines the following key pillars: prevention, detection, assessment, and remediation. The majority of Zettaset’s respondents (89%) are investing in data protection as part of their larger compliance strategy; in fact, that same number believe their agency should put a greater emphasis on detection.
“Zero trust is no longer a nice to have, but a necessary mindset in today’s evolving threat landscape. Borrowing a few of the core tenets from the Cyber EO’s zero trust blueprint can lead to an increasingly more secure and responsive security framework,” said Tim Reilly, CEO of Zettaset.
According to survey respondents, 73% of respondents feel a lack of foundational data protection efforts puts their agency at risk, and 77% say siloed systems that lack visibility make it difficult to properly protect critical assets. Given these findings, it’s no wonder that more than half of respondents (57%) report experiencing multiple data breaches over the past two years. The Cyber EO has not only sparked a movement towards the adoption of zero trust principles, but has motivated federal cybersecurity leaders to invest in data protection solutions such as multi-factor authentication (67%), end-to-end encryption (57%) and data loss prevention (49%).
“Our findings point to a reassuring new development in federal data protection strategies,” continued Reilly. “Almost all (94%) feel encryption is key to protecting confidential citizen data. And, respondents (63%) believe that end-to-end encryption could prevent over half of data breaches in their agency. Historically, encryption has been viewed as too complex, costly and slow. Today, federal agencies are tasked with securing some of our nation’s most confidential information and these organizations are confident that encryption is vital to a more secure data protection framework.”
Zettaset helps the public and private sector build zero trust architectures through its XCrypt line of encryption management and monitoring products, which are optimized for performance and scalability to address the data protection requirements of today’s high-volume cloud-native environments. With monitoring and detection mechanisms like Zettaset Xcrypt in place, organizations can better detect and respond to threats before they wreak havoc.
For more information on Zettaset’s data protection solutions, please visit here.
The study was conducted by MeriTalk, in partnership with Zettaset, and surveyed 150 Federal cybersecurity leaders in September 2022 to explore data protection utilization, best practices, and challenges. The data can be found online here.
About Zettaset
Zettaset is a leading provider of data protection solutions. Its software-defined encryption solutions can be transparently deployed across all physical and virtual enterprise environments. Unlike traditional solutions that are appliance-based, Zettaset is a cost-effective, software-only solution that is easy to deploy, does not impact performance, and scales with your business from on premise to the cloud. Learn more at zettaset.com.
