Cybersecurity Threats in the Public Sector Can Be Daunting; Preparing for Them Doesn’t Have to Be
Throwing a barrage of cybersecurity tools and services at your network, devices and applications is neither cost effective nor sustainable.
ISG helps public sector clients transform operations through research, benchmarking, and consulting. We can help you:
Is a limited budget preventing you from improving critical services? You need to eliminate process inefficiencies and reduce costs in a sustainable way.
Through our process assessments and operations reviews, we help you identify, design and implement suitable candidates for automation and work with you to discover the best way to train and repurpose talent and increase efficiencies. You can reinvest the saved dollars in other projects and bolster service delivery to your citizens.
You need state-of-the-art enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other critical software systems to enable your workforce and serve your constituents. How do you acquire best-in-class software?
As a business partner with expertise in the full cycle of ERP and software advisory, we can support your efforts, from sourcing to implementation to post-deployment and value realization. You need to successfully match your business needs with a software package’s capability so you can improve business operations and reduce risks. ISG brings procurement experience, sourcing expertise, best-in-class methodology and insightful market data to help you assess, source, implement and manage your ERP software.
ISG is a leader in proprietary research, advisory consulting and executive event services focused on market trends and disruptive technologies. In 2023, ISG published 7 research reports specific to the public sector and in 2024 will publish many more.
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As part of your digital transformation, you may want to deploy a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. ERP software can help you deliver best practices for business workflows, security, performance and data analytics faster and at a better price. You will also be able to improve integration across your business units, including finance, supply chain, human resources and sales.
ISG helps organizations evaluate software options based on platform capabilities and what will best meet your unique needs. Let us review your drivers, optimize your processes and help you design a future roadmap that leverages the platform or combination of platforms that will enable growth.
ISG is a leader in proprietary research, advisory consulting and executive event services focused on market trends and disruptive technologies.
Get the insight and guidance you need to accelerate growth and create more value.
Learn MoreData breaches are costly. The average U.S. cybersecurity breach cost across the public and private sectors is $9.5 million per breach. U.S. government agencies are not exempt from this, despite the government spending substantial sums on cybersecurity. At the federal level, the budget for 2024 is projected at $12.7 billion. The largest allocation is for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with a budget of over $3 billion. The federal government funds the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP), which allocates funds to states. The budget for this program was $400 million in 2023. This amount is typically matched by state funding for cybersecurity projects, reflecting the high degree of spending required to allow agencies to stand still from a cybersecurity perspective.
ISG research indicates that U.S. public sector organizations, including state, local and educational (SLED) agencies, are using colocation, managed hosting and hybrid cloud managed services 20 to 30 percent more than they were in 2020. This means that SLED agencies need more help than ever with private/hybrid cloud and data center environments.
State, local and education (SLED) organizations increasingly embrace cloud computing for core IT infrastructure due to several compelling advantages.
Cloud provides exceptional scalability, enabling organizations to easily adjust computing power, networking and storage to meet fluctuating demands. Cloud platforms offer enhanced security, with robust data centers, advanced data protection and qualified staff, protecting sensitive information. The cloud enables organizations to embrace agility and innovation, facilitating the adoption of technologies, modernizing existing systems and operations, and implementing digital services quickly and efficiently. Finally, cloud technology combined with qualified IT service providers enables the alignment of IT and business strategies, with seamless planning, execution and enhancement independent of frequently inaccessible in-house resources.
Decades of deferring investments in mainframes within the U.S. state and local governments has led to challenges that can no longer be ignored. Constituents are demanding experiences that are comparable to what they have become accustomed to in the private sector. However, significant barriers exist to meeting this requirement. The experts who have been maintaining mainframes in state and local agencies are aging and exiting the workforce quickly, leaving a limited number of workers with mainframe skills to replace them. The public sector is also 10-20 years behind the public sector in its upgrade cycles, leaving agencies with seemingly unsurmountable technical debt.
As the commercial and consumer use of cloudbased IT infrastructure continues to grow, its use among state, local and education (SLED) and other public-service client organizations also increases. This, in turn, is driving rapidly growing interest in, and purchases of, private/hybrid/data center managed hosting and managed services by SLED organizations.