Caimi: Some of the strongest correlations between practices and outcomes involved a proactive best-of-breed technology refresh strategy that keeps digital transformation moving while maximizing operational efficiency. The report concluded that even though proactive investments can involve an initial cost outlay, it is money well spent. State and local governments can follow the federal government’s lead with a cloud-smart strategy. Security in the cloud is constantly updated, and integrated and automated technology speeds detection and response. These kinds of things lend themselves to operating efficiencies.
The second thing was that well-integrated technology improves retention of cybersecurity talent. If you’re a cybersecurity professional in state and local government, you’re probably being recruited every single day. Governments can’t afford to lose their expertise.
Romness: Cybersecurity professionals want to operate with the latest technology and do interesting work that makes the job rewarding. They want solutions that integrate so they don’t have to track down minutiae and follow system logs to find an issue. They want dashboards that show them incidents as they happen. They also want to be able to give back to organizations by helping them achieve their mission.
Caimi: The fundamental role of cybersecurity is about efficient and effective risk management. We don’t have unlimited resources, so we have to figure out the things that matter the most and go and address them. A lot of times, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. NIST has developed a lot of security best practices, but it changed the game with its Cybersecurity Framework in 2014 — a framework to make informed investment decisions by understanding where the risk is in a way that is simple and easy to follow. They’re not alone; other organizations also have good best practices that state and local governments can and should bring into their operations. One of the things we do is follow those best practices and align our portfolio with those best practices. It’s easy to have that conversation.
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