To continue our series of blog posts that reveal the results of the 2019 Netwrix Cloud Data Security Report for various industries, we decided to take a closer look at the state of cloud data security in the public sector and the cloud migration plans of these organizations. We found out that, despite various U.S. federal government initiatives aimed at encouraging cloud migration, e.g. the 2010 Cloud-First policy and the 2011 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, state and local governments are not very happy about moving more their data to the cloud. In fact, the number of organizations that are ready to implement a cloud-first strategy or become 100% cloud-based has decreased by almost 20% since 2018.
The reason is simple: lack of resources. 92% of IT teams at government organizations don’t receive sufficient budget for cloud security, and management at 50% of government organizations leave IT on their own when it comes to cloud security initiatives. As a result, they cannot ensure data security in the cloud, and their organizations suffer security incidents and cannot identify the threat actors responsible for those incidents. It’s no wonder that public sector organizations hesitate to move more data to the cloud; in fact, 26% of them are even considering moving data back on premises due to high costs and security concerns.
