Sector Brief On Cybersecurity Issues & Threats In The Federal Government.

Sector Brief
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Author Note
It is evident that in the last half century, a great evolution of information technology (IT) has taken place. The continued progress that is noticeable in the power and memory capacity processing has made IT smaller, faster, cheaper, lighter and very easy to use. The IT industry has also teamed up with the communication industry that is the information and communications technology thus a disruption of the ICT components and devices may affect a lot of others. There has been increasing concerns on ICT systems protection from cyber attacks over the past several years. Cybersecurity is termed as the act of protecting ICT systems and what they contain from these threats.
Notably, the federal agencies made reports of 35,277 incidents of cybersecurity incidents for their systems in 2017. However, as much as these federal agencies have improved in the prevention and detection of intrusions in their systems, they are still at a high risk of getting attacks such as phishing that is the tricking of people into clicking on malicious links.
Withal, a lot of agencies have also not implemented security practices or programs that are effective fully thus leaving them at a higher risk of being attacked in the future. Because many government IT systems have a wide range of personal information, the federal agencies should protect the integrity, confidentiality and information availability and respond to security incidents and data breaches effectively
The federal role in cybersecurity includes both assisting in protecting non-federal systems and securing the federal systems. All the federal agencies have responsibilities in cybersecurity that relate to their own systems that are under the current law and many have responsibilities that are sector specific for CI. Notably, there are more than 50 statutes that address the various aspects of cybersecurity.
Ever since the first cyber attack in the year 1988, online viruses have become common to the government and organizational computers worldwide which has become a devastating concept. In 1999 concern was raised about the effects of the poorly protected nuclear weapons of the nations and more reports have brought about the mistakes of the information infrastructure of the country that has put public safety, national security and personal privacy at a risk.
There was an alarming frequency report of government systems and agencies attacks in 2014. Notably, with the protection of software’s being non-existent, insufficient or just unused as well as the lack of expertise, leadership, and funding are key issues and threats (Andreasson, 2011). The cybersecurity policy making and execution ideals continue to be side-lined by the conflict in roles between both government and non-government sector. Therefore, there will be a need for meaningful action through joint pressure from the government and the public.
Notably, for years, the legislature has failed in extenuating the threats of cyber attack due to laxity in putting in place the standards of prevention, consequences for non-compliance and the protocol for reporting intrusions. The Federal Information Management Act of 2002 was the last piece of legislation that was pass...