Costs Of Securing Federal Systems Climbs
New cybersecurity mandates are certain to drive tech spending for the next several years. What's less certain is the kind of products and services federal agencies will be buying, as well as which agencies will be doing the buying, Nextgov.com reports.
In April, the Office of Management and Budget directed agencies to start monitoring continuously and automatically the status of their security controls in the fall. And Congress is pushing to update the oft-maligned 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act to eliminate its burdensome reporting, require real-time monitoring and build security into all technology acquisitions.
"At the end of the day, compliance with cybersecurity goals and initiatives will represent a multibillion-dollar opportunity for the contractor community," says Rishi Sood, a vice president at research firm Gartner Inc.
Estimates on how much the government spends on cybersecurity range from roughly $2 billion to $8 billion a year, depending on how one defines cybersecurity and its range of applications. Some analysts predict costs could grow 5 percent to 8 percent annually during the next several years.
Security concerns are affecting just about every federal information technology initiative from social networking to cloud computing, in which users subscribe to products and services on demand and online from a third party. To read more, click here.
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