Federal agency leaders are under constant pressure to maintain the highest level of cybersecurity in the face of myriad challenges from budget constraints to workforce shortages. Recent economic uncertainty has had significant impacts on the public sector, resulting in budget cuts, staffing shortages, and massive vendor layoffs. To combat these challenges, government IT leaders are using IT automation to overcome workforce shortages, reduce program costs, and optimize cybersecurity efforts.
With IT automation, agency leaders can automate routine cybersecurity tasks, such as patch management, vulnerability scanning, and compliance monitoring, which can result in significant workload elimination and cost savings. By automating these predictable tasks, IT leaders will also improve efficiency and reduce human error risks, which often lead to data breaches and costly fines.
In an interview with Government Technology Insider, Ali Malik, IntelliDyne’s Vice President of Technology and Innovation, explained why automation can help agencies overcome workforce shortages. “There is [a] constant pressure for government agencies to do more with less,” Malik shared. “The budget constraints result in increasing backlogs of claims and forms processing… By using automation, agencies will be able to increase accuracy and speed to optimize service delivery.”
By reducing manual workloads and improving efficiency with IT automation, federal agencies will free up time for their workforce to focus on more complex and strategic cybersecurity tasks, including training, education, and proactive threat hunting.
In a webinar, Christine Finnelle, Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Marshals Service, shared how integrating automation saved them 700 hours of labor in a single program. “We saw immediate success with [automation],” Finnelle said. “We’ve now been adopting it to [streamline] more labor-intensive, standard, repeatable processes. [Automating those tasks] helps us to engage with other tasks that may enhance the mission.”
After seeing the success of automation in one program, the U.S. Marshals Service is looking into how they can integrate automation to improve their cybersecurity efforts, empower data-driven decision-making, and enable marshals with the tools they need to drive mission success.
IT automation enables government IT leaders to keep pace with future challenges. With IT automation, IT leaders have the ability to scale programs quickly and efficiently, to ensure they have the resources necessary to protect assets, streamline workflows and processes, and maintain high cybersecurity standards.
Maintaining high cybersecurity standards amidst workforce shortages and economic uncertainty can be challenging. Agencies can use IT automation to optimize cybersecurity practices and scale programs to meet future challenges.
Learn more about how IT automation can help agencies overcome workforce shortages and optimize cybersecurity here.