The total number of incidents the government experienced last year dropped 12% from 2017, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Federal agencies didn’t experience a single “major” cybersecurity incident in 2018, marking the first time in three years the government avoided such a severe digital incursion, according to a recent White House report.
Not one of the more than 31,000 cybersecurity incidents that agencies faced last year reached the “major incident” threshold, which is defined as an event that affects more than 100,000 individuals or otherwise causes “demonstrable harm” to the U.S, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The government fell victim to five major incidents in 2017 and 16 in 2016.
Overall, the total number of cyber events the government experienced dropped 12% from 2017, OMB officials told Congress in their annual report on the Federal Information Security Management Act.
While OMB called this downward trend “encouraging,” they warned that agencies shouldn’t let down their guard. Phishing and other email-based attacks remain a popular strategy for online bad actors, and the government is still struggling to attribute and label the thousands of attacks every year, officials said.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/08/agencies-faced-31000-cyber-incidents-last-year-gave-no-major-breaches/159290/
