By Gregg Ostrowski, CTO Advisor, Cisco Observability
Across the world, government agencies continue to be a highly attractive target for cybercriminals. These malicious entities are aware of the vast amounts of sensitive data stored by federal, state, and local institutions, and recognize the limited resources many of these have to protect legacy applications and infrastructure.
Whether it’s geopolitical strategy and cyber war through state sponsored attacks (a growing possibility with the number of countries with major elections this year) or one-off ransomware and phishing attacks, government agencies are threatened like never before. In Canada, 11 per cent of all cyberattacks were aimed at the public sector last year, with attackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities to access huge volumes of personal data for fraud, identity theft, and account takeovers.
Unfortunately, many government IT teams are struggling to handle an increasingly dynamic and sophisticated threat landscape. They simply don’t have the tools and insights needed to detect and address threats in a timely way. Unless addressed, this issue represents a huge challenge for government agencies, and for citizens around the world. The likelihood of serious security breaches will continue to rise, with all the subsequent effects to reputation, trust, and citizen engagement.
While IT teams across vast industries rely on cloud-native and SaaS-based observability tools to address security threats, public sector agencies face unique challenges. Federal, state, and local government institutions often operate in air-gapped environments with strict data privacy and security rules, limiting their access to these solutions.
Fortunately, more government institutions are now turning to self-hosted observability solutions. This shift allows them to leverage advanced AI-powered tools to enhance their security posture and proactively manage application availability, performance, and security.
Self-hosted observability is vital to protect on-premises environments
Observability offers technologists unified visibility across the IT stack, allowing them to identify vulnerabilities, understand root causes and dependencies, and address issues promptly. Additionally, it provides business context to security findings, helping IT teams assess the potential impact of vulnerabilities in cloud-native technologies and prioritize mitigation efforts based on customer and business outcomes.
Unfortunately, however, the reality is that most observability solutions only run in cloud or SaaS environments – making them unsuitable for organizations maintaining applications and infrastructure on-premises. On-premises observability has largely been overlooked, with only one or two comprehensive solutions on the market. The result is that many on-premises IT teams are struggling to respond to increasing levels of complexity and overwhelming volumes of data, and to respond to an increasingly more sophisticated threat landscape.
Fortunately, though, there is now a new breed of observability solutions which are delivering innovative functionality within on-premises environments and helping government IT teams mitigate risk and deliver secure and seamless citizen experiences.
Across federal, state, and local government, a growing number of agencies are embracing self-hosted application observability solutions to monitor their most critical business systems, end-to-end.
Self-hosted observability – or customer-managed observability – includes on-premises deployments or cloud-based deployments where the organization maintains control of all the data and associated operations. It enables technologists to proactively manage the performance, availability, and security of mission-critical applications and, in turn, delivers market-differentiating digital experiences to end users.
With observability, IT teams gain a unified view of their applications, infrastructure, and data, allowing them to monitor, manage, and optimize applications in real-time. It integrates seamlessly into the data centre while adhering to compliance, security, and operational policies.
Modernizing the on-premises control to leverage AI capabilities
IT teams managing on-premises environments need an observability solution that modernizes their installation and operates effectively within a Kubernetes environment.
Upgraded observability controls provide government agencies with the same comprehensive capabilities as cloud-native solutions, including AI-powered anomaly detection, root cause analysis, and automated transaction diagnostics. Self-hosted observability enhances security by identifying application vulnerabilities within context and offering automated business risk scores. This helps IT teams prioritize responses based on potential impact.
With the threat landscape likely to become even more severe over the coming months and years, government agencies urgently need to ensure their IT teams have access to the latest AI-powered functionality that self-hosted observability can deliver. Only with the right capabilities and insights will IT teams be able to counter rising threats and deliver the seamless and secure experiences that are now so crucial in driving improved citizen outcomes.
Guest Post: Self-hosted observability is essential for federal agencies to protect on-premises applications and infrastructure
Posted in Commentary with tags Cisco on July 25, 2024 by itnerdBy Gregg Ostrowski, CTO Advisor, Cisco Observability
Across the world, government agencies continue to be a highly attractive target for cybercriminals. These malicious entities are aware of the vast amounts of sensitive data stored by federal, state, and local institutions, and recognize the limited resources many of these have to protect legacy applications and infrastructure.
Whether it’s geopolitical strategy and cyber war through state sponsored attacks (a growing possibility with the number of countries with major elections this year) or one-off ransomware and phishing attacks, government agencies are threatened like never before. In Canada, 11 per cent of all cyberattacks were aimed at the public sector last year, with attackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities to access huge volumes of personal data for fraud, identity theft, and account takeovers.
Unfortunately, many government IT teams are struggling to handle an increasingly dynamic and sophisticated threat landscape. They simply don’t have the tools and insights needed to detect and address threats in a timely way. Unless addressed, this issue represents a huge challenge for government agencies, and for citizens around the world. The likelihood of serious security breaches will continue to rise, with all the subsequent effects to reputation, trust, and citizen engagement.
While IT teams across vast industries rely on cloud-native and SaaS-based observability tools to address security threats, public sector agencies face unique challenges. Federal, state, and local government institutions often operate in air-gapped environments with strict data privacy and security rules, limiting their access to these solutions.
Fortunately, more government institutions are now turning to self-hosted observability solutions. This shift allows them to leverage advanced AI-powered tools to enhance their security posture and proactively manage application availability, performance, and security.
Self-hosted observability is vital to protect on-premises environments
Observability offers technologists unified visibility across the IT stack, allowing them to identify vulnerabilities, understand root causes and dependencies, and address issues promptly. Additionally, it provides business context to security findings, helping IT teams assess the potential impact of vulnerabilities in cloud-native technologies and prioritize mitigation efforts based on customer and business outcomes.
Unfortunately, however, the reality is that most observability solutions only run in cloud or SaaS environments – making them unsuitable for organizations maintaining applications and infrastructure on-premises. On-premises observability has largely been overlooked, with only one or two comprehensive solutions on the market. The result is that many on-premises IT teams are struggling to respond to increasing levels of complexity and overwhelming volumes of data, and to respond to an increasingly more sophisticated threat landscape.
Fortunately, though, there is now a new breed of observability solutions which are delivering innovative functionality within on-premises environments and helping government IT teams mitigate risk and deliver secure and seamless citizen experiences.
Across federal, state, and local government, a growing number of agencies are embracing self-hosted application observability solutions to monitor their most critical business systems, end-to-end.
Self-hosted observability – or customer-managed observability – includes on-premises deployments or cloud-based deployments where the organization maintains control of all the data and associated operations. It enables technologists to proactively manage the performance, availability, and security of mission-critical applications and, in turn, delivers market-differentiating digital experiences to end users.
With observability, IT teams gain a unified view of their applications, infrastructure, and data, allowing them to monitor, manage, and optimize applications in real-time. It integrates seamlessly into the data centre while adhering to compliance, security, and operational policies.
Modernizing the on-premises control to leverage AI capabilities
IT teams managing on-premises environments need an observability solution that modernizes their installation and operates effectively within a Kubernetes environment.
Upgraded observability controls provide government agencies with the same comprehensive capabilities as cloud-native solutions, including AI-powered anomaly detection, root cause analysis, and automated transaction diagnostics. Self-hosted observability enhances security by identifying application vulnerabilities within context and offering automated business risk scores. This helps IT teams prioritize responses based on potential impact.
With the threat landscape likely to become even more severe over the coming months and years, government agencies urgently need to ensure their IT teams have access to the latest AI-powered functionality that self-hosted observability can deliver. Only with the right capabilities and insights will IT teams be able to counter rising threats and deliver the seamless and secure experiences that are now so crucial in driving improved citizen outcomes.
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