The IT Nerd

As President Donald Trump calls for sleeker, more user-friendly government websites through a new executive order, the Business Digital Index (BDI) team examined how well each state’s main government website is protected — revealing that cybersecurity, not design, should be the priority.

Here’s the methodology the BDI team used to evaluate the cybersecurity of government websites:

• Full technical methodology is available here.
• BDI carries out passive scans of publicly visible systems, and no internal access is required.
• Grading scale: 0–100 scores mapped to A–F grades.

And here are the findings:

Best-performing states

• Democratic-leaning: Connecticut (96/A), Colorado (87/C), Hawaii (83/C)
  
• Republican-leaning: Arkansas (96/A), Kansas (81/C), Oklahoma (80/C)
  

Most improved states (Feb–Aug 2025):

• District of Columbia (+28 points, from 38 to 66)
  
• Nevada (+27 points, from 60 to 87)
  
• Texas (+27 points, from 49 to 72)
  

Worst-performing states (Aug 2025):

• Democratic-leaning: Delaware (37/F), Minnesota (42/F), Maine (49/F)
  
• Republican-leaning: Indiana (27/F), Wyoming (28/F), Iowa (35/F)
  

States with the steepest declines (Feb–Aug 2025):

• North Dakota (–18 points, from 68 to 50)
  
• Louisiana (–13 points, from 64 to 51)
  
• Tennessee (–13 points, from 65 to 52)
  

Political trends 

• Democratic-leaning states: 59 (Feb 2025) → 63 (Aug 2025), +8% improvement
  
• Republican-leaning states: 57 (Feb 2025) → 59 (Aug 2025), +4% improvement
  
• The three lowest-ranked states — Indiana, Wyoming, and Iowa — are all Republican-leaning, with Indiana at the bottom at just 27/100.

To see the full report, please visit:

https://businessdigitalindex.com/research/trump-pushes-for-sleeker-government-sites-but-73-have-security-issues/ 

This entry was posted on September 11, 2025 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Business Digital Index. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.