Feds Ramp Up Cyber-Spending

By

Palo Alto Networks, FireEye, Fortinet and CyberArk Software have all put in bids for the $14 billion up for grabs in fiscal 2016 cybersecurity spending by the federal government. The four are battling it out, according to Business Insider, representing a fresh flurry of security investment by the feds.

And it’s about time. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, between fiscal years 2006 and 2014, cyberattacks on federal agencies increased nearly 12 times over, from 5,503 to 67,168. And, the flow of threats does not seem to be letting up.

In May, hackers accessed about 334,000 taxpayer accounts. More recently, in October, the U.S. Postal Service was targeted. The scope of that hack is still under investigation. But the recent attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was perhaps the most headline-grabbing.

The federal government’s main employment body revealed in August that about 22.1 million individuals had their Social Security Numbers and other sensitive information affected by a pair of hacks. In addition, 5.6 million people are now estimated to have had their fingerprint information stolen—which could have a big impact on future biometric security initiatives.

Image via Pixabay

State-sponsored attacks are also continuing: China is reportedly continuing hacking attacks on U.S. firms in spite of a pact that banned government spying on companies; authorities are probing a potential Russian hack of Dow Jones; and ISIS has reportedly tried to hack the U.S. electrical grid.

Yet, despite the escalating threat level, the GAO also revealed that the between 2014 and 2016, federal cybersecurity spending grew only 40% — compared with the 1,100% increase in attacks over the past eight years.

Changes are afoot that will increase the focus on cybersecurity, however. After intense debate, the Senate has passed the controversial Cybersecurity Information Act bill, which makes the Department of Homeland Security into a hub for sharing information about cyber-attacks within the government and the private sector. The bill, which has faced privacy concerns from high-tech firms and advocacy groups, must now be reconciled with a separate piece of legislation that was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year.




Edited by Kyle Piscioniere
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

Contributing Writer

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

How Is AI Bringing Intelligence to Traditionally Manual Inspection Workflows?

By: Contributing Writer    10/16/2026

For insurers, rental companies, fleet operators, and remarketing businesses, vehicle inspections are a part of everyday operations. Much of that proce…

Read More

3 Factors That Can Dramatically Impact Your Microsoft Intune Spend

By: Contributing Writer    10/13/2026

With remote and dispersed work here to stay for the long term, secure endpoint management has become a big headache for IT and cybersecurity teams. Th…

Read More

Why Threat Modeling Fails Without an Attacker's Perspective

By: Contributing Writer    10/13/2026

A security team might spend weeks mapping attack paths and planning defenses, only to be breached through a web application nobody remembered was stil…

Read More

From AI Experiment to Enterprise Strategy: Making Claude Work at Scale

By: Contributing Writer    10/12/2026

Artificial intelligence often enters an organization through experimentation. One employee discovers a useful prompt, another tests document analysis,…

Read More

SIEM needs exposure context to keep pace with AI-era threats

By: Contributing Writer    10/6/2026

Security information and event management (SIEM) platforms give security operations center (SOC) teams a central place to collect and analyze security…

Read More