According to the annual SolarWinds Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey, IT complexity is the most significant obstacle to strengthening the security postures of government agencies — pushing budget constraints to second place for the first time ever.
When asked, 66% of government IT operations and security decision-makers said their IT environment is extremely or very complex to manage, which can expose them to potential cyber risks and threats.
Because managing complex IT environments is linked intrinsically to overall security, federal IT professionals and business leaders must implement the right strategies to maintain the integrity and security of their organizations. The top four include:
1. Adopt full-stack observability
The continued expansion of hybrid IT workloads combined with the need to support both new technologies and legacy infrastructure presents a big challenge for federal IT pros: visibility. Indeed, 47% of public sector IT pros cited hybrid environments as their top visibility challenge.
Understanding federal IT infrastructure’s overall cybersecurity posture, performance, and health is nearly impossible without a holistic view of these environments. If a security vulnerability or issue occurs, determining the root cause is particularly difficult. The problem is compounded by an overload of alerts and information generated by siloed monitoring tools.
But with unfettered, full-stack observability, agencies can move beyond siloed views and monitoring and gain a single pane of glass view into their entire hybrid, multi-cloud, and on-premises environments.
With this visibility, teams can streamline and accelerate issue resolution by highlighting critical security and compliance issues across complex, distributed systems — without a deluge of data, alert fatigue, or risk. For example, if a threat actor gains unauthorized access to the network or a critical piece of software experiences configuration drift, IT pros can proactively detect this issue before the incident escalates.
2. Eliminate IT risks with a pay-as-you-go model
A pay-as-you-go procurement model (a.k.a., subscription licensing) has benefits beyond helping maintain fiscal prudence. Partnering with an IT vendor offering a range of payment options can also reduce IT complexity.
For instance, a subscription model enables agencies to invest more strategically in technology to solve a myriad of problems via a scalable tool or platform. A pay-as-you-go subscription model ensures technology investments scale based on consumption while offering the flexibility to adapt to evolving needs. Pay-as-you-go also makes leveraging future upgrades and smart integrations for new use cases easy.
3. Factor in the organization’s size
Before earmarking budgets for any investment promising to manage IT complexity, agencies must factor in the size of the IT workforce.
In fact, 47% of respondents to the SolarWinds survey indicated the top challenge in managing their IT environment is insufficient IT staff.
There is no doubt federal agencies are facing a significant IT skills gap, impacting their ability to manage complex IT services. Before deciding the best way to manage big tech stacks, IT leaders should factor in the organization’s size and perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine the most effective tool, strategy, or technology to manage IT complexity.
4. Invest in IT training
Insufficient IT staff training remains a significant challenge for the public sector. Nearly 30% of survey respondents cited it as a problem.
In addition to impacting proficiency and productivity, more training is needed to maintain IT teams’ confidence as they tackle IT complexity. Indeed, a separate study by SolarWinds found that tech pros’ confidence in managing IT is waning. This sentiment is reflected in the more recent cybersecurity survey, which finds only 5% of respondents say they feel extremely confident in their ability to manage hybrid IT realities.
Technology tools can help, but training and upskilling are needed to help address these issues. Of those surveyed, 56% agree offering comprehensive, hands-on training — including the time to test drive and experiment with new technologies — is urgently needed to create the IT workforce agencies need.
IT complexity is a challenge but not insurmountable
Rapid change is a constant, both in government and in IT.
In recent decades, federal IT pros have navigated numerous modernization initiatives, migrations, upgrades, and security drills. Simplifying IT complexity is just another aspect of change IT pros must overcome, and these four steps can serve as a guide as IT leaders look to set their teams up for success.
Krishan Sai is GVP of Engineering at SolarWinds, leading ITSM, AIOps, and next-generation initiatives. He is seasoned technology & engineering leader & entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in scaling & leading global teams, innovating and building winning products in a variety of technologies & domains such as ITSM/ITOM, E-Commerce, Enterprise Software, SaaS, AI & Social Networking. He’s passionate about meaningful application of technologies that deliver value and better our lives.
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