Security News > 2022 > October > What $1B in cybersecurity funding can mean for US state, local governments

How do you best spend a cybersecurity budget you have long been hoping you'd get? That's the question state, local, and territorial governments are starting to ask themselves in the wake of a major September announcement from the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS will be doling out $1 billion in funding over the next four years as part of a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity grant program specifically aimed at SLT governments.

While the designated State Administrative Agency for each state and territory is the only entity eligible to apply for funding, the legislation requires states to distribute at least 80% of funds to local governments, with a minimum of 25% of the allocated funds distributed to rural areas.

A lot of the investment that was done in that second funding wave was around network infrastructure and security, such as replacing firewalls and upgrading to the latest antivirus technology.

A recent Center for Digital Government survey of 103 state and local officials flagged both security and compliance challenges as the major holes, among them, "Legacy, unpatched and nonsupported networks that increase their exposure" and "Limited enterprise visibility around the endpoints connecting to their networks."

For any organizations who get this funding, I'll sum up my hope for you: That it helps you mature your security posture and bring your security infrastructure into the modern age.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/10/07/us-state-local-governments-spend-cybersecurity-budget/