Third-party and open-source software accounted for a majority of critical security debt on government networks.
Almost 80 percent of government agencies have failed to address software flaws for at least a year, while 55 percent. had enduring vulnerabilities that could be exploited in attacks.
According to Cybersecurity Dive and research by Veracode, 50 percent of software vulnerabilities have been remediated by government agencies within 315 days on average, compared with 252 days for public- and private-sector organisations.
Additional findings showed that third-party and open-source software accounted for a majority of critical security debt on government networks, despite being linked to only 10 percent of overall ‘security debt’.
Elevated security debt among government entities has been associated with the persistence of legacy apps.
Such a report, which comes after the
breach of the U.S. Treasury Department using BeyondTrust exploits, should prompt the prioritization of critical security issues in government remediation efforts. "No software is perfect, and every codebase carries security debt from the moment it is created," said Georgianna Shea of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
