Budget pressures were cited by a quarter as the biggest obstacle to strengthening defences.
Nearly half of UK public sector IT leaders were found to be doubting their cybersecurity tools' ability to adequately safeguard sensitive information, reports SecurityBrief.
According to a survey of 100 IT decision-makers across government, health, and education by SolarWinds, system complexity and budget restrictions are key challenges undermining cyber resilience.
More than half of respondents described their IT environments as "very" or "extremely" complex, with health and education reporting the highest levels. This complexity, paired with outdated infrastructure, makes detecting and responding to threats more difficult.
Budget pressures were cited by 23% of leaders as the biggest obstacle to strengthening defences, limiting upgrades and training. Human error also emerged as a major risk, with 56% identifying careless or poorly trained staff as the top vulnerability.
While most see potential in advanced tools such as observability and AI for monitoring and predictive detection, SolarWinds' Richard Giblin stressed that "technology alone is insufficient" without governance, training, and cross-department collaboration.
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.
