Risk Management
Bringing our world-leading threat insight to CyberUK
It’s no secret that the public sector has always been a popular target for threat actors. The National Audit Office (NAO) claimed back in 2022 that it accounted for as many as 40% of cyber-incidents. Trend Micro data reveals that this is no exaggeration. But with funding and skills a persistent challenge, it can be tough knowing how to manage risk across what is for many organisations a large and complex attack surface.
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It’s no secret that the public sector has always been a popular target for threat actors. The National Audit Office (NAO) claimed back in 2022 that it accounted for as many as 40% of cyber-incidents. Trend Micro data reveals that this is no exaggeration. But with funding and skills a persistent challenge, it can be tough knowing how to manage risk across what is for many organisations a large and complex attack surface.
Such challenges are very much on the radar of CYBERUK, the government's flagship cybersecurity event. As always, Trend Micro will be there again this year to share our expertise and insight into the threat landscape, and offer an exclusive networking event on day two.
Government under pressure
- Government entities were the number one victim of malware campaigns in 2023, according to Trend Micro data. They were also the second-top ransomware target. A confluence of factors ensures public sector security professionals are frequently on the back foot:
- Legacy IT: Described by the Government Commercial Function as a “a multibillion-pound problem”, outdated tech products can cause operational failure, and may contain unpatched vulnerabilities.
- Skills shortages: According to the government’s own figures, 50% of all UK businesses have a basic cybersecurity skills gap, and a third have an advanced cyber skills gap. But the public sector is particularly badly hit as salary bands are often below market average, recruitment processes are slow and security checks restrict the pool of candidates even further.
- Geopolitical conflict: Hostile nations have grown bolder over recent years, and their target is often government data and systems. Cybercrime groups sheltered beyond the reach of Western law enforcement also pose a growing ransomware threat.
- Data and services: Whether the adversary is state-sponsored or nominally financially motivated, the public sector is a popular target due to the sheer volume of sensitive data it holds. It could be personally identifiable information (PII) on citizens or geopolitically important government data. Public services also have a low tolerance for outages – a fact ransomware actors seek to exploit.
A proud public sector partner
Against this backdrop, public sector cybersecurity teams frequently find themselves in firefighting mode. But help is at hand. Trend Micro has been a committed partner for decades, and today we offer a vision for powerful but streamlined security delivered from a single platform.
Our flagship Trend Vision One offering is designed to help public sector partners manage risk across their entire attack surface, to minimise the management burden and empower smaller teams to do more with less. Among other things, it provides continuous insight into security gaps and rapid remediation workflows, protection against malware and other threats, and rapid discovery and containment of threats via XDR. From the endpoint to the cloud, it delivers the visibility and control public sector teams need to manage risk and support zero trust initiatives.
All of this is backed by world-leading threat intelligence generated by our 450 in-house threat researchers, and the 10,000+ security researchers registered with the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) –the world’s largest vendor-agnostic bug bounty program.
At the show
We’ll be at CYBERUK every day to demonstrate these capabilities to visitors to our booth: H3. Attendees can see Trend Vision One in action, enter prize draws and speak to the public sector team – including Erick Thek, Manager Cyber Threat Intelligence, Global Services.
