Digital transformation is a work in progress for most organizations, with privacy, security concerns, and the complexity of integrating new systems remaining key barriers

SolarWinds (NYSE:SWI), a leading provider of simple, powerful, and secure IT management software, today announced its Next-Gen Government IT: AI and Observability Insights Report, identifying the challenges faced by IT professionals and the sources of IT security threats. SolarWinds partnered with Market Connections, the leading government market research firm, to conduct an online survey in December 2024, targeting 200 U.S. IT decision-makers and influencers from Federal, State, Local, and Education sectors. The report assessed the confidence levels and concerns related to managing IT environments while exploring barriers to achieving digital modernization, the current state of visibility and observability, and the usage and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) by organizations.

For most organizations, digital transformation is a work in progress, with the complexity of integrating new systems and privacy and security concerns remaining key barriers. Few respondents (6%) report having fully completed their digital transformation journey, while most indicate they are somewhere along the journey, with efforts either well underway (41%) or beginning implementation in some areas with limited progress (42%).

“As the public sector navigates the rapidly evolving technology landscape, more organizations will continue to redirect operations and workloads to the cloud and adopt hybrid IT solutions,” said Travis Galloway, Senior Advisor, Government Affairs at SolarWinds. “This adds another layer of complexity to data security and compliance across operations, along with the added pressures of budget constraints. To be a valuable partner in this dynamic process, SolarWinds has actively focused on identifying trends, challenges, and solutions to help government entities build operationally resilient environments, helping keep our nation safe from threats.”

The most pressing security challenges today include vulnerabilities in monitoring systems and the critical need to safeguard sensitive information from cyber threats. Participants ranked the general hacking community (59%) and careless/untrained insiders (58%) as their top-ranked security threats, emphasizing the need for stronger security awareness training, enhanced tools, and better access control mechanisms.

AI adoption is also gaining momentum, with benefits like predictive analytics and issue detection, but concerns still linger. Over 33% of respondents leverage AI to automate cybersecurity operations and enhance IT observability, with many more planning to adopt it soon. Despite this, approximately 4 in 10 respondents are extremely or very concerned about potential risks associated with adopting AI, such as data privacy and compliance, making full-scale implementation a cautious process.

Additional insights into the obstacles faced by public sector organizations include:

  • Digital Transformation Journey
    • Data privacy and security concerns (62%), budget constraints (57%), and the complexity of integration (56%) are the top challenges in respondents’ digital transformation journey.
      • Notably, education-sector respondents are more likely to cite the complexity of integration as a challenge.
    • Improving the observability of systems and processes and advancing digital transformation are high or very high priorities for over half of the respondents. In contrast, integrating AI into operations is regarded as a lower priority.
  • Threat Trends and Assessments
    • Budget constraints (28%) top this year’s list of significant obstacles to maintaining or improving IT security. Closely following is the complexity of the internal environment (20%).
    • The primary sources of security threats for the SLED audience have remained relatively consistent since 2019. However, in 2024, the education audience saw a shift, with the general hacking community surpassing careless/untrained insiders as the leading source of threats.
  • Current and Future Environments
    • In 2024, government (private) cloud has taken the lead as the most prevalent environment (70%), driven by a decline in traditional on-premises data center usage (58%), which was the most common in 2023 (91%). Consistent with last year, respondents continue to anticipate that hybrid environments will be the most common in the future (48%).
    • Over half of respondents report their IT environment is extremely or very complex to manage, though this has decreased compared to last year. Additionally, less than half feel extremely or very confident in their ability to manage it effectively.
  • Hybrid IT Infrastructure Challenges
    • The complexity of managing hybrid environments is the top challenge (73%), especially for federal respondents. Security issues (67%), issues with legacy system integration (55%), and cost concerns (51%) are also challenges for the majority of participants.
    • When considering both overall rankings and being ranked as the top priority, data protection and privacy concerns, along with safeguarding sensitive information from cyber threats, emerge as the leading security challenges in a hybrid IT infrastructure at 51%.
    • 63% of respondents face challenges with monitoring across multiple environments, hindering their ability to gain visibility into their organization’s hybrid IT infrastructure.

For the full U.S. Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey Report, please visit here

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About SolarWinds

SolarWinds (NYSE:SWI) is a leading provider of simple, powerful, secure observability and IT management software built to enable customers to accelerate their digital transformation. Our solutions provide organizations worldwide—regardless of type, size, or complexity—with a comprehensive and unified view of today’s modern, distributed, and hybrid network environments. We continuously engage with IT service and operations professionals, DevOps and SecOps professionals, and database administrators (DBAs) to understand the challenges they face in maintaining high-performing and highly available hybrid IT infrastructures, applications, and environments. The insights we gain from them, in places like our THWACK community, allow us to address customers’ needs now and in the future. Our focus on the user and our commitment to excellence in end-to-end hybrid IT management have established SolarWinds as a worldwide leader in solutions for observability, IT service management, application performance, and database management. Learn more today at www.solarwinds.com.

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