State cyber officials are losing confidence as challenges mount
State cyber officials are losing confidence as challenges mount
https://statescoop.com/state-cyber-officials-losing-confidence-challenges-mount/
Publish Date: 2026-04-27 08:01:00
Source Domain: statescoop.com
If you ask a state chief information security officer about their expectations for the near future, you’re unlikely to hear an entirely happy story. Between the rising use of AI by threat actors and fewer resources at hand to support cyberdefense efforts, the outlook is grim. The number of state CISOs who described themselves as “extremely” or “very” confident in their ability to secure the government’s data has plummeted, from 48% in 2022, down to 22% this year.
Biennial survey results collected by the IT firm Deloitte and the National Association of State CIOs, the group that monitors, convenes and advocates for states’ top technology officials, show that there are other reasons to be wary. One unnamed CISO quoted in a report published Monday affirmed that AI has accelerated sophisticated cyberattacks aimed at the public sector such that they now occur at “a blistering pace.” Yet cybersecurity leaders from all 50 states (along with Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands) generally reported flagging budgetary support to repel those attacks.
Less than a quarter of state cyber leaders reported significant (6% or greater) budget increases, down from 40% two years ago. And “perhaps more concerning,” the authors of the new report wrote, is the marked rise in cuts to cyber budgets: Sixteen percent reported decreases in funding, compared to 0% in 2024. And when asked about the top barriers to performing their jobs of protecting the public’s data, insufficient funding made the top three, next to managing old infrastructure and the increasing sophistication of threats leveled at their organizations.
NASCIO remarks that “state CISOs have a slightly different set of future concerns than in previous years.” Concerns of malware and state-sponsored espionage are receding to make room for worries about potential third-party security breaches and phishing attacks, which with the help of artificial intelligence tools no longer…
