Survey: 42 Percent of High-Level Fed IT Managers Hacked in Past 6 Mos.

Forty-two percent of high-level federal information technology managers say they have experienced a data breach in the past six months – and one in 8 said they were breached in the past 30 days, according to a new survey.

The survey released Wednesday by cybersecurity company BeyondTrust comes as lawmakers raise concerns about the vulnerability of federal government systems to criminal hackers and nation-state spies, The Hill reported.

In the survey, senior federal IT managers singled out application vulnerabilities, nation-state attacks, and malware as the top security threats, with data breaches on average costing over $91,000.

Across the federal IT systems, data breaches are estimated to cost $637 million each year, The Hill reported.

The survey also found 61 percent of federal IT officials said aging infrastructure impedes their ability to comply with federal cybersecurity mandates, with nearly half of federal agencies still using Windows XP, which Microsoft no longer supports.

Lawmakers are now pushing for legislation to incentivize agencies to transition to newer, more secure IT systems, The Hill reported.

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