A recent survey found that organizations victimized by ransomware attacks are increasingly deciding to pay the ransom demand to regain access to their systems and data. Those same organizations also are concerned that generative AI could enhance future attacks.

Michael Watson, chief information security officer at the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA), ran down the state agency’s latest actions to leverage its data sources at Splunk’s GovSummit event on Dec. 14.

A new survey released by MeriTalk and Splunk finds that public sector IT decision makers are increasingly planning around zero trust security concepts, with that thinking driven by current and future requirements for telework capabilities, among other security management needs. However, agencies face challenges in migrating to zero trust, including the need to invest in foundational technologies, according to findings from the survey of 150 Federal IT decision makers and 150 state, local, and higher education (SLED) IT decisionmakers on their agencies’ efforts around zero trust.