News Insights: Biden’s $11 billion 2023 cybersecurity budget

From Fedscoop: The White House is calling for an 11% overall increase in federal IT spending for fiscal 2023 in addition to nearly $11 billion proposed to bolster federal cybersecurity. President Biden’s 2023 budget proposal, released Monday, requests a total of $65.8 billion for civilian IT spending, a significant increase over the estimated $58.4 billion spent in the current fiscal year. According to White House data on IT spending, the 11% boost is the biggest in the past dozen years. The budget does not group defense IT funding or civilian grant spending with these numbers.

News Insights:

Mark Manglicmot, VP of Security Services, Arctic Wolf:

“In the wake of critical infrastructure concerns stemming from the conflict in Russia – paired with the ongoing risk of nation state attacks – it’s clear that the administration is concerned with ensuring the forward progress of collective cybersecurity efforts. There have been consistent motions from the Biden administration for organizations to focus on strengthening their cyber ecosystems – from internal initiatives to the recent memorandum holding federal contractors accountable for their efforts, too.

To improve their defenses, organizations must, at a minimum, improve their cybersecurity budgets. In fact, 50% of surveyed security teams don’t have the budget to feel adequately equipped to thwart threats. Inadequate budgets impact important avenues for improving security postures, including tools, talent acquisition and retention and robust and consistent awareness training for employees. Spending the funds efficiently enables organizations to shore up gaps in technical controls, remediate known vulnerabilities, and add talent to address 24×7 coverage deficits.

Additional budget can continue to advance both defensive and offensive cybersecurity operations. It can also expand the resources to continue the recent progress made in bringing both private and public sector leaders together to fight adversarial attacks. With this motion to put more resources behind our nation’s security, both sectors are in a better position to collectively defend against attackers that are most certainly resource backed.”

Biden calls for 11% boost in federal IT budget, $10.9B for cyber