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Cybersecurity Leadership of the Year winners share post-pandemic challenges

(Scoop News Group)

The 2021 StateScoop 50 Awards recognize the top people and projects in state government IT. In interviews with StateScoop, winners of this year’s prizes look back at their work over the past year, most of which was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic revealed many of state government’s cybersecurity pitfalls, chief information security officers said last year, according to the biennial survey that often informs their organizations’ priorities. Yet many CISOs also found that government workers had also become more sensitive to cyber risks and more engaged with their agencies’ security initiatives. As the health crisis wanes and remote work starts scaling back, state cybersecurity leaders are considering what lessons from the last year-plus will last.

In a series of interviews, StateScoop 50 Cybersecurity Leadership of the Year winners share some of these lessons, the ongoing risks of ransomware and supply-chain attacks and what government leaders need to do to meet a growing threat landscape.

Previous interviews in the 2021 StateScoop 50 Awards include winners in the GoldenGov and State Leadership of the Year categories.

All interviews in this category were conducted by Benjamin Freed. These interviews were edited and condensed.