New research[PDF] by Tenable and Ponemon shows that a whopping 88% of organizations in the public sector experienced at least one damaging cyberattack over the past two years, while 62% of organizations where targeted at least twice. The top concern for 2 out of 3 (65%) public sector organizations is cyberattacks that target operation technology (OT) infrastructure and Internet-connected devices that make up the Internet of Things (IoT). This concern is warranted, as 46% of organizations have been at the receiving end of OT or IoT attacks.

The study also found that 3 in 4 organizations (77%) do not have a full picture of their attack surface, which obviously makes it impossible for them to properly defend against cyberattacks. Furthermore, the majority of organizations (56%) rely on slow, manual processes for dealing with security issues, which makes it difficult to keep up with the high number of new vulnerabilities that are constantly being uncovered.

Read more: The public sector is a cyberattack magnet, manual processes are to blame