Report to the Public AccountsCommittee on mitigation of cyber attacks
This report concerns the action taken by Danish government bodies to prevent cyber attacks. Behaving sensibly in cyberspace to avoid attacks is important, but should be supplemented by technical ... security controls that can increase security and mitigate cyber attacks. International studies have concluded that three central security controls can prevent the majority of the currently known types ... of attacks: - technical restriction of download of programmes; - limited use of local administrators; - systematic software updates. Rigsrevisionen has assessed whether the government bodies in the study ... Three basic security measures are often neglected ... Government agencies are open for cyber attacks because they often forget to respect three basic IT security measures. The three measures are: 1. technical restriction on programs downloading; 2 ... . limited use of local administrators rights; 3. systematic software updates.
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Use of consultants and temporary staff
New skills needed in a longer term UK NAO: Used well, consultants and temporary staff can be an important source of specialist skills and capabilities that are uneconomic for departments to maintain in their permanent staff. Since 2009-10, the government has used spending controls to reduce its use of consultants and temporary staff, and by 2014-15 spending had fallen by £1.5 billion. However, spending has increased by between £400 million and £600 million since 2011-12, suggesting that this was more of a short-term reduction than a sustainable strategy. In the longer term, departments will need to develop workforce, skills and capacity plans to reduce their dependence on external skills. They will need to improve their strategic workforce planning to determine where they can deploy existing staff, where they need to recruit, and where they need to engage temporary resources. Without this, departments cannot demonstrate that they are achieving value for money from the use of consultants and temporary staff.
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Digital transformation in government
Support exemplars, provide consistent guidance... and do not lose focus As the NAO states: Government faces significant challenges in providing public services. While many government services are now available online, public administration is struggling to manage more complicated programmes and to improve the complex systems and processes that support public services.
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