Federal agencies in the United States are moving to the cloud at an ever increasing pace. Driven by the promise of improved usability, security, and reliability, agencies are rapidly adopting cloud apps and systems.

But that move isn’t carefree. While IT professionals in federal agencies see many benefits from cloud adoption, they also see security risks and worry about their ability to respond to them.

Agencies live in a hybrid environment—and that’s not changing anytime soon

In the fall of 2018, OneLogin and CITE Research conducted a survey of 150 IT professionals in federal agencies. The survey revealed that, on average, agencies had 50.8% of their apps in the cloud and 49.2% on-prem. And agencies are moving rapidly to adopt more cloud apps. In the next two years, 85% of those surveyed reported that they expect to increase the number of cloud apps used by their agency.

The result is a hybrid environment with huge app proliferation. 35 percent of those responding reported managing between 25 and 49 apps. Another 21 percent manage between 50 and 74 apps.

High expectations of the cloud

Agencies reported they are adopting the cloud because of the many benefits it offers. Chief among them:

• Easier IT management
• Improved security
  
  

But those weren’t the only reasons. IT expects to see better reliability, better control, and easier end-user access from cloud apps.

Cloud expectations tempered by concerns

Yet, these federal agency IT professionals also had concerns about the cloud: primarily security. 49 percent worry about data security. 36 percent worry about compatibility with other systems and 32 percent worry about complex IT management.

That’s probably why 75 percent of those surveyed said they wanted a centralized access management platform that includes SSO, MFA, and RBAC for both cloud and on-prem apps.

For federal agencies, the move to the cloud brings both benefits and challenges. But they’re looking to unified access management to address the challenges in order to fully reap the cloud’s rewards.

Want to know more?

You can download and read the full survey results.

If you work for a federal agency and have similar concerns, you may want to review our full length paper detailing the results of the survey in light of the evolution of the technology landscape, and the opportunity to rethink existing access management approaches.