Dive Brief:

• A new report from BitSight Technologies awarded the federal government the second overall security performance rating among six sectors.
• The government trails only the finance sector in terms of overall security preparedness, according to BitSight.
• The report analyzed the security ratings of nearly 10,000 organizations.

Dive Insight:

The third annual edition of “Insights Industry Benchmark Report” analyzed security ratings in the finance, federal government, retail, energy and utilities, health care and education industries. According to the report, “many agencies are performing well as a sector in defending, detecting and recovering from network threats.”

BitSight said the federal government’s score was up over the previous year by four points. Education came in last.

“The OPM breach, purportedly undertaken by Chinese hackers, compromised the records of 25.7 million records of current, former and prospective government employees and contractors,” said the report. “Since this time, there have been consistent calls from lawmakers and Washington pundits for the government to get its cyber house in order. Nevertheless, our analysis of 119 different government entities shows that many of these agencies are performing well as a sector when it comes to overall security performance.”