At last week’s Government Cybersecurity Showcase – California, RedSeal joined leaders from across state departments to discuss what’s working, and what isn’t, in building cyber resilience across California’s public sector. Through our roundtable discussion, “Protecting Critical Data: Strengthening Cyber Resilience Across Agencies” facilitated by RedSeal cyber warriors Brett Bartow & Paul Frumer, the consensus was there is no shortage of commitment, but there is a critical shortage of connection.
A fragmented landscape
California’s public sector agencies operate in silos, with inconsistent policies and outdated continuity plans. Many lack foundational visibility, some share they do not have a clear picture of their data, dependencies, or risks. With constrained budgets, and while frameworks like NIST are respected, implementation often falls short due to resource limitations. As one participant summarized, “It’s a big mess — but it’s our starting point.”
The common denominator: Visibility
Building resilience starts with knowing what you have, where it lives, and how it connects. Without comprehensive visibility and continuous models across hybrid environments, agencies struggle to prioritize vulnerabilities, justify investments, or respond effectively when incidents occur.
This visibility challenge is why agencies are now prioritizing mapping their environments as fundamental first steps, understanding what’s at stake before a breach happens.
Collaboration: Recognized but not yet realized
The attendees we spoke to acknowledged that collaboration is essential, but few have the practical means to achieve it. Cross-agency sharing, unified frameworks, and common metrics remain aspirational rather than operational in most of California’s public sector IT ecosystem.
The state’s leadership through the California Office of Enterprise Security (OES) and Office of Information Security (OIS) can provide the mandate, but process and technology must provide the mechanism to make coordination practical and sustainable.
RedSeal: Turning complexity into clarity
California’s public sector operates across a sprawling digital landscape, cloud infrastructure, on-premises data centers, and operational technology, all of which must be secured as one unified, continuously monitored environment.
Through RedSeal, organizations model their digital environment, analyze attack paths, and quantify risk exposure enabling government agencies to:
- Identify exposures before attackers exploit them
- Simulate incidents to test resilience and response readiness
- Maintain compliance and align with frameworks like NIST, MITRE ATT&CK, and Cal-Secure
- Break down silos between teams by creating a common operational picture across agencies
- Justify investments with quantified risk metrics that speak to both technical and executive audiences
Moving to a proactive cybersecurity strategy
California’s cybersecurity challenges are significant, but they’re not insurmountable. As you work to improve the security of your constituents, consider:
- Collaboration across departments and teams on strategy, tactics and tools
- Comprehensive visibility across all digital infrastructure including IT, OT, IoT, cloud, and remote assets
- Data-driven insights into exposures that truly matter, enabling cost-effective risk reduction and prioritized remediation
- Verify and validate continuously with automate control validation and policy checks
As California centralizes its cybersecurity strategy, the agencies that embrace comprehensive visibility, unified frameworks, and continuous monitoring will transform from reactive defenders into proactive protectors of public services and citizen data.
The market for continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) continues to expand as organizations recognize that traditional point-in-time assessments are insufficient in today’s dynamic threat landscape. This shift isn’t just a trend, it is a necessity. With cyber threats growing in sophistication and public sector budgets under constant scrutiny, agencies need solutions that deliver measurable risk reduction and defensible security investments.
RedSeal is a proud sponsor of events like the Government Cybersecurity Showcase, where leaders gather to set strategy for cross-department collaboration to protect Californians, strengthen compliance, and ensure continuity of public services. Contact us today to learn how RedSeal can bring clarity to your complex environment.
