A new MeriTalk survey of 300 U.S. federal IT decision-makers showed that the number of reported breaches on U.S. federal computer networks has nearly doubled since 2009. The majority of these professionals are concerned about cybersecurity as they update their data centers as well.

The survey, underwritten by Palo Alto Networks (PANW), revealed 67 percent of U.S. Feds are concerned with cybersecurity as they modernize their data centers. Also, 49 percent said they believed that the data center modernization process makes cybersecurity more challenging.

U.S. Feds noted that they were concerned about the following stages of the data center modernization process:

Additionally, Feds cited the following as the top challenges with currently available data center security solutions:

“Many agencies have focused security efforts at the perimeter,” Steve Hoffman, Palo Alto Networks’ vice president of regional sales for its federal division, said in a prepared statement. “But, as we consider increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity attacks, all government agencies need a platform approach to protect the heart of their network – the data center – while safely enabling business applications. They need to be able to correlate known and new threats and take preventative action, not just detect and remediate.”

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Despite various cybersecurity challenges, however, recent data indicates that the federal IT market could expand over the next few years.

Technology market researcher TechNavio last month predicted that the federal IT market would expand at a 1.67 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2014 and 2019, thanks in part to the rising demand for cloud computing, mobile devices and virtualization tools among government agencies.

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