Public sector organizations face many challenges as they work to achieve the vision of a more responsive and cost-effective government. Not least of these are shrinking IT budgets, the regulatory requirement to share information, and a growing demand for public access to their applications and data. However, as applications are made accessible, they may become vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Application security protects critical infrastructure
Governments worldwide face threats from cyber terrorists who deliberately target government systems with the intent of stealing secret information or causing disruption to control systems. Application security prevents hackers from accessing sensitive internal resources even in cases where they succeeded in penetrating perimeter security; it can also stop instances of unauthorized access from inside the organization.