Protecting your own PC and smartphone from hackers is challenging, but the job of protecting the critical systems used by federal agencies to run the country is on a scale so big, few can comprehend it. Additionally, despite the provision of increased budgets and resources, governments are still playing catch up as hackers remain one step ahead in the cyber race. Maintaining federal security is expensive and slow to show definitive results for the vast sums of money being invested in trying to protect this critical national infrastructure.

Last February, the White House requested $19 billion to federally fund cybersecurity measures in 2017. That is a $5 billion — or 36 percent increase — over the $14 billion requested for 2016, an indication of the challenge government agencies face in protecting their systems from hackers.

A report from Market Research Media highlights just how much the U.S. government is spending on this area: “The annual cybersecurity spending of the U.S. Federal government is bigger than any national cybersecurity market, exceeding at least twofold the largest cybersecurity spending countries.” The report says that the U.S. federal cybersecurity market will grow steadily at about 6.2 percent between 2015 and 2020.

This full article originally appeared on Samsung Insights and is authored by David Gilbert.

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