The RSA Unified Identity Platform for State and Local Government
State and local government agencies deliver essential services and protect sensitive citizen data while managing tighter budgets and more complex compliance obligations than most organizations. Government cybersecurity has never been more urgent: according to the FBI’s IC3 report, government facilities ranked as the third most targeted critical infrastructure sector for ransomware attacks—and identity is almost always the entry point.
The RSA Unified Identity Platform addresses the four core identity security challenges state and local agencies face.
Download the solution brief for full capability and integration details, or read on for answers to the key questions below.
Ransomware attacks on government agencies almost always begin with compromised credentials. 80% of breaches involve stolen or misused credentials, and the average recovery cost for state and local governments reached $2.83 million in 2024. For state and local IT security teams, eliminating credential-based entry points is the most direct way to reduce ransomware risk.
RSA ID Plus delivers phishing-resistant and passwordless authentication that removes the credential attack surface entirely, with adaptive access policies and AI-driven risk analytics that detect anomalous access before it escalates into a breach.
Public sector identity management is uniquely complex—agencies manage full-time staff, contractors, seasonal workers, and inter-agency personnel, each with different access requirements and tenure periods. Manual lifecycle management leads to delays in provisioning and, critically, delays in de-provisioning that leave dormant accounts open as attack vectors. Privilege creep is especially common in environments where roles change frequently.
RSA Governance & Lifecycle automates onboarding, role-based access assignment, access reviews, and immediate de-provisioning—eliminating the manual bottlenecks that slow government IT teams and the access gaps that create security risk.
Government compliance mandates set specific technical requirements for authentication, access controls, and audit trails—and they evolve as threats change. 69% of US state government respondents cite managing cybersecurity risk as their top priority, but manual compliance processes are difficult to scale and prone to gaps that surface only under audit scrutiny.
RSA ID Plus and RSA Governance & Lifecycle provide phishing-resistant MFA, role-based access controls, and real-time audit trails that satisfy CJIS, HIPAA, and IRS 1075 requirements—keeping compliance current rather than scrambling before audit windows. The solution brief maps specific RSA capabilities to each mandate.
Most government IT environments blend legacy on-premises systems with modern cloud applications and SaaS tools—creating fragmented identity visibility and inconsistent access policies that municipal cyber defense teams struggle to manage consistently. US state and local government IT spending is projected to reach $125.4 billion by 2026, but each new system added without unified identity security creates a new potential gap.
RSA ID Plus is the only government IAM solution capable of securing all users across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments from a single platform—including legacy systems, without requiring agencies to replace existing infrastructure.
RSA ID Plus and RSA Governance & Lifecycle meet the authentication and access control requirements of CJIS Security Policy, HIPAA, and IRS 1075—covering phishing-resistant MFA, role-based access controls, audit trails, and automated access certifications. The solution brief includes a full compliance capability mapping for each standard.
RSA ID Plus is designed to secure users across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments—including legacy systems that predate modern identity standards—without requiring agencies to replace existing infrastructure. It integrates with existing directories, HR systems, and applications through standard APIs and connectors.
Password-only systems are vulnerable to phishing, credential stuffing, and brute-force attacks—methods responsible for the majority of government breaches. Phishing-resistant MFA using FIDO2 hardware keys binds authentication to a specific physical device, making stolen passwords useless without it and eliminating the credential attack surface ransomware actors depend on.
RSA ID Plus supports fully on-premises and hybrid deployment options, allowing agencies to keep sensitive identity data within their own infrastructure when required by policy or regulation. Encryption at rest and in transit, combined with granular access controls and comprehensive audit logging, supports the data residency requirements common across government mandates.
Implementation timelines vary based on environment complexity, but most state and local government deployments follow a phased approach: initial configuration and directory integration, followed by pilot rollout to a subset of users, then agency-wide deployment. RSA’s professional services and customer success teams work alongside government IT staff throughout, and the solution brief outlines typical phases and milestones for planning purposes.
Licensing and implementation costs depend on agency size, deployment model, and the mix of authentication and governance capabilities required. The more relevant financial framing for most agencies is ROI: with ransomware recovery costs averaging $2.83 million per incident and compliance failures risking federal funding, the cost of strong public sector identity management is typically a fraction of the cost of a single breach or audit failure. Contact RSA for a tailored cost assessment.
Included