Ex-CISA chief decries cuts as Trump demands loyalty above all else
America’s top cyber-defense agency is “being undermined” by personnel and budget cuts under the Trump administration, some of which are being driven by an expectation of perfect loyalty to the President rather than the nation.
That’s according to Jen Easterly, who led the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, aka CISA, under former President Biden.
Speaking at an event on the outskirts of San Francisco’s RSA Conference on Tuesday, Easterly didn’t mince words, calling the White House’s upheaval at CISA “a real loss for the federal government, but more so it’s a loss for the American people.”
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance