The Nation’s Top Cybersecurity Agency Is Bleeding Employees
The nation’s main cybersecurity agency is operating with more than 1,000 vacant positions due to staffing losses over the past year, the agency’s director said Wednesday at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is now also dealing with the impact of the government shutdown, which has left 60% of the remaining workforce furloughed or unable to work, said Acting Director Nick Andersen.
The agency has also been operating without a Senate-confirmed director for more than a year.
CISA’s mission is to protect the systems that keep the country running — power grids, water systems, telecommunications networks, hospitals and healthcare infrastructure, election systems, and more — but Trump has targeted the agency since taking office last year, effectively gutting its work in several areas including election security.
In his first few months in office, Trump cut a third of CISA’s workforce and dismantled critical partnerships that the agency depends on in order to carry out its mission.
With key positions still unfilled and internal instability due to uncertainty around agency priorities, what remains is an agency operating below the level required to match the threat environment.
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And now, with the government shutdown affecting paychecks and further complicating employees’ ability to carry out the mission, Andersen said that CISA is seeing a “continued flow of people out the door.”
The agency currently has just under 2400 employees, down from 3,300 in January 2025, said Rep. Bennie Johnson (D-MS).
Although CISA is continuing its work — focusing on “protecting life and property, or functions that [are] otherwise excepted or exempted [from the shutdown]” — the agency’s capacity to do so “is becoming exceedingly strained,” Andersen said.
He added that six “highly technical subject matter experts” from the threat hunting team resigned in a single day recently.
“That’s not a sustainable model going forward,” he said. “At some point, the compounding risk within this dynamic threat landscape is going to cause real damage to Americans.”
CISA isn’t the only security agency feeling the effects of the shutdown.
Officials also said that, because of the time it takes to train new agents and the delays caused by the shutdown, the Transportation Safety Agency (TSA) won’t be equipped to accommodate the surge of travelers in the U.S. that is anticipated ahead of the FIFA World Cup in June.
According to Ha Nguyen McNeill, a senior official acting as TSA administrator, 500 TSA officers have quit due to the shutdown.
On top of that, the Coast Guard has also halted many preparations for the FIFA World Cup, said Adm. Thomas Allen, Coast Guard vice commandant. He added that the Coast Guard is unable to make payments for more than 5,000 utility accounts, “putting us in imminent danger of widespread shutdowns to critical infrastructure.”
Additionally, funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) disaster preparedness and disaster recovery programs are rapidly dwindling, and if funding is not restored soon, they will be unable to assist with many disaster recovery efforts, said Victoria Barton, FEMA’s Office of External Affairs associate administrator.
The agency has also had to cancel training courses in disaster preparedness and anti-terrorism preparedness, she said.
All of these agencies are currently being held hostage by congressional Republicans, who are refusing to pass a new funding bill unless it also fully funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Following the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Priddy by ICE agents earlier this year, Congress agreed to extend ICE funding through Feb. 13, but Democrats said further funding would be contingent on appropriate reforms. Those reforms have not happened, though, and Republicans have thus far refused to fund the rest of DHS while negotiations take place.
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If, indeed, Republicans’ motivation for giving ICE more funds is to protect national security and keep Americans safe (as they claim it is), then they’ve chosen to go about it in an interesting way: refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security …in the name of national security. That’s the kind of newspeak that even Orwell couldn’t come up with.