Firing of 130 CISA staff worries cybersecurity industry – Source: www.csoonline.com

The firing of upwards of 130 cybersecurity professionals at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is a disaster for the US, but also for many of its allies that count on close collaboration, a security expert said Thursday.

David Shipley, CEO of Beauceron Security, said he “struggles to think of another government agency that has built so much credibility and goodwill and respect across the private sector as what CISA has done. [The dismissals] are wholly undeserved, foolhardy and it’s like you can see the iceberg and you decide to speed the Titanic up. That seems like a bad thing to me.”

He added that the cuts orchestrated by Elon Musk’s US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “will raise questions of and put further strains on alliances. How much trusted information sharing will allies be willing to do with CISA going forward?”

Shipley said, “everything that I’ve heard from the national security and intelligence community has thus far been mostly that the trusted relationships at the staffing level endure despite the political noise. As a Canadian, I am seeing an unprecedented level of political noise, and leaning on that reassurance that ‘don’t worry, the people that keep the lights on still keep the lights on.’  [Now] I am watching those people lose their jobs.”

A lack of transparency

Frank Dickson, group vice president for the security and trust research practice at IDC, lamented the lack of transparency about what those laid off were doing, and whether eliminating their positions will have a material effect on national security or on the security of CISA operations.

“We don’t really know, because there’s just no transparency, and I think that’s the fundamental issue that we’re struggling with,” he said.

Will Townsend, vice president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, was surprised by the headcount reduction.

One reason for the layoffs, he suggested, “could involve the broader deployment of Gen AI security tools within CISA to make a smaller staff of senior analysts more productive in analyzing threats, generating situation reports, etc., as well as the deployment of AI-infused security infrastructure more broadly — specifically cloud based analytics, threat hunting, and DNS security to identify the potential weaponization of lookalike domains/sites that could serve as the tip of the spear for nation-state attacks.”

With the current administration on a mission to improve efficiency and mitigate wasteful spending, he said, “Musk’s deep knowledge of the power of modern AI and what it can do to improve security posture may be at the root of what’s materialized with CISA recently.”

But with so little information available about the changes at CISA, it’s difficult to speculate, he said.

Cybersecurity concerns

Alexander Garcia-Tobar, CEO of email authentication provider Valimail, said the new administration’s actions are causing significant concern among security professionals. “Many of us are advocating for cybersecurity to be seen as the bi-partisan effort it should be,” he said via email, but “the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to cancelling or disbanding orders with bi-partisan support with little to no commentary nor a chance to debate.”

As a result, he said, “There is great consternation that this is happening at exactly the same time we are seeing security threats escalate.”

In addition, said Garcia-Tobor, “DOGE seems to not be following even the most basic cybersecurity protocols, and potentially exposing not just data, but also the architecture of our secure systems … much of their data is reportedly unencrypted and on unsecured laptops. Not only are the actions by DOGE themselves opening us up to data and systems hacking by state actors and/or criminals, but we are at the same time firing or shutting down the very people and organizations that work to prevent hacking — so it’s a double whammy.”

This transition, he said, “seems more severe and more politically oriented than most, leaving many of the security professionals I speak with extremely concerned and disillusioned. They feel that a lot of what was working has been dismantled with no strategic plan in place.”