Trump revokes security clearances for Chris Krebs, SentinelOne in problematic precedent for security vendors – Source: www.csoonline.com

In an ominous development for the cybersecurity industry, US President Donald Trump revoked the security clearance of former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Chris Krebs, now chief intelligence and public policy officer at cybersecurity giant SentinelOne. Trump also revoked any active security clearance held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs, including those of Krebs’ SentinelOne colleagues.

Trump revoked Krebs’ security clearance in an executive order, the first direct presidential action against any US cybersecurity company. The EO says the revocation of clearances for SentinelOne workers is pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.

Dan Meyer, national security attorney for law firm Tully Rinckey, paints an unpleasant scenario for SentinelOne. Although security clearances are revoked routinely, Meyer said it’s highly unusual for them to be revoked by presidential executive order. “The fact that you’re doing this by an executive order is odd,” he said.

This adds a layer of complexity to what will likely be a lengthy administrative and legal process facing both Krebs and SentinelOne. “You cannot just revoke the clearance without going through the process, even if you’re the president. The first thing that should happen is there should be a security review, maybe interrogatories, then a statement of reasons, and then you respond to the statement of reasons,” Meyer said. “If you’re a contractor, you can eventually go in front of a judge, have a hearing, and appeal, and the judge makes the final decision on the clearance.”

Retribution for Krebs’ role in vouching for the 2020 election

Chris Krebs, the founding director of CISA who is well-respected among cybersecurity professionals, was fired by Trump in 2020 for vouching for the integrity of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.

In his order, Trump offers a litany of disjointed allegations against Krebs, whom he calls a “bad faith” actor. He accuses Krebs of denying that the 2020 was rigged, “blinding” the American public about the controversy over Hunter Biden’s laptop, and skewing “the bona fide debate about COVID-19.”

He also calls for a review of Krebs’s role as a government employee, including his leadership of the CISA, and a comprehensive evaluation of “all of CISA’s activities over the last 6 years” to “identify any instances where Krebs’ or CISA’s conduct appears to be contrary to the administration’s commitment to free speech and ending federal censorship.”

In a Fox News video of the EO’s signing appearing on X, Trump again wrongly claimed that the 2020 election was “badly rigged” and called Krebs “a wise guy.”

However, “Despite the accusations of the White House, we have no hard evidence of actual wrongdoing by Krebs from what I can tell,” Dakota S. Rudesill, associate professor at Moritz College of Law and national security simulation director at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State University, told CSO.

“Instead, the overwhelming balance of the evidence before the public today suggests that Trump is using the powers of the presidency to single out Krebs for retaliation because Krebs did his job,” Rudesill added. “He did so in the face of threats and did not back down even after Trump fired him in November 2020. He ought to be celebrated.”

Like living ‘in Stalin’s Soviet Union’

At the same time Trump revoked security clearances from Krebs and SentinelOne, he issued another executive order revoking the security clearance of former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, as well as any entities associated with him, including the University of Pennsylvania.

Taylor is a veteran of multiple Republican administrations who served as chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly during Trump’s first administration and then wrote a tell-all book entitled A Warning under the pen name Anonymous. Trump’s EO regarding Taylor likewise presents a string of jangled allegations against his former official and calls for an investigation into Taylor’s activities as a government employee.

Moreover, simultaneously with the EOs against Krebs, Taylor, and their associates, Trump signed a third order stripping the security clearances from prominent law firm Susman Godfrey, restricting its access to government buildings, and threatening to cancel federal contracts held by the firm’s clients.

Susman Godfrey was just the latest in a string of clearance revocations hitting law firms and political “enemies,” such as President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

All these punitive actions are highly concerning to security clearance experts. “With each new executive order stripping or suspending security clearances, the language becomes more personal and less professional and in violation of existing law,” Mark Zaid, security clearance expert and managing partner of Mark S. Zaid, P.C., told CSO.

“It is particularly egregious that innocent people who are nothing but associated with the targeted person are being punished as if they were guilty of something,” Zaid said. “We might as well live in Stalin’s Soviet Union.”

Problematic precedent for cybersecurity vendors

As bad as the EO is for Chris Krebs, it poses a highly problematic situation for SentinelOne. Cybersecurity vendors depend on security clearances to provide contracted services to the government and to obtain or discuss frequently classified or sensitive government intelligence for research they provide to clients.

SentinelOne is a federal government contractor offering its Singularity Platform to various government agencies, including CISA. The platform is designed to “achieve zero trust, secure the cloud, and maximize data value.”

In SentinelOne’s most recent earnings call, CEO Tomer Weingarten predicted solid growth in the company’s government business despite the cost-slashing work of Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. “We’ve actually seen our federal pipeline expand,” he said. “It’s a definite source of demand for us.”

However, Trump’s order holds profound concerns for how SentinelOne conducts its business until it challenges the clearance revocation and goes through a long, time-consuming, well-established administrative and legal process “designed for the analog era,” as Tully Rinckey’s Meyer puts it.  

“If you lose the personnel security clearance of your team management officials in these companies, they lose their facilities clearance, which [is required] to contract for classified work.” Without that clearance, “every contract you have is now void, and you can’t perform on it” without going through the process, which can take months or even years, Meyer says.

In a statement, SentinelOne told CSO, “Regarding the Executive Order dated April 9, 2025, which focused on Chris Krebs in his prior role as a government employee, we will actively cooperate in any review of security clearances held by any of our personnel — currently less than 10 employees overall — only where required by existing government processes and procedures to secure government systems. Accordingly, we do not expect this to materially impact our business in any way.”