Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Sunday said the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) lost about 1,100 employees over the course of the partial government shutdown this year. DHS was closed for 76 days over a Democratic-led push for federal immigration reform after the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota… Source link
President Trump’s pick to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has withdrawn his nomination after waiting more than a year for Senate confirmation. An aide with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs told The Hill the committee is aware Sean Plankey requested his nomination be withdrawn but had not yet… Source link
U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA is reportedly in dire shape, according to bipartisan lawmakers and industry leaders who fear that the agency’s ability to perform its core mission has been diminished and left it unprepared for a cybersecurity crisis. News site Cyberscoop’s Tim Starks spoke with sources across Congress, the private cyber industry, and beyond, and what came back reflected a general consensus that CISA has suffered under cuts and layoffs during the Trump administration’s first year. Over that time, CISA has lost around one-third of its staff, which cost it programs, personnel, and expertise, including the agency’s counter-ransomware initiative and efforts to promote secure software development. Some of these have included several members of its election security team, TechCrunch reported last year. CISA is the federal agency responsible for election security. Some warned that Trump’s ongoing obsession with promoting false claims about the 2020 election has led to the administration deprioritizing CISA. CISA also reassigned hundreds of other staffers to aid other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security as part of the Trump administration’s broad …
Jen Easterly, a longtime public- and private-sector cybersecurity practitioner who led the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for more than three years, has been appointed CEO of RSA Conference, known as RSAC. The organization puts on the prominent annual gathering of cybersecurity experts, vendors, and researchers that started in 1991 as a small cryptography event hosted by the corporate security giant RSA. RSAC is now a separate company with events and initiatives throughout the year, but its conference in San Francisco is still its flagship offering with tens of thousands of attendees each spring. “The conference is the crown jewel, but now we are also a year-round global membership entity for cyber professionals,” Easterly tells WIRED. “We are internationalizing more deeply and I’m excited to expand the innovation sandbox, the early stage expo and startup ecosystem, and that’s really about supporting the next generation of AI-driven cyber companies and secure by design innovators to produce high-quality software. In many ways we are living through an inflection point.” Easterly’s appointment as CEO certainly comes at …
