Post

New from me: Inside CISA as Trump prepares to take power. Employees are worried that he'll end key projects, drive away star talent, and generally weaken the agency's role in protecting the government and the nation from hackers. My @wired.com story: www.wired.com/story/cisa-c...

CISA staffers expect Trump to spurn efforts to raise the tech industry's security baseline. "Compliance efforts like secure-by-design may not have the support that they currently benefit from," one employee said. Also at risk: Election security aid and incident reporting rules.

As a U.S. cyber official put it to me of Trump's team, "They do not think it's the role of the US government to make [the] private sector act in a certain way."

On election security, the cyber official noted that Trump's pick to lead DHS (which oversees CISA), Kristi Noem, is a 2020 election conspiracy theorist. "I have a lot of questions about what happens there," the official said.

One CISA staffer even told me that they expect to see the "persecution of those who have done election security work" after Trump takes office.

It's not just marquee projects like secure-by-design. Trump could also weaken CISA's oversight of other federal agencies, which grew under Biden, sometimes in ways that rankled those other agencies. Separately, one of CISA's most powerful tools could be unexpectedly threatened.

During CISA Director Jen Easterly's tenure, CISA has recruited cyber industry luminaries and up-and-coming talent, simultaneously improving its capabilities and burnishing its credibility. Employees are worried that Trump will repel those kinds of "star hires," eroding CISA's workforce gains.

A lot of this will depend on who Trump picks to lead CISA and how they get along with Noem at DHS and Trump's White House team. But the list of respected cyber veterans who can clear Trump's vetting (www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/u...) is short.

Then there's the DHS problem. The department's immigration crackdown will make it even more polarizing. Many CISA employees already hate being part of DHS, and Trump's second term will only fuel those tensions, straining CISA employees' morale.

Read my full story here to learn more about where things stand at CISA on the cusp of Trump's second term: www.wired.com/story/cisa-c...

Counterpoint: At least on the election security front Easterly's priorities were focused on using CISA's platform to amplify the message from EOs that voting tech is totally secure, when we all know it isn't. Easterly kept repeating the myth that voting machines are never connected to the internet.

She also hired several pro-internet voting election officials to serve as election security advisors-quite a contradiction as CISA is on record on the high risk dangers of IV. And then there's this - apnews.com/article/tech...