CISA would lay off a majority of its workforce and only a third would remain on the job under conditions of the shutdown, the agency’s acting director Madhu Gottumukkala told the appropriators of the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
“I want to be clear: if the government closes its doors, cyber threats will no longer do so,” he said.
The pending shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security — CISA’s parent agency — comes after Congress granted the department a two-week funding extension following high-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement shootings in Minneapolis. Democrats have used these incidents to argue for funding overhauls of ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which have played a central role in the Trump administration’s maximalist deportation efforts.
The cyber defense agency’s work would be “strictly limited to those essential to protecting lives and property” and the available personnel will “look only at anything that is an immediate need and an immediate threat,” Gottumukkala said, adding that the agency will not be able to proactively scan for cyber vulnerabilities.
The closure would also delay ongoing renewals of a rule for reporting major cyber incidents that was signed into law in 2022, he said. The Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act directed CISA to adopt a final rule by October 2025, although that deadline has been extended to May. CISA announced a series of listening sessions for CIRCIA on Thursday.
The cyber defense agency has already lost about a third of its workforce in the past year due to various Trump 2.0 efficiency plans and mechanisms aimed at reducing perceived government bloat and wasteful spending.
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