Federal shutdown deals blow to already hobbled cybersecurity agency CISA

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 10:47:30 -0400
cisa, cybersecurity

UMBC's Dr. Richard Forno published an article in The Conversation on the impacts of the US federal government shutdown on cybersecurity, especially on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the nation’s leading civilian cybersecurity agency. Nearly 1,000 CISA employees had left the agency through voluntary buyouts or deferred resignations earlier in 2025. Now, only about one-third of CISA's remaining employees are working after federal employees were furloughed due to the federal government shutdown.

In addition, the president's draft 2026 budget proposes to reduce CISA's head count by nearly one-third, and Congress failed to renew the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, the law providing a legal shield that allowed companies and infrastructure operators to share timely and often sensitive information with CISA about the cyberattacks, vulnerabilities, and incidents that they were encountering.

You can read Dr. Forno's article here.