The latest round of sweeping layoffs could hamper the business community’s collaboration with the beleaguered cyber agency.
The Trump administration has effectively closed the division of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that coordinates critical infrastructure cybersecurity improvements with states and local governments, private businesses and foreign countries.
Sweeping layoffs in mid-October eliminated almost all 95 employees in CISA’s Stakeholder Engagement Division (SED), four people familiar with the matter told Cybersecurity Dive. After the cuts take effect in early December, they will leave three of the division’s four units without any staff.
Pulled Health-ISAC quote:
The cuts “create a dangerous void,” said Errol Weiss, chief security officer for the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center. “The health sector is one of the most targeted and vulnerable, and this is exactly the wrong time to be pulling back federal support.”
“Losing the specialized personnel who manage those deep relationships means we lose institutional knowledge, trust built over years, and the agility needed to respond to sophisticated nation-state and criminal threats,” said Weiss, the Health-ISAC executive.
Weiss also hadn’t heard from CISA about the layoffs, which he said “inevitably increase the cyber risk” for already-struggling hospitals, clinics and other providers.
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