The Office of the National Cyber Director has rolled out its second regional cyber pilot program, this one focused on rural hospitals.

National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross visited South Carolina on Monday to debut the six-month program, Project Lifeline 250, which connects industry with rural hospitals. The concept is similar to the first pilot program in Texas that connected industry with the water sector.

“Project Lifeline 250 connects the world-leading American industry with rural hospitals and uses the greatest American tools and capabilities to defend hospital networks; deploy physical back up devices after an initial incident to ensure an impacted hospital can still provide critical care; and identify high-risk and legacy devices and replace them,” Cairncross said in a statement.

The health care sector had a record year for breaches last year, with 804 large breaches reported to the Health and Human Services Department’s Office for Civil Rights that affected more than 140 million people. The FBI identified the sector as the top target for ransomware and other hackers in 2025.

Rural hospitals, like the water sector, lack resources compared to other kinds of critical infrastructure.

Besides industry and the ONCD, the effort is a project that draws in the South Carolina Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity program, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and local governments in the state.

“Cyber threats are a rising challenge to our nation’s security, and we must remain vigilant to protect the systems our communities depend on,” said South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster. “Project Lifeline 250 is another important step toward ensuring South Carolina’s rural hospitals have the resources they need to defend against cyberattacks and continue providing critical care.”

Some of the same companies involved in providing free services in the Texas pilot are involved in the South Carolina pilot, too, along with some new participants. Among the participating firms: Abnormal AI, Cisco, Cyera, Microsoft, Rilian Partners, Trellix and Zscaler.

“The stakes for critical infrastructure are getting higher and higher,” said Yotam Segev, cofounder and CEO of Cyera. “There’s real urgency in bringing cyber expertise from some of the world’s largest and most complex enterprises to rural hospitals through Project Lifeline 250. When a hospital knows where its patient data lives and who can reach it, it can reduce the leverage behind ransomware. Every community should have that clarity, no matter the size of the hospital or its IT team.”

Members of Congress also have introduced legislation designed to aid rural hospital cybersecurity.

The ONCD hasn’t said what will happen at the end of the six-month pilots. And so far it has only partnered, or publicly discussed partnering with, GOP-led states.

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published a strategy Monday that focuses on taking a leading role in cyber defense, prioritizing protection of critical infrastructure and building the ability to withstand attacks.

The 10-page strategy — “CISA 2030: Defend, Harden, Prevail” —  largely reaffirms existing roles for the agency, but CISA will begin reviewing its core services and capabilities within 60 days to make sure they meet key objectives, followed by implementation over the next 180 days and an update on its progress after one year.

Acting CISA Director Nick Andersen said in a foreword that the agency needs to act with “renewed purpose” in the face of threats.

“The threat landscape we face today is not static,” he said. “Nation-state actors and other malicious adversaries continue to grow more sophisticated in their efforts to compromise our networks, and there is no guarantee that a strong defense will eliminate intrusions. As President Trump has reminded us, resilience must be the foundation of our approach. We must ensure that when adversaries gain a foothold, we are prepared to detect them quickly, evict them decisively, and keep critical operations running without interruption.”

The strategy is also meant to align with the administration’s broader cyber strategy, published in March, and last year’s executive order on state and local preparedness.

“I call on every company and organization in the critical infrastructure community — from owners and operators to vendors and technology manufacturers — to act now,” Andersen said in a comment released with the strategy. “CISA 2030 provides a focused roadmap to strengthen defenses, eliminate adversarial footholds, and deny them any advantage that could endanger the nation’s security, economy, or public health.”

Within each section of the strategy, there are other goals listed.

Under “defend: lead national cyber defense,” the key objectives are to integrate state, local and industry cyber defense; protect operational technology; developing guidance and best practices on software security; and assess and develop emerging technologies.

Under “harden: prioritize national infrastructure security,” the key objectives are to coordinate intelligence for critical infrastructure; analyze infrastructure data; work with international partners; and emphasize strengthening the nation’s most important infrastructure.

Under “prevail: mobilize national resilience,” the key objectives are to invest in critical infrastructure resilience; strengthen national communications interoperability; modernize planning and exercises; and build next-generation interoperable infrastructure.

Critics say much of CISA has been badly diminished by budget cuts at the agency by the Trump administration, including many of them specifically a focus of the new strategy, that have left it understaffed.

The last strategic plan at the agency, published in 2023, also had three pillars: address immediate threats, harden the terrain and drive security at scale.

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A group of leading House Democrats introduced legislation Monday requiring the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to conduct an assessment of its workforce to determine whether it’s up to the task after the exit of around 1,000 employees during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The concept of a force structure assessment is more common in military branches, including one that Congress previously ordered for Cyber Command. The CISA Force Structure Assessment Act would order the agency to carry out a review of whether the agency still has the necessary personnel, training and certifications after budget cuts and other Trump-era departures.

“America’s cyber defenses are only as strong as the people behind them,” Rep. James Walkinshaw, the Virginia Democrat serving as lead sponsor of the bill, said in a news release. “As cyber threats grow more sophisticated and technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing reshape the threat landscape, Congress needs a clear accounting of whether CISA has the workforce, skills, and resources required to keep Americans safe and enable mission delivery. This legislation will identify critical gaps and give Congress concrete information to address them.”

Also sponsoring the bill are the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and the top Democrat on its cybersecurity subcommittee, Delia Ramirez, D-Ill.

Additional elements of the force structure assessmewould include a review of the security of federal IT systems and support for state and local governments; the risks posed by AI, quantum computing and other cutting edge technologies; CISA’s threat-hunting and incident response capabilities; support for critical infrastructure and operating technology, including CISA’s role as a sector risk management agency for a number of industry sectors; the operation of the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative; and international cooperation.

Some lawmakers and other observers have worried those areas have been greatly impacted by staffing cuts, ultimately hurting CISA’s ability to carry out its core functions.

Ramirez dinged GOP lawmakers for “a lack of interest in safeguarding our nation’s cybersecurity and our residents’ civil rights and privacy” in going along with the CISA cuts and other developments at the Department of Homeland Security.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have voiced concern about the scope of cuts at CISA, but Republicans have approved some of them while pushing back on others. CISA itself is currently seeking to hire hundreds of new personnel, even as its latest budget blueprint calls for yet more funding reductions.

“With Iran targeting our critical infrastructure and frontier AI models creating new cyber risks, we must ensure we have a cybersecurity workforce to counter these growing threats,” Thompson said. “After Trump has spent the past two years targeting and slashing CISA’s workforce, we need the agency to assess if it has [the] right personnel in place to fulfill its mission.”

National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross has discussed White House plans to develop a cybersecurity academy meant to consolidate and enhance existing federal cyber training and education programs, with the aim of addressing cyber workforce shortages. His office has reportedly drafted an executive order that would establish that academy.

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President Donald Trump blamed Minnesota Friday for the cyberattacks its water systems have suffered in recent days, saying the state was “behind it.”

Trump said the state being “incompetent” was the issue, but it wasn’t clear whom he thought actually conducted cyberattacks that U.S. investigators have attributed to Iran — if, perhaps, somehow Minnesota incompetently cyberattacked itself. The White House referred a request for clarification back to Trump’s remarks.

“I think that Minnesota is behind it,” Trump told reporters Friday. “Because they’re grossly incompetent. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think Minnesota ought to get its act together.”

The White House also didn’t clarify whom the president believed was behind similar attacks in other states, when asked for comment. Trump has repeatedly used federal power aggressively in Minnesota, a state led by Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who was on the ticket that ran against him in 2024 as the vice presidential nominee. Trump also has downplayed Iranian attacks amid the war he launched against the nation with Israel in February.

A number of cyber experts quickly pushed back on Trump’s comments after he made them.

“Victim blaming in cyber is so 2000 and late,” cybersecurity pioneer Chris Wysopal, Veracode co-founder and chief security evangelist, said on the Bluesky social media platform. Said Jake Williams, a member of the IANS faculty: “His own intelligence services are attributing this to Iran.”

Andy Jabbour — founder and CEO of Gate 15, a cybersecurity firm which provides support to the water sector — told CyberScoop that, “speaking candidly, I’m not even sure what he was actually saying or suggesting Minnesota’s government did or didn’t do.”

“Attribution is tricky business,” he continued, referencing recent alerts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and others. “But logically, given an ongoing war with Iran, recent statements made by Iran-aligned threat groups, with assessments that the recent activity is aligned with recent CISA warnings, given yesterday’s statements from CISA and the FBI, random unsubstantiated allegations aimed at political opponents seem reckless and are a disservice to the American people.”

Walz struck back at Trump in a Facebook post, noting steps from his Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal funding. CISA has shrunken considerably under Trump, and his administration has pushed states to defend against cyberattacks that feds once countered.

“Trump knows exactly who is responsible for this attack, and knows that other states were hit too,” Walz said. “This is what modern warfare looks like, and it further illustrates there’s no plan to win a war with Iran.”

“DOGE took an axe to CISA and left the U.S. exposed to cyber attacks,” he continued. “Thankfully, our experts in Minnesota were able to identify the vulnerability quickly and work with local communities to stop it.”

A spokesperson for Minnesota IT Services, a state agency that has been responding to the water cyberattacks, declined to address Trump’s remarks.

“We remain focused on supporting affected communities, securing critical infrastructure and coordinating with local partners and federal officials as the investigation continues,” the spokesperson, Emily Zimmer, told CyberScoop. “We will not comment on political statements or speculate about attribution.”

Other cyber professionals declined to comment directly on Trump’s remarks, but offered thoughts on who was behind the attacks and their motives.

Bryson Bort, CEO and founder of Scythe said the evidence supports the attribution with Iran, and that it looks like hackers there found something they could exploit on the internet and seized the chance.

“This was a target of opportunity,” said Bort, co-founder of the ICS Village, a non-profit advancing awareness of industrial control system security; such systems are common in the water sector. “It wasn’t that Minnesota did something as a state to raise Iran’s ire.”

Cynthia Kaiser, a former top FBI cyber official, said that when the bureau conducts attributions, it looks at technical indicators but also who has the capability, who has conducted similar attacks in the past and what the purpose of the attacks is.

“Iran ticks all these kinds of things,” Kaiser, now senior vice president at cybersecurity firm Halcyon, told CyberScoop. “My view is, if it walks like a duck, if it talks like a duck, I strongly suspect it’s a duck. I’d be shocked if we found out it wasn’t Iran.”

Just last week, CISA updated an advisory about how Iranian hackers were targeting programmable logic controllers in the water sector and other sectors, a warning that the water industry’s information sharing and analysis center said it believed.

“WaterISAC is confident in our government partners’ assessment that the confirmed activity is aligned with the joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) AA26-097A ‘Iranian-Affiliated Cyber Actors Exploit Programmable Logic Controllers Across U.S. Critical Infrastructure’ published and recently updated by CISA,” Tom Dobbins, executive director, WaterISAC, told CyberScoop. “We have evidence of earlier attacks from Iran even before this current conflict. Cyber attacks are the most viable way that Iran can directly attack our homeland, and it is logical that they would do so, especially given the challenges of absolute attribution.”

The water sector is often viewed as one of the most vulnerable critical infrastructure sectors, and Dobbins called on Congress to provide funding to provide funding for the ISAC.

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., also took issue with Trump’s comments.

“The President provided an unserious response that is beneath the dignity of the office he holds. Iran’s purported cyberattack on Minnesota’s water infrastructure must be taken as a serious threat to our national security.  Smith said in a statement, adding that she’s been in touch with CISA and the FBI and was grateful to Minnesota’s IT experts. “The entire situation serves as a stark reminder of the danger this war puts us in the longer it drags on.”

Fellow Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar had earlier been in touch with Sean Cairncross, the national cyber director and a Minnesota native, about the incident.

Trump has previously displayed a laissez-faire view toward other cyberattacks on the United States, such as when he’s been asked about Chinese and Russian cyberattacks and Trump shrugs them off as something America does, too.

He also has cast doubt before on his government officials’ assessments of who’s responsible for cyberattacks on the United States, such as when he asserted China rather than Russia was behind the landmark SolarWinds breach.

Updated 8/3/2026: with comments from Minnesota’s senators.

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An annual spy policy bill would authorize a cyberthreat intelligence sharing pilot program for state and local governments, and order an outside assessment of how intelligence agencies are currently sharing that information with those jurisdictions.

The House Intelligence Committee approved fiscal 2027 intelligence authorization legislation Monday that also includes provisions on election security and that are meant to boost intelligence community (IC) usage of artificial intelligence for cyber and other purposes.

The measure’s language on state and local information sharing come amid widespread frustration with Trump administration cutbacks on such aid from the federal government, with the president taking explicit action to shift more responsibility for cyber defenses to the local level.

Under the pilot program, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) would pick one state to receive monthly briefings from the ODNI, Department of Homeland Security, FBI and others to receive monthly briefings on “timely, specific, and actionable information regarding cyber threats” in unclassified form. After a year, the ODNI would then provide a report on the viability of a wider briefing program for state and local governments.

The bill requires the ODNI to produce a strategy on information sharing with states and local areas, and would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct an assessment of the state of such sharing now, including a summary of relevant agencies’ current efforts, how the agencies deconflict those efforts and what kind of obstacles security clearances pose to improving information sharing.

Trump’s pick to serve as DNI, Jay Clayton, emphasized his desire to focus on cyber threat information sharing as part of his Senate vetting last week, but some in the GOP are also pushing to significantly reduce the size of his office.

National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross has also talked about creating pilot programs for cyber threat information sharing with state and local governments, but there’s been little movement on that initiative.

During committee deliberation, panel Democrats won adoption of a trio of election security amendments.

An amendment from the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, would require the intelligence community to publish an unclassified assessment of foreign intelligence threats to the 2026 midterms. Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado’s amendment would partially withhold funding for the ODNI until Congress gets overdue reports it had required on the 2024 and 2026 elections. And  Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania’s amendment would “protect analysts from retribution by IC leadership for working on intelligence products related to foreign influence in US elections,” according to a news release.

The Democrats’ push arrives shortly after President Donald Trump delivered a primetime address seeking to bolster his long-debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

According to a Republican summary of the bill, it includes provisions for “significantly increasing funding for expanded access and use of frontier AI models for intelligence and cyber missions,” to codify and expand the role of the Artificial Intelligence Security Center at the National Security Agency and strengthen information sharing on AI threats.

“This year’s [bill] balances strong transparency and accountability measures while equipping the IC with the resources needed to combat the ever-evolving threats from our adversaries around the world, with a particularly strong focus on the global AI race,” said House Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark.

Another assessment that the bill orders would come from the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence of the Department of Energy on foreign cyberthreats to critical energy infrastructure, including their intent and risks.

The trend in Congress is for lawmakers to incorporate the annual intelligence authorization bill, or some of its provisions, into the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which often reaches the president’s desk at the end of each calendar year.

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