Trump administration budget chief Russell Vought told lawmakers Tuesday that he’s willing to work with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on re-staffing up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, following deep personnel cuts and further proposed reductions in the fiscal 2027 budget blueprint.

Mullin said last week at a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security hearing that he would like to hire 600 more people at CISA, similar to remarks he made earlier this month at another House hearing. President Donald Trump has cut or lost more than 1,000 from an agency that stood around 3,400-strong at the end of the Biden administration — cuts criticized by lawmakers in both parties.

At a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government   hearing Tuesday, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., asked Vought about Mullin’s CISA remarks.

“You don’t just flip a light switch on, and you got 600 folks over in CISA now. What’s the plan for getting CISA fully operational?” Amodei, who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security, asked. “How do we make sure we have a robust, effective, cost-effective CISA force? Because I don’t think anybody thinks we have it now.”

Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said he hasn’t received a formal request from Mullin to increase CISA’s number of full-time employees, but knows that hiring isn’t instantaneous.

“He was not here when we developed this budget, so if he feels the need to have additional resources, we will work through that internally, and at the appropriate time, come up and brief you,” he answered Amodei. “I do think he’s in the process still of getting his arms wrapped around the department,” he said. Mullen became DHS secretary in late March.

“This is probably one of those things, particularly in the cyber world, you now have a year and a half of a new administration,” Vought continued, and referred to conservative complaints about how CISA handled election security and disinformation under Biden. “We saw this agency had major concerns with it in our four years outside of government and with new management, I think it’s now an agency, or could be an agency, that plays a very valuable part for DHS’s portfolio.”

Bringing hundreds of new CISA personnel on board could prove challenging for reasons beyond the usual bureaucratic hurdles and security clearance processes that slow any federal hires in the national security space. Past CISA employees and agency observers have said the way the Trump administration has purged personnel and treated those who have stayed could prove a further disincentive to future hires.

Acting CISA director Nick Andersen recently said that the agency has begun the process of hiring new CISA staffers, and expected to have nearly 200 job offers out by the end of this month.

The post Trump budget boss Russell Vought open to re-staffing CISA appeared first on CyberScoop.

Accenture announced Thursday it would acquire a majority stake in industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos for $3.25 billion and purchase two smaller security companies outright, essentially making a $4.18 billion bet that defending the IT networks of power grids, pipelines, factories and critical infrastructure sectors will become one of the defining challenges of the AI era.

The deals — which also include two Austin, Texas-based companies, runZero and NetRise —  represent a significant strategic pivot for Accenture toward operational technology (OT) security,  a segment of the cybersecurity market that has long been underfunded relative to traditional IT defenses. The announcement comes as the consulting giant faces pressure on its core business from the same AI tools reshaping the threat environment it is now moving to address.

Dragos, founded in 2016 by former intelligence specialists and based in Hanover, Maryland, has built what the industry regards as a leader detecting threats in OT environments. Its proprietary dataset of industrial threat intelligence has made it a trusted partner to critical infrastructure operators globally.

RunZero specializes in asset discovery and attack-surface intelligence — essentially mapping what is connected to a network and identifying where it is exposed. NetRise focuses on firmware-level visibility and software supply chain security, areas that have drawn increased scrutiny since high-profile incidents revealed how deeply embedded vulnerabilities can propagate through industrial device ecosystems.

Dragos co-founder and CEO Robert M. Lee will continue leading the combined entity, which will operate as an independent business under Accenture’s ownership. The CEOs of runZero and NetRise, HD Moore and Tom Pace, respectively, along with NetRise’s chief technology officer Michael Scott, will join Dragos as senior executives.

The acquisitions are not Accenture’s first move in OT security. The company acquired Cimation in 2015 and Revolutionary Security in 2020, along with several other OT-focused firms. 

Thursday’s deal, however, is of a different scale and ambition. Where previous acquisitions built out Accenture’s services capabilities, the addition of Dragos, runZero and NetRise moves the company firmly into OT cybersecurity software, a market it had not previously entered at scale.

Accenture and Dragos describe this expanding environment — which also encompasses Internet of Things devices, cloud-connected sensors and related IT infrastructure — as “xOT.” The concern is that as AI is integrated into industrial decision-making, the attack surface grows. At the same time, adversaries are using AI to shorten the window between compromising an IT network and pivoting to OT systems underneath it.

Despite that convergence, most cybersecurity budgets remain concentrated on traditional IT, leaving critical infrastructure comparatively exposed. The OT cybersecurity services market is estimated at roughly $7 billion in 2026. The broader OT cybersecurity market, which includes software, is estimated at $27 billion this year and projected to reach nearly $59 billion by 2031, growing at approximately 16% annually.

“Our energy and water systems, manufacturing plants, data centers and other operational environments need cybersecurity built from the ground up for xOT and designed to keep pace as threats evolve. The consequences of getting it wrong become societal threats,” Lee said in a release. “Organizations need solutions, not a patchwork of software and services. The addition of runZero and NetRise will allow the Dragos Platform to be a unique end-to-end platform for global defense, and Accenture will bring its decades of trusted relationships and deep expertise to help us scale and secure more critical infrastructure and physical operations globally.”

The transactions are expected to close in August or September, pending customary regulatory approvals.

The post Accenture shells out $4.18B on three companies in big industrial cybersecurity push appeared first on CyberScoop.

House Democrats criticized a draft Republican Department of Homeland Security spending bill Thursday that they said would cut funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by $250 million.

Republicans said the bill provides $2.4 billion for CISA, and that among its focuses are “improving cybersecurity resilience,” in the words of House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla.

But Democrats decried it as a funding reduction. The panel’s subcommittee on homeland security is set to vote on the bill Friday.

The fiscal 2027 funding measure “dramatically cuts funding for cybersecurity and infrastructure protection despite an increasing number of sophisticated attacks from foreign adversaries against U.S. businesses, health care systems, utilities, schools, and state and local governments,” Democrats said in a fact sheet.

They also said it limits DHS’s ability to counter foreign propaganda seeking to undermine U.S. democracy, and to protect states against foreign groups during the elections.

The second Trump administration has sought deep cuts in CISA’s personnel numbers and budget in both fiscal 2026 and 2027, drawing concerns from both sides of the aisle.

Congress last year sought to implement some, but not all, of Trump’s proposed cuts for the agency, advancing legislation to set its budget at $2.6 billion.

In their fact sheet, Republicans said they were reallocating $100 million from past appropriations to fund CISA’s core missions.

They acknowledged some cutbacks, saying that the bill “Includes strategic reductions to redundant, unauthorized, or duplicative contracts, positions, and programs.”

Despite the cutbacks at CISA over the last year and a half, officials have talked about wanting to hire additional personnel. The fiscal 2027 bill includes “$31 million to hire mission critical positions to counter threats from foreign adversaries, such as China,” according to the GOP.

The GOP also highlighted other cyber funds in the DHS bill. DHS’s management director would get $11.3 million for “enhanced cybersecurity protections,” while the Homeland Security Investigations division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement would get $5 million for the Cyber Crime Center.

Neither panel Republicans nor Democrats responded to requests for comment seeking more detailed numbers for the fiscal 2027 bill.

The post Hill Dems hammer GOP for $250M CISA budget cut appeared first on CyberScoop.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Congress Wednesday that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would ideally have 2,800 personnel, up from approximately 2,200 now and down from 3,400 before the second Trump administration began.

President Donald Trump has pushed to dramatically reduce personnel numbers at the agency, something that has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill. Trump has proposed hundreds of millions more in cuts for fiscal 2027.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., asked Mullin at a hearing Wednesday about further proposed CISA budget cuts, saying he was “concerned” about personnel numbers and funding for education programs and whether the fiscal 2027 blueprint would “negatively impact those efforts.”

Mullin said DHS funding lapses have made the department rethink CISA, although the deep CISA personnel reductions predate the recent spate of government shutdowns. 

“We had to readjust the way we’re looking at CISA and better lean on public partnerships,” he said. The agency can work well with 2,800 people “If we can actually have the partnerships we need with states and be able to use the grants, the monies that [we] saved with CISA to be able to invest with local and state municipalities. … We’re not going to fail on the mission we have in front of us.”

CISA personnel figures are in a constant state of flux. The CISA staff figure of 2,200 Mullin gave is down even from December. In March, acting director Nick Andersen said CISA was looking to hire 300 people.

There’s been no proposal from the Trump administration to-date to take funds formerly allocated to CISA and shift them to state governments for cybersecurity. State officials have said CISA budget cuts have made their jobs harder, and most experts have said the Trump administration’s approach to shift cyber responsibilities to states is badly misguided.

Congress has yet to permanently reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program that expired last year before it got a temporary extension and is due to expire again in September.

CISA has gone without a Senate-confirmed director for the entirety of the second Trump administration. Mullin said “we’ve got a person soon to be nominated that will be running CISA that has the ability to recruit and focus on the authorities we have.”

Mullin said CISA has “unique” authorities that haven’t “been completely utilized.” 

“We want CISA to be the leader in cybersecurity,” he said. “They should be and they will be.”

A House Appropriations subcommittee is set to consider a DHS funding bill Friday.

The post DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin pinpoints optimal CISA staffing levels appeared first on CyberScoop.