Democrats’ big win on Election Day, which saw them take control of both the House and Senate, has ramifications for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, artificial intelligence, surveillance policy and much more.

Here’s what lawmakers and cybersecurity experts have to say about the short-term and long-term prospects on Capitol Hill.

Leadership plans ahead

Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. is in line to take the gavel on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, with Sen. Gary Peters, Mich., retiring.

“Our government’s number one job is to keep people safe, and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee must work to ensure that our country remains safe, secure and free from all kinds of threats,” Hassan said in a statement to CyberScoop. “That work involves protecting against terrorism and fentanyl trafficking, but it also includes guarding against emerging threats like artificial intelligence security risks and strengthening our cybersecurity.”

“The Trump-Vance administration has undermined our security on these fronts, including by diverting resources away from combatting fentanyl trafficking and gutting CISA,” she continued. “We need to reverse these cuts, confront these challenges and put public safety first.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is poised to return once again as chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Democrats are taking over at a “pivotal time for CISA,” with it looking to add staff after cutting back by nearly one-third.

“First and foremost, we will aim to work with CISA to expedite its critical re-staffing effort and to ensure it has the expertise necessary to support stakeholders as they defend against the scale and velocity of AI-enabled cyber-attacks,” he said in a statement to CyberScoop. “Advances in AI can help defenders, but it will also accelerate the consequences of deferred investments in security and CISA must be well-positioned to help critical infrastructure owners and operators rapidly improve their cybersecurity posture.”

“We will prioritize getting resources straight into the hands for defenders — by extending the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program and improving support of under-resourced sectors, especially water,” he continued. “We will work to ensure CISA re-establishes its cross-sector coordination capacity, which was diminished when the Trump administration- terminated CIPAC, by making sure the Anchor-CI is eventually up and running and meets the needs of stakeholders. Finally, we will make sure CISA is well-positioned to support the secure development and deployment of AI.”

What happens in the lame-duck session

Before the GOP relinquishes control of the House and Senate to Democrats, though, there’s a lame-duck session ahead. 

Long-term renewal of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 2015) is a bipartisan and industry priority, with it set to expire Dec. 11. Current Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., has been the biggest obstacle to reauthorization, but he could get “rolled” by GOP leadership on an extension, said Michael Garcia, a former government cyber official and vice president of the cybersecurity practice at Monument Advocacy. Possible vehicles for CISA 2015 to hitch a ride include an omnibus funding bill or the annual defense policy bill.

The Department of Homeland Security, and its subagency CISA, are currently operating on a continuing resolution that’s also set to expire Dec. 11, where lawmakers could temporarily extend CISA 2015 if a long-term solution can’t be reached in the lame duck. Another continuing resolution before Dec. 11 in lieu of an omnibus spending bill is an option for the lame duck. Both a CR and omnibus spending bill would theoretically include DHS funding, although the agency’s funding has been made more difficult in the past by the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the department.

Republicans have talked about wanting to get the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act done in the lame duck. Besides the possibilities of CISA 2015 being included in the bill, Nicholas Leiserson, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Security and Technology, said the Senate version of the legislation has a pair of very noteworthy cyber provisions: a “very broad” authorization for contractor-owned, contractor-operated offensive cyber operations, and a requirement that every artificial intelligence product sold to the Defense Department have an AI bill of materials.   

Additional leadership shuffle

While Paul is losing his gavel, he’s shown he can be a disruptive force on passing cybersecurity legislation through the Senate in the minority. That makes what he does next possibly determinative for cyber bills, Leiserson and Garcia said. “If he leaves HSGAC, let a thousand cyber bills flourish!” Garia quipped on social media. Paul could opt to become the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee instead of HSGAC.

Nebraska Sen. James Lankford would take over for Paul as top HSGAC Republican in that scenario, and an industry source said he’s viewed as a supporter of CISA 2015.

On Senate Intelligence, the panel’s leadership goes to a lawmaker who has placed a big emphasis on cybersecurity in his congressional career: Mark Warner, D-Va. 

On the House side, while Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., moves to the minority on the Homeland Security panel, he has proven willing to collaborate with Democrats on cybersecurity issues. Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., is poised to take the gavel of the panel’s cybersecurity subcommittee, and Rep. Vince Fong, R-of California looks set to become the subcommittee’s top Republican and has his own history of bipartisanship. Fong would replace current subcommittee chair Andy Ogles, the far-right Tennessee Republican who lost in the primaries.

One thing to watch in the House, Leiserson said, is how the House looks to tackle AI — through existing committees, a select committee or some other structure. Democrats haven’t put forward a unified front on AI guardrails yet.

With AI models uncovering as many vulnerabilities as they are, “highly capable frontier models are going to drive a lot of discussion” about AI and cybersecurity, said Craig Albright, the Business Software Alliance’s senior vice president for U.S. government relations.

Appropriations, oversight, legislation

If the NDAA or a CISA 2015 extension don’t pass in the lame duck, they’d be priorities in 2027, too.

“CISA 2015 has to happen, and if we can’t get it done, then we can’t move to the next thing,”  said Henry Young, BSA’s policy director. “Once we get it done, there’s an open question about which of these priorities that we’ve talked about gets to be number one. Is it post-quantum cryptography? Is it government IT modernization? Is it frontier AI cybersecurity systems? We don’t know that yet, and we can’t know until we pass this law.”

How damaged the agency CISA is by Trump administration’s budget cuts is something Democrats are expected to scrutinize closely. Another top budget issue is what to do with the expired State and Local Cybersecurity Grants Program housed at DHS, since even if it’s reauthorized, it will require appropriators taking steps to invest in it.

Democrats could take a look at a variety of other Trump administration changes at DHS and CISA, on topics like election security, the Cyber Safety Review Board, the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative and more. 

More broadly, Leiserson said an area of Democratic cyber oversight is likely to be the Department of Government Efficiency that cut cyber personnel at agencies at and beyond CISA, and “particularly the integrity of systems that DOGE touched when they were given very high privileged access to federal systems.”

If the White House puts forward a permanent nominee for director of CISA, Democrats would be poised to vet that person. They also would have a say in who leads the Office of the National Cyber Director, should the incumbent, Sean Cairncross, depart.

So far, Democrats haven’t put forward a unified posture on expired surveillance authorities known as Section 702, although both Warner and incoming House Intelligence Chairman Jim Himes, D-Conn., have fought in the past for its renewal. The surveillance program is operating similarly still due to a court order, but that order only lasts through next spring.

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The clock is running out on Nick Andersen’s time to serve as acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, but there appear to be efforts afoot to keep him in the role for longer, with no permanent nominee in sight.

There’s broad support for the idea of Andersen retaining the position one way or another, which he’s held since February of this year. Since then, Sean Plankey withdrew his nomination for the Senate-confirmed position in April, and in June, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said a likely replacement nominee had met with the president and was coming soon. Four months later, no nominee has materialized.

“We proudly support the work Acting CISA Director Nick Andersen has done in his role,” a DHS spokesperson said in response to questions about keeping Andersen on board and what became of that potential nominee. DHS referred CyberScoop to the White House for any further comment, but the White House didn’t respond to inquiries.

The easiest way to keep Andersen in the acting role would be to select a nominee, thus pausing his 210-day limit on serving as acting director, said Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.

But “my gut reaction is that there’s just no appetite at the White House to say the four-letter ‘CISA’ to the president,” given his past animosity toward the agency, Montgomery said. “The way to keep Andersen in play is to nominate somebody. I think that stops the clock. But I don’t even think they can get the president to nominate Bugs Bunny. To me, that’s troubling.”  

Other top agency positions have received Senate confirmation under Mullin, Montgomery observed.

Multiple sources told CyberScoop they’ve been told that the administration has been working to keep Andersen in the job, possibly by shifting his title to “senior official performing the duties of” CISA director.

Some would like to see Andersen receive the job full-time, but sources say that when the search to replace Plankey began, the administration was looking for someone with a high pre-existing profile, such as a role at a big-name tech company.

On Capitol Hill, the leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee offered at least some  degree of support for Andersen.

“Acting Director Andersen is doing an excellent job preparing CISA to meet today’s threats, and we have a great working relationship. He has shown exceptional leadership at the agency, which is especially important in an increasingly complex threat environment as adversaries and criminals use AI to expand their capabilities and make attacks on our networks and critical infrastructure harder to defend against,” said Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y. “I appreciate our partnership and would gladly support his nomination.”

“Acting Director Andersen has provided some much-needed stability to CISA following a year of chaos and incompetent leadership,” said the panel’s top Democrat, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi. “While we may have our differences, I appreciate his dedication to the mission: securing government networks and the critical infrastructure ordinary Americans rely on every day. I am also concerned that any unnecessary changes to CISA’s leadership could once again destabilize CISA, which would make America less safe. It is in the best interest of CISA’s mission to have an empowered leader who has earned the trust of the agency’s workforce and its stakeholders.”

One industry source also said Andersen was a popular leader.

“Frankly, from everything [I’ve heard], people broadly support Nick, and he’s doing well at CISA,” the source said. “I don’t get the sense that anyone in the White House wants to make the effort to nominate a CISA director, which is a missed opportunity. With limited time remaining in this Congress, the administration would be wise to push his nomination through the Senate and put Nick on firmer footing.”

Andersen has made a tangible difference at an agency that has seen dramatic budget and personnel cuts, said John Zangardi, a former chief information officer at DHS.

“The organization is actually getting much better under Nick,” said Zangardi, chair of the Northern Virginia Technology Council Cyber Summit and Cyber50 Awards. “Like if you were there a year ago, it was pretty stark. … So morale has kind of gone back up, and I think Nick has been very instrumental in that. And I think he’s important in keeping that continuity going.”

One of the notions of having a Senate-confirmed nominee is for the prospective leader to be well-vetted by an outside body. On the other hand, it can also lead to nominees being stalled as senators press other agendas, something that Plankey ran into on multiple occasions.

But having a Senate-confirmed nominee at the agency also helps CISA compete for its priorities within the interagency process and at the White House, Montgomery said. Absent that, keeping Andersen in the position in some capacity is the next-best option, he said.

Montgomery also said Andersen has been making longer-term plans at the agency. Most recently, it released a strategy meant to carry CISA through 2030.

Andersen “strikes me as someone who knows he’s got more than a month left in his job,” Montgomery said. “He’s thinking hard about it, and he’s starting to think three to six months out, which is a lot for this administration.”

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Seven out of 10 federal cyber regulations requiring written reports to federal agencies are duplicated elsewhere, a report from a government watchdog found in a report to Congress Wednesday.

And so far, efforts to de-conflict haven’t had much success, the report from the Government Accountability Office concluded.

At the request of two top lawmakers, the GAO examined federal cyber regulations at 37 agencies. It counted 80 out of 117 rules that “either contain the same kind of reporting requirement applicable to a sector or the same reporting requirement as at least one other regulation.”

The desire to harmonize those conflicting rules gathered steam under the Biden administration, as it undertook a more aggressive push to regulate cybersecurity than prior administrations. It has continued into the second Trump administration.

The GAO scrutinized regulations that required the private sector to report cybersecurity incidents, plans and reviews to federal agencies, as part of a study sought by House Homeland Security Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and the top Democrat on the Senate counterpart to Garbarino’s panel, Gary Peters, D-Mich.

In some cases, a single critical infrastructure sector could have duplication with several agencies. For example, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been working on a regulation stemming from the 2022 Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA), which would require critical infrastructure owners and operators to report when they are the victims of major attacks or make ransomware payments.

Elements of the financial services sector might fall under one of 15 preexisting cybersecurity reporting rules, depending on the agency that has oversight, but they may also be subject to the pending CIRCIA rules, GAO noted.

A 2024 national security memorandum tasked the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Department of Homeland Security to harmonize conflicting regulations, and both agencies made some progress on those goals.

But the executive branch paused some of those efforts after Trump issued an executive order in March of last year while the administration conducted a study of the 2024 memo, a study that was still underway as of last month, according to the GAO.

As such, on harmonization, “many past federal efforts have experienced delays and made limited progress,” the GAO concluded in its report Wednesday, its latest on the topic. 

Congress has also looked at ways to streamline cybersecurity regulations.

GAO’s study was focused only on federal rules. BreachRx, a cyber incident response firm, published its own report Wednesday looking at major cyber incidents and how overlapping regulatory reporting obligations came into play, folding in regulations from states and other sources.

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