Sean Plankey, the long-sidelined nominee to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, asked President Donald Trump on Wednesday to withdraw his nomination.

“At this point in time, I am asking the President to remove my nomination from consideration,” he said in a notification letter seen by CyberScoop. “After thirteen months since my initial nomination, it has become clear that the Senate will not confirm me.”

Plankey’s request comes weeks after the Senate confirmed MarkWayne Mullin to lead the Department of Homeland Security, CISA’s parent agency.

“The Nation and Department of Homeland Security Secretary MarkWayne Mullin requires a confirmed director of CISA without further delay,” Plankey wrote, adding thanks to Trump himself. “While I humbly request the removal of my nomination, I wholeheartedly support President Trump’s upcoming nomination for CISA and look forward to the continued success of the United States of America.”

Plankey’s nomination was considered dead by most at the end of last year. His renomination this year caught many by surprise, with CBS reporting the paperwork filing was an accident. The White House denied that.

Numerous senators had placed holds on his nomination, including GOP senators who held him up over matters unrelated to cybersecurity. Most prominently, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla, had placed a hold on his nomination over a Coast Guard contract with a Florida company that DHS had partially canceled.

Plankey had been serving as an adviser to then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Coast Guard matters. He retired from the Coast Guard last month.

While Plankey awaited confirmation, Bridget Bean, then Madhu Gottumukkala, served as acting director. Gottumukkala recently left the position for another at DHS amid widespread complaints about his leadership. Nick Andersen is currently serving as acting director.

Plankey told CyberScoop he had discussed withdrawing his nomination with Mullin. He said he has a “positive relationship” with Mullin and supported his leadership of DHS. And Plankey called Andersen “one of the most competent cybersecurity people in the country.”

Politico first reported Plankey’s withdrawal request. The White House and CISA did not respond to an official request for comment. When asked for a comment, a DHS spokesperson said the department doesn’t comment on personnel matters.

Plankey’s plans leave the agency with yet more upheaval. Trump has dramatically cut personnel and budget at CISA, with many top officials pushed out or otherwise departing. He has proposed deeper budget cuts still for fiscal year 2027.

Updated 4/22/26: to include DHS response.

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The chief information officer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced his departure Tuesday, ending his nearly five-year run at CISA.

Robert Costello, an 18-year veteran of the Department of Homeland Security, posted about the move on LinkedIn.

“Serving as CIO at CISA has been one of the greatest privileges of my career,” he said. “Together, we strengthened our cybersecurity posture, modernized critical systems, and built capabilities that will endure. I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished as a team.”

Costello’s tenure had recently grown turbulent, with conflicting accounts of whether the since-departed acting director of CISA, Madhu Gottumukkala, had tried to force him out. Costello last week received transfer orders for possible reassignment to another agency.

Costello had supporters on the Hill and elsewhere, with House Homeland Security Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., saying as recently as last month that it was good that an earlier reported attempt to move Costello out of the CISA CIO job had fallen short.

As CIO at the agency, Costello advocated for top-notch tech as a recruiting boon. He has been involved in efforts to respond to vulnerabilities within CISA. He has sometimes served as a public face for the agency at events, has touted new tools designed to enhance CISA services and has argued for greater use of artificial intelligence in his role.

“Throughout my career at CISA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and in the United States Air Force, I have been guided by a commitment to protecting our nation and advancing the greater good,” Costello said. “It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve alongside public servants whose integrity and professionalism set the standard.”

Costello did not indicate his future plans beyond leaving the federal government and a “commitment to service and to this nation.”

Costello’s move isn’t the only recent shakeup at the agency. CISA recently got a new acting director, Nick Andersen, to replace Gottumukkala after the former acting director left for a DHS headquarters post, as the nomination of Sean Plankey to lead CISA continues to stall. The acting chief human resources officer, Kevin Diana, also reportedly received transfer orders.

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Madhu Gottumukkala is out as acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, with current agency executive director for cybersecurity Nick Andersen replacing him as the interim leader.

News of Gottumukkala’s departure breaks one day after CyberScoop reported on widespread dismay with the agency’s performance during the first year of the Trump administration, with significant criticism aimed at Gottumukkala’s leadership on both sides of the aisle after a number of unflattering stories about his stewardship.

“Madhu Gottumukkala has done a remarkable job in a thankless task of helping reform CISA back to its core statutory mission,” a Department of Homeland Security official told CyberScoop Thursday. “He tackled the woke, weaponized, and bloated bureaucracy that existed at CISA, wrangling contracts to save American taxpayer dollars.”

Gottumukkala, served as chief information officer under then-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, now secretary of DHS, before he was picked as deputy director of the agency. Sean Plankey’s nomination to serve as full-time director of CISA has stalled, leaving Gottumukkala as the acting director in his place.

Gottumukkala will take on a new role at DHS, as director of strategic implementation. Andersen has won more favorable reviews from industry and cyber professionals during his tenure at CISA than did Gottumukkala, whom some still praised for his technical acumen.

ABC News first reported the news on the Gottumukkala and Andersen moves. The news comes the same day as reports about another leadership change at the agency, with Cybersecurity Dive first reporting on the exit of Robert Costello as CISA CIO.

While some officials CyberScoop spoke to for its story about CISA this week believed the agency had some duplication, most thought the Trump administration had cut far deeper than needed, damaging the agency. 

Andersen has held several IT and cybersecurity roles in the public sector over the past two decades, including positions at the Coast Guard, Navy and Department of Energy.

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“Decimated.” 

“Amateur hour.”

“Pretty much fallen apart.”

“It’s really hard to find something positive to say right now.”

It’s been a little more than one year into the second Trump administration, and there’s a large consensus, if not total unanimity, among those who have worked with and for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency: It has suffered significantly during that time. 

CISA has lost roughly a third of its personnel and shuttered entire divisions. Observers across the political spectrum told CyberScoop for this story that even on its core missions, like coordinating with industry and protecting federal networks, the agency is significantly diminished.

Many sources that spoke with CyberScoop did so under the condition of anonymity, in order to be more candid or avoid retribution. They told CyberScoop that CISA’s biggest problems, and their consequences, include:

• Trump’s ire over the 2020 election results has led to the agency being deprioritized within the administration. Congress has yet to approve the administration’s permanent pick to lead the agency, Sean Plankey, and lawmakers have failed to do other things to strengthen it. 
• CISA’s capabilities have been significantly diminished by the loss of personnel, expertise and programs. 
• In the absence of a permanent leader, Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala has struggled to lead the agency. “I don’t think anybody would argue he’s doing a great job,” one industry source said.
• Organizations that previously turned to CISA for help now seek alternatives, like industry alliances, outside consultants or government-to-government partnerships.

Where to assign blame varied from source to source. Most criticized both the administration and Congress, though some faulted one more than the other.

Some see bright spots in CISA under the current administration. And while many are pessimistic about the agency’s future, others expressed optimism.

But the first year reviews are not glowing.

“Year one was a tough year for the agency,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y. He noted that a “lot of the best and brightest have left the agency,” though he expressed optimism about Plankey’s ability to turn CISA around. “The amount of cyberattacks that our nation is seeing every day, both on the private side and on the federal government side — you want your best people there fighting against it, and if they’re somewhere else, it definitely leaves us all vulnerable.”

Said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on Garbarino’s panel: “It’s tough to have a robust entity when you cut the money…we are weaker because of CISA’s lack of manpower.”

When priorities shifted

Trump has harbored animosity toward CISA since 2020, when it contradicted his false claims related to widespread electoral fraud. He and his allies built on that animosity, recommending in Project 2025 that the agency be dismantled, divided by its core responsibilities, and farmed out to other federal agencies. 

“There was uniquely a target on its back,” said one CISA official who left in 2025. That hostility came from some Republicans in Congress, especially Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Said Thompson: “CISA wasn’t politicized for the most part, until the Trump administration came along and accused them of somehow contributing to his [election] loss.”

CISA has lost substantial personnel, including veterans and whole teams. Some employees were transferred to other divisions in the Department of Homeland Security. Election security was quickly cut. Two information sharing and analysis centers (ISACs) that serve state and local governments lost funding. A division coordinating with foreign governments, businesses and state and local governments was effectively closed.

The agency has lost senior leaders in programs like counter-ransomware initiatives, threat hunting and secure software development. Contracts for things like detecting threats in critical infrastructure networks, tracking vulnerabilities and collaborating with industry teetered, albeit sometimes only temporarily. 

DHS has unraveled multiple programs in which CISA plays a key role, such as by dismissing members of the Cyber Safety Review Board and disbanding the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council. Congress has lurched between letting both a key state and local cyber grant program and a cyber threat information sharing law lapse and temporarily re-upping them.

The departures and program changes likely haven’t ended, either. 

“It’s not a very harmonious place right now,” said one industry source. “I hear from people that are looking to leave.” Former CISA employees say those who remain either believe strongly in the mission, or are simply keeping their heads down until retirement from federal service.

“People I talk to say the morale is really low,” said James Lewis, distinguished fellow with the tech policy program at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank.

CISA and DHS officials routinely say the changes are designed to get the agency “back on mission.” Lewis, industry officials and others say CISA probably never needed to get involved in combatting misinformation and disinformation, roles that rankled some conservatives, but the agency largely halted that work prior to Trump returning to office.

Some saw duplication and redundancy at CISA as legitimate problems. “I did see overlap between who was actually doing policy and who was actually doing the operational work,” said Ari Schwartz, managing director of cybersecurity services at the law firm Venable and a former Obama administration cybersecurity official.

It was not that long ago when CISA experienced quick budget growth, particularly after its establishment in 2018.

“As with any organization, the first few years are growth years and after a while, the agency needed to reevaluate how it was operating and meeting its statutory authorities,” said Kate DiEmidio, who formerly served as the agency’s director of legislative affairs and acting chief external affairs officer. “There was a need for the agency to refocus.”

Even among those who saw the need for change at CISA, though, many saw the Trump administration as going way too far. “CISA needed surgery,” Lewis said, but “what it needed was surgery with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.” He added, “Not only is the White House hostile to CISA, but cybersecurity isn’t a priority for them.”

A question of capacity

The cuts have created real-world consequences for cybersecurity coordination. Former officials and industry partners describe broken relationships, unanswered requests for help and serious questions about whether CISA can handle a major crisis. The coordination and engagement that defined the agency’s approach have largely diminished.

The end result is that “they’ve dismantled all of those capabilities in units within government,” said Caitlin Durkovich, a former DHS official in the Obama administration and White House official in the Biden administration. She recently started a firm with former top CISA official Jeff Greene that offers services CISA has scaled back, such as security assessments.

“It’s been really hard to watch,” Greene said, how CISA has been working with the private sector and local governments on “developing a level of trust that is weakening or gone.”

One industry source said they used to meet regularly with top officials, but now can’t get a response. “We’ve got really good engagement elsewhere in government. We really would like the opportunity to do the same thing with CISA,” they said. “Some of the trust that had been built up has been eroded.”

Thompson said the biggest losses have been in election security and secure-by-design, areas where his staff says personnel has been “decimated.”

Said another industry source: “I do feel like that when people, if organizations, want to reach out to CISA, it’s not clear who’s there… If we got into a major conflict, let’s say, with China, and they start triggering Volt Typhoon-related malware, are we organized and ready to roll? I don’t think so.”

Another former CISA official described the current situation as a “lack of capacity,” especially when it comes to coordinating with state and local governments and others on a regional basis.

“A bunch of regions are really grappling with the loss of really key personnel who were the ones that were establishing and maintaining these relationships, and really trying to build the trust between the agency and the private sector, and especially in critical infrastructure,” they said. “Not having as many people to help do that national coordinating function that CISA is supposed to do is a real issue.”

They also said there are fewer people working in “flagship programs” like secure-by-design and developing regulations for the landmark Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA). “People are overstretched,” they said. “They’re not doing all the things that they could or should be doing, or want to be doing, and I think that you see evidence of that with talk from the private sector and their inability to to reach people and to get help “

Schwartz said he worries about when “an incident happens, do they have the people to go in, go to the states, go locally, and really do the work that’s needed, as they did in the past? Because they’ve lost some of that ability.”

Lewis said that “overall, the impression is it’s a much weaker entity than it was a year ago.”

“Their power was in their ability to act as a focal point, to coordinate, to bring people together, and just the publication of vulnerabilities and some of the things they were starting to get into in the previous administration were big steps forward that’s been diminished because they don’t have the people now,” he said. “So a smaller organization, that’s just not going to be as powerful.”

State and local governments say they’ve lost critical connections with CISA, saying they’ve had to turn to one another to fill the gaps.

“We’re asking states to do a job they’re not resourced to do, while weakening the one federal agency designed to help them,” said Errol Weiss, chief security officer at the Health-ISAC. “This is precisely where you do need a strong, centralized federal security function. We already have a national shortage of cybersecurity experts, and you can’t just replicate that expertise 50 times over.”

Overall, Weiss said industry partners have felt the lack of outreach from the agency. “Fewer touchpoints, fewer briefings, fewer problem‑solving calls,” he told CyberScoop, adding that there’s “a growing perception that CISA is being hollowed out where it matters most to industry: stakeholder engagement, collaborative forums, and operational support during incidents.”

Rob Knake, a former top Biden administration official, recently said that “CISA as an organization has pretty much fallen apart.”

Leadership in limbo

One near-universal sentiment is that as Sean Plankey’s leadership nomination drags in the Senate, the agency is worse off.

“We need to start this year off right, and we’re already in February and can’t get Plankey confirmed,” Garbarino said. “There’s nothing better than having a Senate-confirmed person running the show.”

The acting director has also faced criticism beyond the operational issues. Gottumukkala, who served as South Dakota’s chief information officer under Kristi Noem before she became DHS secretary, has faced fire from both parties for his stewardship.

A string of embarrassing stories have emerged about Gottumukkala, from the tale of him failing a polygraph test and seeking to oust those who administered it; to his reported attempted ouster of veteran agency CIO Robert Costello; to his reported uploading of sensitive contract data to ChatGPT. DHS has defended Gottumukkala amid those revelations.

Reading stories like that, “It just sounds like amateur hour,” said one former CISA employee.

“I don’t think he’s up to the task. I believe that he’s not the best person, and I think he is just somebody the secretary likes, because they both are from South Dakota.” Thompson said. “I don’t know anybody before this administration who would be in sensitive areas and not have passed minimal standards like the polygraph.”

The ChatGPT story drew concern from the right by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as well as from conservative figure Laura Loomer (the latter of whose remarks were racially tinged). Others were more perturbed by the lie detector story.

“When you have security issues with someone in a leadership position, you should find another place for them to go,” said a former Trump administration national security official. “There are plenty of competent people in DHS, in CISA, who could hold things together until Sean Plankey gets there. There are lots of serious things CISA needs to be working on right now. This is a drag on that. It’s not a place where you want any type of friction at the top.”

Garbarino was more generous, noting Gottumukkala’s technical background. DiEmidio also noted Gottumukkala’s technical skills. But Garbarino and Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei, the GOP chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, have been seeking CISA’s organizational plans to no avail.

“I don’t think he’s intentionally lying to us by saying there’s no reorg plan,” Garbarino said. “But there’s got to be some reasoning behind all these moves, moving the people around, or layoffs or whatever. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is the technical guy that has been given a non-technical job to do.”

Schwartz and some others largely blame Congress for CISA’s current woes, since they haven’t approved Plankey as a full-time, permanent leader. “A lot of the issue is the fact that just doesn’t have the leadership to be able to participate in senior-level discussions,” he said.

What’s left to build on

Despite myriad complaints, many observers still see value in the current iteration of CISA. Some are hopeful about its ability to rebound, too.

CISA says it’s still devoted to its missions. The agency published a 2025 year-in-review about its accomplishments.

“CISA remains steadfast in its mission to safeguard the systems Americans rely on by strengthening federal network defenses, empowering businesses, and fortifying critical infrastructure nationwide,” Gottumukkala said in a statement to CyberScoop.

Moving forward, “we will deepen collaboration with trusted partners, prioritize highly skilled technical professionals, and direct resources for maximum impact—accelerating innovation, operational coordination, and workforce right-sizing to reduce long-term risks while maintaining strong industry partnerships and cost efficiency,” he said. “The CISA leadership and workforce remains committed to this mission despite a small minority who are upset that accountability and reform have come to the agency.”

It’s a message Gottumukkala recently delivered to Congress. “He tried to give the impression that we haven’t lost any capacity,” Thompson said. “I wasn’t impressed.”

Others said CISA is still carrying out many of its old tasks, such as issuing public alerts on vulnerabilities and threats.

“There’s still some good reporting coming out,” Greene said. “But what I can’t know is the volume of what they can put out versus what they used to be able to put out.”

Weiss said “CISA still has tremendous value in areas only the federal government can truly provide: national‑level visibility, cross‑sector coordination and the ability to marshal resources across agencies in a crisis.” But it’s not clear whether CISA can rise to the occasion like it did during the 2024 Change Healthcare crisis.

“All of this means it’s more important than ever for the private sector to take the initiative,” he said. “Critical infrastructure owners and operators cannot assume the federal government will have the capacity to step in the way it once did.”

Weiss and others also said that CISA has refocused on federal networks, but others, such as Lewis, said it’s also diminished there. “That’s their primary mission, and they don’t have the policies or the bodies to do that,” Lewis said.

Garbarino and a number of industry sources say they’re encouraged by the idea that the Trump administration could write less onerous regulations for CIRCIA, with an earlier draft drawing bipartisan and industry criticism.

A Senate-confirmed leader could further brighten the agency’s prospects, many agree. “They still have some good talent there. It’s not totally that we’ve lost everything there,” Schwartz said. “If you have leadership in there, then you can build it up.”

DiEmidio said some of the staff changes have made sense. Election security had more people than other sectors that needed the help, she said. 

“In some ways, I think the external attention to CISA’s mission in the media and with Congress was completely focused on one or two things, and the focus on the things that really matter, and the good work that CISA is doing got overshadowed,” she said. For the agency’s cybersecurity division and other cyber teams, “there were several incidents over the summer where those teams were incredible. They were working evenings, weekends.”

But many agree that rebuilding CISA’s workforce will be difficult.

The Trump administration has deliberately made working for the federal government challenging as a matter of policy. Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, said before the election that the goal was to put federal workers “in trauma.” Morale at CISA has been particularly bad, they say. Periodic DHS shutdowns haven’t helped.

On the plus side for CISA, it’s a bad labor market, Lewis said.

Some of what CISA needs to do going forward is about managing expectations, said DiEmidio.

“What I would want to make sure is that CISA has a hiring plan in place to start hiring, especially in those key technical positions at all levels,” she said. “ I think you have to have an understanding that people are going to rotate in and out of government. Not everyone wants to stay in government long term and that’s okay.”

But there are some worries about CISA recruiting going forward. “Just the way they handle the departures, for a lot of folks, I don’t think it gives a lot of encouragement to individuals that ‘Hey, this is a great place to work,’” said one former DHS official.

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Another Department of Homeland Security shutdown would hamper the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s ability to respond to threats, offer services, develop new capabilities and finish writing a key regulation, its acting director told Congress Wednesday.

Some of those activities would continue on a limited basis, while others would halt entirely, acting CISA leader Madhu Gottumukkala testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

“A lapse in funding would impede CISA’s ability to perform … good work,” he told the panel. “When the government shuts down, our adversaries do not.”

As lawmakers held the hearing, DHS was hurtling toward another potential shutdown as Democrats and Republicans clashed over Trump administration immigration policies and enforcement, with a focus most recently on the massive influx of DHS officers in Minneapolis, where those officers have killed multiple U.S. citizens.

Republicans said at the hearing the testimony should persuade Democrats to fund DHS, since its border operations are largely funded by last year’s budget reconciliation law and a shutdown would mainly harm DHS’s other agencies. Democrats said the hearing was “for show,” as they have put forward proposals to fund the rest of DHS as the immigration debate continues — and as 90% of DHS would continue operating under a shutdown, as the panel’s top Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, asserted.

Gottumukkala said CISA planned to designate 888 of its 2,341 employees as “excepted,” meaning they could continue to work during a shutdown, albeit without pay.

“We will do everything we can to meet our mission during the shutdown,” he said. “Uncertainty and those missed paychecks are a serious hardship.”

CISA has reduced its personnel by a third under the second presidency of Donald Trump.

A shutdown “would delay deploying cybersecurity services and capabilities to federal agencies, leaving significant gaps in security programs,” Gottumukkala said in his written testimony. “CISA’s capacity to provide timely and actionable guidance to help partners defend their networks would be degraded.”

There’s a divide between activities CISA could continue in some capacity versus those they would have to shutter entirely during a funding lapse, he said.

“Limited activities include responding to imminent threats, sharing timely vulnerability and incident information, maintaining our 24/7 operations center, and operating cybersecurity shared services,” Gottumukkala said. “However, CISA would not perform any strategic planning, development of cybersecurity advice and guidance, or development of new technical capabilities.”

There would likely be delays in activities like issuing binding operational directives to federal agencies or completing the already-delayed regulations stemming from the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA), the latter of which would require critical infrastructure operators to report major cyber incidents to CISA and would be paused during a shutdown, he said.

Gottumukkala’s testimony is the latest before Congress to focus on personnel at CISA. The chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., chided Gottumukkala for what he said were delays in CISA providing a reorganization plan to the panel.

“We’ve been professional. We’ve been respectful,” Amodei said. “We expect exactly the same thing in return.”

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A Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency order published Thursday directs federal agencies to stop using “edge devices” like firewalls and routers that their manufacturers no longer support.

It’s a stab at tackling one of the most persistent and difficult-to-manage avenues of attack for hackers, a vector that has factored into some of the most consequential and most common types of exploits in recent years. New edge-device vulnerabilities surface frequently.

Under the binding operational directive CISA released Thursday, federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agencies must inventory edge devices in their systems that vendors no longer support within three months, and replace those on a dedicated list with supported devices within one year.

“Unsupported devices pose a serious risk to federal systems and should never remain on enterprise networks,” said CISA Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala. “When the threat landscape demands decisive action, CISA will direct FCEB agencies to strengthen cyber resilience and build a stronger, safer digital infrastructure for America’s future. CISA strongly encourages non-federal organizations to adopt similar actions to strengthen the security of their edge devices.”

To aid agencies in following the directive, CISA is producing a list of end-of-service edge devices. CISA developed the directive in conjunction with the Office of Management and Budget, and puts a bit more muscle behind a decade-old OMB circular on agencies phasing out unsupported technologies.

Despite being called “binding operational directives,” CISA has no authority to mandate that agencies carry out the orders — although agencies have demonstrated they usually seek to follow them, and there are ways that CISA can work to ensure compliance. The private sector pays attention to CISA’s directives even though they don’t apply to companies.

Nick Andersen, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, told reporters Thursday that the directive wasn’t about “forcing” agencies to comply so much as working with them to find a resolution. That includes circumstances such as for operational technology that is difficult to update and replace, he said.

The directive identifies the threat to federal information systems posed by unsupported edge devices as “substantial and constant,” given the access they can provide to hackers and how they are “especially vulnerable” to freshly-discovered and unpatched flaws.

“The United States faces persistent cyber campaigns that threaten both public and private sectors, directly impacting the security and privacy of the American people,” the directive reads. “These campaigns are often enabled by unsupported devices that physically reside on the edge of an organization’s network perimeter.”

The directive cites unnamed “recent public reports of campaigns targeting certain vendors highlight actors’ attempts to use these devices as a means to pivot into FCEB information system networks.” Andersen declined to name which reports the directive refers to, but said the order “isn’t a response to any one incident or compromise.”

Under the order, agencies are also told they must develop a process within two years for regularly identifying edge devices that have become unsupported or soon will.

The one-year timeframe to decommission listed devices is to give agencies time to invest in new technology as needed, Andersen said. He said CISA did not plan to make the list public.

CISA is publishing Tuesday’s directive almost one year to the day after the agency, with other federal and international agencies, released guidance on protecting edge devices.

Updated 2/5/26: to include additional remarks from Andersen.

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The acting head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency faced pointed questions from lawmakers Wednesday over CISA personnel decisions and staffing levels.

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee asked Madhu Gottumukkala about a reported attempt to fire the agency’s chief information officer, efforts to push out a large number of staff and whether CISA had enough people to do the job.

Gottumukkala at times sidestepped the questions, with the probing coming from both sides of the aisle. However,  Democrats exhibited deeper worries about the agency’s workforce and its ability to do its job.

Cutbacks at CISA after employees were “bullied into quitting” — among other methods of reducing CISA’s size — have “weakened our defenses and left our critical systems and infrastructure more exposed, and the American people more vulnerable,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va.

Said Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y.: “This committee supports the administration’s goal of aligning department [of Homeland Security] resources towards urgent homeland security priorities. At the same time, workforce continuity, clear leadership and mission readiness are essential to effective cyber defenses.”

The extent of those CISA personnel reductions was something lawmakers wanted Gottumukkala to be exact about in his answers.

The top Democrat on the panel, Mississippi’s Bennie Thompson, entered a chart into the hearing record that showed the number of personnel had fallen from 3,387 before President Donald Trump’s inauguration to 2,389 by the middle of December, or a loss of 998 people. Those figures aligned closely with the numbers Gottumukkala gave in testimony.

Under questioning from Thompson, Gottumukkala said CISA’s attrition rate was 7.5% last year, a figure he said was lower than most agencies. Gottumukkala said the agency has “the required staff” to do its work, but Thompson said he was still awaiting an expected letter from Gottumukkala on workforce needs and wanted a more precise number on current vacancies.

Gottumukkala also wouldn’t say whether the agency had carried out a study to determine whether its staffing was sufficient. In response to questions from Garbarino, Gottumukkala said there were no further planned organizational changes at CISA.

“We recognize that a disciplined mission requires the right workforce — not a larger one, but a more capable and skilled one,” Gottumukkala said in his opening remarks.

Democrats pressed Gottumukkala repeatedly on whether any CISA personnel had been reassigned to working on immigration enforcement, something he said hadn’t happened during his time at the agency, contradicting published reports to the country and a claim from Gottumukkala that Democrats said was false. The chart Thompson referenced showed 65 employees being reassigned out of CISA.

At times, GOP lawmakers gave Gottumukkala backing on CISA personnel numbers. Rep. Andy Ogles, who chairs the panel’s cybersecurity subcommittee, said, “You’re doing more with less, and you’re doing it more efficiently.” Republican appropriators recently released a homeland security funding bill that would cut CISA’s budget from nearly $3 billion to $2.6 billion.

Responding to a report that Gottumukkala had tried to force out Robert Costello, the agency’s CIO, Gottumukkala said individual agency personnel “decisions are not made in vacuum. It is a leadership-level [decision] at the highest levels, and we work according to how we see the roles fit.” 

Garbarino told reporters after the hearing that “ I don’t know whose decision it is making that personnel [move], but it was stopped, which is probably a good thing.”

Asked about a news story that he failed a counterintelligence polygraph test, Gottumukkala said that “I do not accept the premise of that characterization,” and any answer would have to be discussed in a closed hearing. Garbarino said he hoped an investigation into the polygraph incident would be settled soon.

Democrats repeatedly expressed frustration about Gottumukkala’s testimony. “You’ve managed to answer none of my questions,” Walkinshaw said.

Gottumukkala wouldn’t take questions from reporters after the hearing.

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Sean Plankey’s nomination to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency looks to be over following his exclusion from a Senate vote Thursday to move forward on a panel of Trump administration picks.

Multiple senators placed holds or threatened holds on his nomination, some related to cybersecurity. But the hold from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., appeared to be the biggest hurdle. With Plankey’s exclusion from the resolution to advance a bevy of nominees that got a key vote Thursday, procedural issues make it unlikely that he will be the nominee going forward, sources told CyberScoop. The administration would have to re-submit his name for nomination next year.

Scott’s hold was related to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem partially terminating a Coast Guard cutter program contract with Florida-based Eastern Shipbuilding Group, multiple sources told CyberScoop. The Government Accountability Office issued a critical report on the program.

While awaiting confirmation, Plankey, a 13-year Coast Guard officer, has been serving as senior adviser to the secretary for the Coast Guard. 

A spokesperson for Scott did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, and did not confirm information about his hold when asked for comment in recent weeks.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., also had said he would place a hold on Plankey’s nomination until CISA released an unclassified report on telecommunications network security. CISA said in July it would release the report, but as of Thursday, the agency had not publicly done so.

North Carolina’s GOP senators, Ted Budd and Thom Tillis, also had placed a hold on DHS nominees over disaster relief funding for the state.

A single senator’s ability to hold up the nomination process made Plankey’s inclusion in a broader package  his best chance for advancing.

Plankey’s nomination had broad backing within the cybersecurity community. Backers have frequently called on the Senate to confirm him for CISA director.

Some Democratic senators voted against his nomination after a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing in July, however, where he faced tough questions from them about election security and the slashed workforce at the agency.

Bridget Bean, since departed from CISA, and Deputy Director Madhu Gottumukkala have served as acting director of the agency since the departure of Jen Easterly in January as the Biden administration ended. The agency is poised to go without a Senate-confirmed leader heading into a year where the Trump administration plans to kick off implementation of a national cybersecurity strategy.

The Trump administration has pulled back a historic number of nominees so far this year. But the Senate in September also confirmed 48 nominees all at once following a rules change intended to overcome Democratic objections to his picks.

The post Sean Plankey nomination to lead CISA appears to be over after Thursday vote appeared first on CyberScoop.