DHS Budget Proposal Guts CISA Staff, Programs
It is important to remember that the agency’s budget proposal is just that, a proposal, and Congress may or may not agree to it.
So what is in the proposal?
- It would eliminate more than a third of the staff (the rumors were 40 percent, so that is pretty much in line with the rumors)
- It reduces spending by 17 percent
- It proposes cuts to staffing, cyber operations, infrastructure security, chemical inspections and even communications with you and me
- It eliminates cyber defense education and training
- It guts funding for the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center
- It drastically reduces resources for stakeholder engagement (that is Beltway talk for not bothering to talk to you and me anymore)
- It cuts $40 million out of election security
- Risk management funding would drop from $134 million to $36 million
- It pretends to increase funding for infrastructure security from $159 million to $303 million, but that slight of hand is only because they moved $237.8 million out of the Weapons of Mass Destruction program into infrastructure. Net that is a $90 million decrease in funding
- Bombing prevention effective goes away – funding drops from $30.3 million to $1.9 million
- Chemical security also gets wiped out going from $25.9 million to $3.6 million
Whether Congress agrees with the agency or not is to be seen, but if they do, you can draw your own conclusion as to the effect.
Similar to the plan to eliminate FEMA and tell the states that it is their problem, if this budget gets approved as is, it will be the same. Some states will increase funding for cyber a little bit, but many will not. As for commercial organizations like the readers of this blog, well, you have extra money to dump into cybersecurity, right? On the other hand, countries like Russia, China and North Korea are thrilled. Credit: Data Breach Today
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