{"id":191026,"date":"2026-02-26T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/26\/nebraskas-new-cyber-chief-says-cisos-should-stop-saying-no\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T17:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:50:08","slug":"nebraskas-new-cyber-chief-says-cisos-should-stop-saying-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/26\/nebraskas-new-cyber-chief-says-cisos-should-stop-saying-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Nebraska’s new cyber chief says CISOs should stop saying no"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nebraska’s new cyber chief says CISOs should stop saying no<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/statescoop.com\/nebraska-ciso-bryce-bailey\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-26 17:48:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: statescoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

After being named Nebraska\u2019s interim chief information security officer last month, Bryce Bailey on Tuesday lost his interim status and will serve as the state\u2019s top cybersecurity official for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Bailey joined the Nebraska state government as its deputy CISO last June after departing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, where he\u2019d spent 18 months working on cybersecurity initiatives \u201cforeign and domestic,\u201d he said in an interview. In Nebraska, Bailey said he wants to \u201ctake cybersecurity to the next level,\u201d a goal that includes bolstering the state\u2019s cyber workforce, changing cybersecurity\u2019s image and amassing enough data to demonstrate to government policymakers that cyber programs, like the federal State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, are worth keeping.<\/p>\n

Census estimates in 2024 showed that Nebraska had finally surpassed 2 million residents, a sign of modest growth that nonetheless leaves it as one of the nation\u2019s smaller states, ranked between Idaho and West Virginia. A majority of Nebraskans, Bailey pointed out, live in the east, near Omaha and Lincoln, but his vision for incubating cyber talent, not only for the state government but the state generally, includes smaller, rural communities: \u201cI\u2019m thinking about those kids out in Grand Island or Scottsbluff, where they can learn to protect or defend a network before they even graduate high school and then they stay out there. And that\u2019s a win for Nebraska 10 years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n

A growing number of state governments, including Nebraska, have partnered with community, technical and state colleges in an attempt to develop cybersecurity talent and in some cases provide internships with government agencies, a symbiosis widely lauded but perhaps not adequate to fill all of the nation\u2019s open cyber roles. Bailey said that by starting earlier, in K-12 school districts, the state might harness the rebellious energy of youth: \u201cThey\u2019re fighting not only against adversaries,\u201d he said of schools, \u201cthey\u2019re fighting against the students,\u201d who are \u201ctrying to get around the security controls the district has in place to block them from inappropriate content, all that kind of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryce Bailey (LinkedIn)<\/p>\n

Bailey, like officials in all states, relies on the federal government as a coordinator and distributor of cyber threat intelligence, but the second Trump administration has pulled back funding across numerous programs, from Medicaid and education to disaster relief and cybersecurity. Many state technology officials have reported concern with what this will do to their budgets in the coming months. And continued cuts at CISA \u2014 a federal agency that, by numerous accounts, is struggling to perform some of its core duties \u2014 have likewise pushed states to embrace self-reliance and the grace of philanthropies.<\/p>\n

Bailey acknowledged the current administration\u2019s push to \u201cdecentralize\u201d some of its functions, but added that he still talks to officials at CISA \u201cat least on a weekly basis\u201d and that the federal government is \u201cstill fully supporting what we\u2019re doing here in Nebraska.\u201d He said the change signals an opportunity for states to \u201cstep up\u201d and take more seriously their \u201cwhole of government\u201d cybersecurity strategies, in which states play leading roles in supporting local governments, educational institutions and, in some states, the private sector.<\/p>\n

One potentially remaining federal support for state and local cybersecurity is a major federal grant program that\u2019s found passage in the House but still needs Senate approval, and consensus from lawmakers on how much funding the program\u2019s second run would receive after its past $1 billion, four-year authorization. Bailey said the SLCGP has been \u201csuper valuable\u201d in Nebraska, paying for vulnerability scanning, hardware replacements and security information management systems, particularly in the state\u2019s cash-strapped school districts. He said that if the program receives a second tranche of funding, states and local governments should diligently collect data on how helpful the program\u2019s been: \u201cWe need to be able to tell that story to the federal government, to individuals in Washington, D.C., and tell them how important this program is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Managing cybersecurity\u2019s image not only on a national stage, but inside Nebraska\u2019s executive branch is another priority for Bailey, who said he doesn\u2019t want cyber officials to always be viewed as the ones \u201cwho are just going to say no to everything.\u201d He warned that being overly strict with security can backfire, leading state employees to find insecure workarounds or use unmonitored personal devices to skirt the rules. \u201cI want to drive that secure innovation,\u201d he said, \u201cmaking sure security is baked in from the very beginning. I want to leave Nebraska\u2019s security posture stronger than I found it, not just technically but also culturally.\u201d<\/p>\n

And though Nebraska is small, the world of state technology officials is close-knit, and information spreads quickly. Bailey said that when it comes to government IT security, he wants his state to be known as an originator of good ideas: \u201cBy the time I\u2019m done here and my time has come, I want other state CISOs and CIOs to be looking at Nebraska and saying, Man, what is Nebraska doing? Let\u2019s reach out to them so that we can do what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\tWritten by Colin Wood
\n\t\t\tColin Wood is the editor in chief of StateScoop and EdScoop. He’s reported on government information technology policy for more than a decade, on topics including cybersecurity, IT governance and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

colin.wood@statescoop.com<\/p>\n

Signal: cwood.64\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nebraska’s new cyber chief says CISOs should stop saying no https:\/\/statescoop.com\/nebraska-ciso-bryce-bailey\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-26 17:48:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/06\/GettyImages-607346095.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[20,24,27],"class_list":["post-191026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191028,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191026\/revisions\/191028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}