{"id":207190,"date":"2026-04-29T17:57:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/29\/cisa-cyber-partnerships-face-standstill-amid-cuts\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T22:15:11","slug":"cisa-cyber-partnerships-face-standstill-amid-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/29\/cisa-cyber-partnerships-face-standstill-amid-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"CISA cyber partnerships face \u2018standstill\u2019 amid cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

CISA cyber partnerships face \u2018standstill\u2019 amid cuts<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/04\/cisa-cyber-partnerships-face-standstill-amid-cuts\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-29 17:57:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: federalnewsnetwork.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

Cyber experts say staff cuts and other changes at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have left CISA less ready to engage with the private sector on critical cyber issues, even as lawmakers eye new steps to address increasingly important sectors like space systems and data centers.
\nDuring a House Homeland Security cybersecurity and infrastructure protection subcommittee hearing Wednesday, witnesses focused primarily on CISA\u2019s role carrying out sector risk management agency (SRMA) duties assigned to the Department of Homeland Security.
\nRep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the new ranking member of the cybersecurity subcommittee, pointed out that CISA has lost roughly one-third of its staff over the past year. CISA\u2019s Stakeholder Engagement Division lost 96 of 189 staff since January 2025.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s ironic to talk about modernizing DHS as a Sector Risk Management Agency when Trump has been on a vindictive campaign to dismantle CISA, the very agency he established but started attacking the minute it became an obstruction to his interest,\u201d Ramirez said]]><\/p>\n

CISA\u2019s fiscal 2027 budget request would further cut the Stakeholder Engagement Division to just 62 positions. The budget would eliminate the division\u2019s Council Management offices, Stakeholder Engagement activities and offices, and the International Affairs external engagement offices.
\n\u201cThis change shifts CISA\u2019s stakeholder engagement mission space to solely support the SRMA efforts and aligns with CISA\u2019s priorities to strengthen critical infrastructure security while optimizing operational effectiveness,\u201d CISA\u2019s budget request states.
\nBut Mark Montgomery, senior director and senior fellow at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argued the Stakeholder Engagement Division\u2019s work is crucial amid the cuts.
\n\u201cWithout the Stakeholder Engagement Division, you don\u2019t have the ability to set up the information sharing agreements to do the engagement with the sector,\u201d Montgomery said during Wednesday\u2019s hearing.
\nCyber attacks \u2018have not stopped\u2019
\nThe Stakeholder Engagement Division\u2019s Council Management offices had supported CISA and DHS\u2019s work with various groups, including the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC). The council had provided key authorities for DHS and CISA to work with the private sector on security issues, including cyber threats.
\nBut DHS eliminated CIPAC last year. A promised replacement for the council\u00a0hasn\u2019t materialized.
\nScott Algeier, executive director of the Information Technology-Information Sharing and Analysis Center, called for DHS to move forward with a replacement for CIPAC.]]><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen DHS disbanded CIPAC, it removed the legal framework that enabled and protected strategic engagement between CISA and industry,\u201d Algeier testified on Wednesday. \u201cAs a result, most of the work with CISA is at a standstill. Our adversaries have not paused. They have not stopped. They are continuing to attack with impunity.\u201d
\nCISA officials have also warned that the ongoing government shutdown has hampered the agency\u2019s ability to coordinate with the private sector and other partners.
\nHowever, Robert Mayer, senior vice president of cybersecurity and innovation at USTelecom, applauded a \u201cmarked increase\u201d in the number of intelligence briefings CISA had provided to the private sector over the last two years.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve made a lot of progress in this that area,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cOne area that deserves greater attention is the ability to convey that information to the local and regional providers in the communication sector. There are hundreds of such providers, and getting very quick information is very important to them. But I also will say that CISA has done a better job in terms of releasing cybersecurity advisories at the unclassified level, and that has been very helpful as well.\u201d
\nMontgomery pointed out that CISA\u2019s work with state and local governments has been hampered by the elimination of CIPAC, the pulling of federal funding for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), and Congress\u2019s failure to reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program.
\n\u201cWhen you combine those three efforts together \u2026 there\u2019s no way that these small public utilities, who don\u2019t have two wood nickels to rub together normally in their budget for cybersecurity, are able to make the proper investments to protect those utilities against ransomware and against nation state actors,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cAnd so our public health and safety at the very core, at our most vulnerable level, is weak.\u201d
\nSpace and data centers
\nMeanwhile, some cyber experts continue to advocate for an expansion of the 16 designated critical infrastructure, with various proposals to add the space sector and data centers, respectively.
\nSeveral House lawmakers in recent years have introduced legislation that would direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to designate space systems, services and technology as a sector of critical infrastructure.
\nSam Visner, chairman of the board of directors for the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said the United States should \u201crecognize that space systems are, in fact, critical to every aspect of our national security, every aspect of our economic security, and every aspect of the security of our critical infrastructure.\u201d]]><\/p>\n

Visner also pointed to a Council of Foreign Relations report that advocated for an assessment of space vulnerabilities and remediation steps.
\n\u201cIt certainly should include DHS, which, despite the decrement in its staffing, there have been people at DHS and at CISA who have worked very closely with the Space-ISAC and with the space systems domain, and have shown a great deal of interest,\u201d Visner said.
\nMeanwhile, amid the artificial intelligence boom, Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Chairman Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) pointed out that the current U.S. policy framework \u201cdoes not provide a clear, unified approach to data center security.\u201d That includes which federal agency would be responsible for addressing risks to data centers.
\nData center security largely falls under the IT sector today. But Montgomery advocated for the United States to create a separate designation for data centers, much like the United Kingdom has already done.
\n\u201cThere should be a strong consideration of whether data centers and cloud need to be a separate critical, national critical infrastructure,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cThere\u2019s been a push for that in the past. It fell short with the cloud. But now the other data centers as well, and we can all see the dynamic, large role they\u2019re going to play in the United States, possibly an independent national critical infrastructure that handles data center and clouds separate from communications.\u201d
\n Copyright
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CISA cyber partnerships face \u2018standstill\u2019 amid cuts https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/04\/cisa-cyber-partnerships-face-standstill-amid-cuts\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-29 17:57:00 Source Domain: federalnewsnetwork.com…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Copy-of-Untitled-5.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[20,24],"class_list":["post-207190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207190"}],"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=207190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207192,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207190\/revisions\/207192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}