IC Workforce & Leadership — 2026-05-09

CISA Loses One-Third of Workforce in a Year as Industry and Lawmakers Warn of Crisis Preparedness Gap

CISA has lost roughly 1,000 employees over the past year, cutting its workforce to approximately 2,200, according to Cybersecurity Dive citing current agency staff. Cybersecurity Dive reported the Cybersecurity Division shed between 200 and 300 personnel, while the field Cybersecurity Adviser corps fell from about 164 to 97. Sean Plankey's nomination to lead the agency permanently has yet to clear the Senate, and both House Homeland Security Chairman Garbarino and Ranking Member Thompson told CyberScoop that the departures have left the nation weaker. CyberScoop cited multiple industry officials and former staff saying organizations previously reliant on CISA for incident support now seek alternatives, including private consultants and industry alliances.

Analysis
The degradation is structural: CISA shed the relationship infrastructure, including field advisers, senior program leads, and trusted private-sector interlocutors, that absorbed routine incidents before they escalated, corroborated across two outlets by named bipartisan lawmakers and five separately sourced agency employees. Organizations routing to private consultants and industry alliances are forming coordination habits that will persist after headcount recovers, and those channels may prove more resilient than reliance on a single federal backstop. CISA has simultaneously launched CI Fortify while losing the personnel who would coordinate federal response to the prolonged outages it now directs operators to prepare for. Congress will likely hold at least one dedicated hearing before October 1, 2026, with Plankey's pending confirmation as a natural focal point.

3 sources

CISA lost a third of its people in a year - Nextgov/FCW
Across party lines and industry, the verdict is the same: CISA is in trouble - CyberScoop
CISA workforce cut by nearly one-third so far - Cybersecurity Dive