Acting CISA director tells House panel agency detection and response capacity more limited than I would like during ongoing DHS funding lapse
Acting CISA Director
Operating on Antideficiency Act exception-only funding while Salt Typhoon and Iranian-affiliated OT operators actively target critical infrastructure, CISA's non-salary activity freeze translates directly into missed threat-hunt engagements, canceled election-system penetration testing, and loss of ISAC-level tipper distribution at the point where state and local targets most need it, per converging accounts from the House subcommittee testimony. Andersen's explicit Antideficiency Act framing and the quantified $10M ISAC cut narrow the general shutdown-stress story to a concrete budget-mechanic constraint with immediate operational consequence; slower incident-response timelines and increased time-to-public-advisory are very likely within 30-60 days if the lapse continues. CISA leadership may be foregrounding these constraints tactically to defend the FY26 baseline ahead of FY27 negotiations, which would mean the publicly stated capacity gap overstates actual operational impact; regardless, the FY27 Presidential Budget Request's proposed one-third workforce reduction and elimination of the election security program mean the agency almost certainly exits this crisis, in the coming months, smaller in both authority and capacity.