IC Workforce & Organization — 2026-09-11

CISA Acting Director Andersen Reports 250 Prospective Employees Await Security Clearance as Agency Rebuilds After Losing One Third of Workforce

BLUFCISA is unlikely to onboard even half of its 250 pending hires by March 2027, leaving the agency short-staffed through election-season infrastructure defense.

Acting CISA Director Nick Andersen told reporters at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit on Wednesday that roughly 250 prospective hires have tentative job offers but remain in limbo pending security clearance, background investigation, drug testing and fingerprinting 12. Andersen said hiring priorities are the cybersecurity, infrastructure security and emergency communications divisions, plus regional field roles such as cybersecurity and protective security advisers, with a second wave targeting clearance adjudicators and HR staff needed to process further hires 12. He declined to set a timetable for reaching the 600-person plus-up Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin outlined in June, saying the agency is focused on filling specific operational gaps rather than a headcount target 12. The hiring push follows workforce reductions that cut roughly a third of CISA's staff, around 1,000 people, over the past year 12, and Andersen separately told The Record that CISA must change quickly to avoid the "worst that could happen" 3.

Analysis
Onboarding half the 250 pending hires by March 11, 2027 is unlikely. Andersen placed clearance adjudicators and HR staff in a second hiring wave rather than the first, leaving the processing bottleneck itself under-resourced even as candidates clear screening. Background checks, drug testing and fingerprinting routinely run weeks to months, and the administration's fiscal 2027 request to cut roughly 867 CISA positions works against sustained plus-up funding. This judgment is held with high confidence given Andersen's on-record sequencing and documented federal clearance timelines, though reporting from three outlets covering the same event doesn't disentangle CISA-specific dysfunction from government-wide hiring backlogs. Andersen has now explicitly declined to commit to Mullin's 600-person target, leaving Congress and DHS budget planners to decide whether to fund the full plus-up or accept a smaller, operationally-targeted workforce heading into the 2026 midterms.

3 sources

CISA has roughly 250 prospective hires awaiting clearance, agency chief says - Nextgov/FCW
US CISA Hires Stalled in Red Tape - GovInfoSecurity
CISA head says agency must change quickly to prevent the 'worst that could happen' - The Record from Recorded Future News