Roughly one-third of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s workforce will stay on the job if the federal government shuts down on Wednesday, according to newly published guidance.
“CISA estimates 889 employees as the total number excepted and estimated to be retained during a lapse in appropriations,” the Department of Homeland Security said in its shutdown plan document, which it published over the weekend. CISA had 2,540 employees as of the end of May, meaning it would retain just 35% of its workforce during a shutdown. The rest would be furloughed until Congress passed new spending legislation.
CISA is among the agencies that are allowed to retain a significant number of employees during a shutdown because it performs national security work. While hundreds of thousands of federal workers stay home, some CISA employees — working without pay — will likely be expected to continue monitoring government networks for intrusions and helping other agencies respond to attacks.
But CISA’s shutdown plan is still up in the air, and some employees still do not know who will be required to report to work and what exactly they will be expected to do. CISA leaders had few answers for employees during a town-hall meeting last week. But in keeping with the Trump administration’s plan to fire employees during a shutdown, CISA employees at the meeting “were made aware of the potential for more cuts,” said a U.S. official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Those cuts could prompt even more departures from an agency already significantly depleted by the Trump administration’s workforce purge.
“Some people may actually leave” as a result of the shutdown, the U.S. official said. “It seems like a war against federal staff.”
CISA did not respond to a request for detailed information about its shutdown plan.
A shutdown could have other ripple effects on national and federal cybersecurity. Past funding lapses have frozen cyber vulnerability scans, delayed cutting-edge security projects and prevented federal officials from engaging with the security community.
Some CISA employees are even worried that hackers might exploit reduced staffing during a shutdown to slip through federal agencies’ digital defenses. That risk is “pretty obvious,” the U.S. official said.
