A second CISA employee predicts that “compliance efforts like security by design may not have the support they currently benefit from.”
That retreat from corporate oversight will be a top priority for Musk and other tech billionaires who have flocked to Trump. “The technological influence here, assuming Elon Musk remains in Trump’s favor, will be significant,” the cyber official says.
Without high-level support from the White House, CISA’s security-by-design campaign “becomes ineffective,” says CISA’s first employee. “Some companies will be less willing to follow these (guidelines) if they don’t believe the executive branch is going to support them.”
CISA employees are also watching with concern if Trump officials pressure the cyber agency to dilute itself. your draft regulations require critical infrastructure operators to report cyber incidents. Congress imposed the rule in a 2022 spending bill, but groups representing infrastructure operators they have complained that the draft requirements, which must be finalized by the end of 2025, are too onerous. Trump could force CISA to reduce rules to appease the private sector.
Trump and his allies want to “get rid of anyone who can enforce the rules, because then the rules don’t matter,” the cyber official says. “In the case of CISA, that will be quite significant.”
CISA is also preparing for changes to its election security mission. The agency already drastically reduced conversations with social media companies about online misinformation that follows a reaction from the rightbut Trump’s team could force CISA to further abandon its election security work. CISA staff are concerned that Trump will prevent the agency from participating in meetings of state and local election officials. “Reliable Information” Initiativethat encourages Americans to listen to their local election supervisors instead of provocative online claims.
“I think the job is probably dead,” says a third CISA employee.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, embraced electoral conspiracies after Biden’s victory in 2020. “Kristi Noem is a Trump loyalist who has backed him on his election denial claims, and will now be in charge of the agency she oversees (CISA),” the cyber official says. “I have a lot of questions about what’s going on there.”
The third CISA employee hopes to see the “persecution of those who have done election security work” once Trump takes office.
Weakened authorities
Trump’s victory could also have serious consequences for other CISA missions.
Under Biden, CISA won broader authority and new financing to monitor other agencies’ networks for suspicious activity, making it the centralized defender of federal networks that many experts always hoped it would become. That could change under Trump, especially if senior officials close to Trump bristle at CISA’s oversight.