Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Acting Director Nick Andersen said Wednesday that the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has led to risks “accumulating across the system.”

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, Andersen painted a bleak picture of how the shutdown is impacting CISA. He said about 60 percent of the agency’s workforce is now furloughed. CISA currently has 1,000 vacancies and in a single day a few weeks ago six members of a highly technical threat hunting and incident response team submitted their resignation, he said.

“The remaining personnel are carrying out mission essential functions without pay while facing increasing pressure from nation-state and criminal actors targeting our nation's critical infrastructure,” Andersen testified. 

With CISA’s reduced capacity during the shutdown, Andersen said, the agency is largely limited to responding to imminent threats, protecting life and property, sharing critical vulnerability and incident information and keeping its 24/7 operation center up and running.

“These are necessary functions, but they are not sufficient to get ahead of the threat,” Andersen said. “Delays in issuing binding operational directives, reduced coordination with industry partners and constrained incident response capacity all create openings for our adversaries.” 

Andersen told lawmakers that CISA has been constrained in its work with the private sector, with state and local partners and across the federal ecosystem, creating “a real opportunity for our adversaries to be able to take advantage of that gap in capability.” 

Every day the shutdown continues, risks grow, Andersen said, particularly as CISA prepares for the heightened threat environment that will accompany the upcoming America 250 celebration events and the FIFA World Cup.

“What has been scaled back or paused are the very activities that reduce systemic risk over time — proactive assessments, coordinated planning, partnership, engagement and strategic initiatives across the federal enterprise and critical infrastructure sectors,” Andersen said. 

Intelligence information sharing continues, Andersen said, but as the shutdown continues the agency’s capacity for that function has become “exceedingly strained.”

“At some point, the compounding risk within this dynamic threat landscape is going to cause real damage to the American people,” Andersen said.

In an interview after the hearing, Andersen told Recorded Future News that he is concerned about how the shutdown — and the ones that came before it — will impact the retention and recruiting of talent inside CISA.

“This is not going to be a one-and-done,” he said. “We're going to be dealing with the longer term impacts of people thinking that the Department of Homeland Security and CISA, in particular, is not a choice employer in this technical world.”

Cyber talent will look elsewhere for employment, Andersen said, predicting that the shutdown could “create downstream impacts where it's going to make it harder for us to recruit people into service with DHS and CISA.”