{"id":213589,"date":"2026-02-11T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/11\/cisas-acting-chief-says-70-staff-were-reassigned-to-other-dhs-offices-in-last-year\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T19:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T00:00:20","slug":"cisas-acting-chief-says-70-staff-were-reassigned-to-other-dhs-offices-in-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/11\/cisas-acting-chief-says-70-staff-were-reassigned-to-other-dhs-offices-in-last-year\/","title":{"rendered":"CISA\u2019s acting chief says 70 staff were reassigned to other DHS offices in last year"},"content":{"rendered":"

CISA\u2019s acting chief says 70 staff were reassigned to other DHS offices in last year<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nextgov.com\/people\/2026\/02\/cisas-acting-chief-says-70-staff-were-reassigned-other-dhs-offices-last-year\/411359\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-11 13:55:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.nextgov.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency\u2019s top official confirmed to House appropriators that multiple employees were given transfer orders to other offices inside the Department of Homeland Security over the last year.<\/p>\n

Acting director Madhu Gottumukkala\u2019s remarks in a Wednesday hearing came weeks after he appeared to say that those transfers \u2014 deemed as official Management Directed Reassignments \u2014 did not occur during his tenure at the cyberdefense agency. He appeared with other DHS component leaders for a hearing to discuss contingency plans for a potential lapse in DHS funding that\u2019s set for Friday unless Congress can reconcile on a budget bill in time.<\/p>\n

In January, when pressed about the reassignments in the House Homeland Security Committee, Gottumukkala said those occurred \u201cnot in my time.\u201d On Wednesday, he said about 70 CISA staffers were given reassignments and that a \u201chandful\u201d were transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In turn, \u201c30 plus\u201d people were also transferred into CISA over the last year, he said.<\/p>\n

Gottumukkala\u2019s initial remarks last month confused lawmakers and other observers because the transfer orders were underway after he joined CISA in May of last year.<\/p>\n

A December 2025 staffing chart provided to the House Homeland Security Committee shows\u00a027 people were\u00a0transferred into CISA and 65 were assigned out of CISA. Nextgov\/FCW has asked the agency to clarify if more inbound and outbound reassignments have occurred since the end of last year.<\/p>\n

The reassignments have been a flashpoint for some lawmakers because they raised concerns that experienced cyber staff were being shifted away from CISA while cyber threats from China and others continue targeting U.S. networks and critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Gottumukkala is facing scrutiny over a handful of developments concerning his tenure, including a failed counterintelligence polygraph exam, the cancelled transfer of a well-liked agency Chief Information Officer…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CISA\u2019s acting chief says 70 staff were reassigned to other DHS offices in last year…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":213590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.nextgov.com\/media\/img\/cd\/2026\/02\/11\/GettyImages_2257443530\/open-graph.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-213589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213591,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213589\/revisions\/213591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}