As the U.S. government enters its first full week with operations ground to a halt, experts fear that there will be cybersecurity ramifications.
The numbers paint a grim picture: According to Department of Homeland Security planning documents, approximately 65 percent of CISA’s workforce has been furloughed, leaving just 889 cybersecurity professionals to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure. This comes at a particularly precarious moment, as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 has lapsed without renewal, eliminating legal protections that facilitate threat intelligence sharing between government and private sector partners.
We’ll let other people sort out the political part, but we will dive into the cybersecurity aspects of a shutdown. One thing that seems to unite all cybersecurity experts: a shutdown leaves everyone more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Hackers see opportunity as CISA operates with limited capacity
Rohit Dhamankar, vice president of threat intelligence at Alert Logic and Product Strategy at Forta at Forta, tells SmarterMSP.com that hackers don’t care about the politics. They just see an opportunity.
“Cutting CISA to 35 percent capacity during an active cyber campaign is like pulling two-thirds of your firefighters off duty during a five-alarm fire. The blaze doesn’t care that Congress couldn’t pass a budget, it just burns faster,” Dhamankar remarks, adding that modern cyber defense operates on a ‘see one, tell many’ principle.
“When a power company in Texas detects an attack, CISA typically alerts energy operators nationwide within hours. Now? That coordination hub is dark,” Dhamankar comments, noting that adversaries can use the same attack technique across dozens of targets before anyone connects the dots. “Nation-state hackers read shutdown announcements just like we do, and they know CISA’s workforce has been gutted. They know the information-sharing law lapsed. This is their window, and they’re not wasting it.”
He advises that managed service providers (MSPs) need to operate under the assumption that federal support is unavailable and that the CISA threat bulletin you normally receive within hours of a new vulnerability may now take days to arrive, or may not come at all.
“The coordinated response to a sophisticated attack? You’re coordinating it yourself now,” Dhamankar states, adding that MSPs protecting critical infrastructure clients need to understand they’ve become the front line by default.
Shutdown timing adds pressure during peak cybersecurity season
Deepak Kumar notes to SmarterMSP.com the irony of the timing of this newfound cyber vulnerability.
“It is no secret that this has been a challenging year for federal agencies. Executive orders have shifted priorities for CISA’s cybersecurity initiatives, coinciding with hiring freezes and budget cuts. Now, these challenges are reaching a critical point as a skeleton crew prepares to manage the department during the busy holiday shopping and travel season.
“The timing is particularly ironic, as the shutdown begins just as Cybersecurity Awareness Month starts. This year’s theme concentrates on protecting critical infrastructure, yet right as federal agencies deal with this massive change, sophisticated state actors stand ready to exploit the vast array of endpoints that make up our nation’s digital infrastructure,” Kumar says. “Ultimately, it may be difficult to demonstrate cybersecurity awareness if our own digital security agency furloughs over half of its staff.”
Shutdown stress increases human error and cybersecurity risk
Elika Dadsetan, CEO of VISIONS, Inc., a 40-year-old nonprofit rooted in clinical psychology and organizational systems change, approaches cybersecurity and crisis management through the lens of human behavior, systems interdependence, and resilience under stress. She believes these areas will face serious tests during the shutdown.
“A government shutdown elevates risk not only because systems go offline, but because people do. Human error increases when teams are furloughed, multitasking, or under financial and emotional stress,” Dadsetan notes.
Dadsetan reports that communication breakdowns, which are a hallmark of shutdowns, create openings for social engineering and phishing attacks exploiting confusion. Also, deferred updates and patching magnify technical risk, particularly in critical infrastructure where “temporary” downtime can cascade into long-term breaches. She also notes that psychological fatigue among remaining IT staff increases response time and lowers vigilance, a human factor often overlooked in cybersecurity planning. “MSPs can mitigate these threats by prioritizing psychological safety and clarity alongside technical controls, ensuring that even during institutional paralysis, teams remain connected, communicative, and empowered to act quickly.”
As the shutdown continues, cybersecurity experts agree on one thing: the risks are real, and growing. With federal defenses weakened and threat actors emboldened, MSPs and private sector defenders must stay vigilant, proactive, and prepared to shoulder more of the burden because for now, the front lines have shifted.
Photo: stockbroker / Shutterstock
This post originally appeared on Smarter MSP.