Federal Government Passes Cost of Cybersecurity onto County

By Gordon HopkinsIn an effort to cut spending at the federal level, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative of President Donald Trump’s administration intended to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse,” eliminated some of the services provided by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which defends critical infrastructure against threats.One example is election security. At a meeting of county commissioners in March of this year, Brad Eisenhauer, Jefferson County IT (Information Technology), explained the value of the service that was removed, “Some days we get multiple emails a day on cybersecurity threats, especially in this instance pertaining to the election. And one of the great things they had this last election day is, for lack of better term, they opened up what they kind of called a war room. And so it was a site you could log in and, all day long, there was people from all across the country, all sorts of tech people and elected officials were in this room and just sharing information.” In a recent interview, U.S. Representative Don Bacon said, “The administration, I think, is misguided on the cuts that they’re trying to do to CISA and the reductions in manpower.”Bacon added, “I’m the Cyber Subcommittee chair. I work on the DoD (Department of Defense) side, so I have oversight of Cyber Command, some elements of NSA (National Security Agency) and our military cyber, but I work very closely with homeland security, cyber which CISA is a part of that. In fact, I helped the legislation that passed, signed into law, that gave CISA the authorities that they have today to be the key defender of all things, private sector, our infrastructure and things like that.”Recently CISA announced that some of those services would be coming back online. However, they will no longer be free. Eisenhauer informed commissioners at a meeting on Tuesday, July 8, “Due to federal funding cuts, they're no longer able to provide their services for free like they have in the past.”CISA has now moved to a subscription model. Eisenhauer said, “They base the subscription model off of your annual budget. The lowest end of that subscription is a budget of $25 million a year or less. So, that is the cheapest one they offer.”Jefferson County falls into the lowest ranges. The cost to the county will be $995 annually. Eisenhauer added, “If we sign up by September 1, then we can get basically 18 months subscription for the price of a 12 month subscription.” Commissioner Mark Schoenrock asked, “Is it access to all the same services that we previously had”“Yes,” said Eisenhauer.

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