“If we’re going to charge [CISA] with being the quarterback of the federal agency team and the public-private collaboration they need this money.”
Other allocations include $187 million for integrated operations, which would help provide support to CISA stakeholders across the nation and $170 million for emergency communications to provide assistance and support for federal, state and local stakeholders.
Finally, an allocation of $250 million would support CISA’s “critical mission enabling initiatives,” including the establishment of CISA procurement operations, the implementation of key security improvements to the agency’s networks, the expansion of workforce assistance offerings and continued progress on building out CISA’s headquarters. The allocation, a $108 million increase over the FY 2022 budget, reflects how CISA has continued to build out its operations since its establishment in 2018 – and in particular over the past year – to match up against the looming threats over the past year, including the SolarWinds attack and Colonial Pipeline hack.
There are also a few programs that were funded in fiscal year 2022, but that now either have no line items or significantly lower budget allocations, noted Mark Montgomery, executive director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. These include investments in cyber exercises, sector risk management agency duties, vulnerability management infrastructure and a K-12 cybersecurity training program.
However, Montgomery said that the increase reflected in the fiscal year 2023 budget proposal is a “significant improvement” over fiscal year 2022 budget, which was a 5 percent increase over the previous year.
“This [budget increase] quantitatively is closer to the challenge,” said Montgomery. “If we’re going to charge [CISA] with being the quarterback of the federal agency team and the public-private collaboration they need this money.”
