The Trump administration has removed all members from the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), ending what some observers saw as one of the few bright spots at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). 

A terse memo signed by Acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman cited a commitment to “eliminating the misuse of resources” and directed the “immediate” termination of all memberships across several advisory committees, including the CSRB.

“Future committee activities will be focused solely on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS’s strategic priorities,” Huffman declared.

The CSRB was established under President Joe Biden’s Executive Order (EO) 14028 on “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity” to study major cyber incidents and recommend improvements. Its members served in a volunteer capacity and did not have regulatory or enforcement authority. 

The board conducted three investigations — the Log4Shell crisis, the high-profile Lapsus$ attacks and Microsoft’s Exchange Online breach — and gained the respect of security professionals for harshly calling out corporate and technical deficiencies at major corporations.

In its review of the Microsoft Exchange Online hack, the CSRB decried “a cascade of Microsoft’s avoidable errors that allowed this intrusion to succeed” and insisted that “this intrusion was preventable and should never have occurred.”

“Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul, particularly in light of the company’s centrality in the technology ecosystem and the level of trust customers place in the company to protect their data and operations,’ the CSRB said in a scathing report that triggered major changes at the world’s largest software maker.

The CSRB was in the midst of an inquiry into the Chinese government-linked Salt Typhoon hacks of multiple US telcos when disbandment instructions arrived.

The CSRB was made up of cybersecurity pros from the federal government and the private sector and included Google VP Heather Adkins, CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, SentinelOne’s Chris Krebs and former NSA director Rob Joyce.

The fate of CISA is also up in the air following the departures of director Jen Easterly and deputy Nitin Nataranjan.  Under Easterly, CISA established itself as the go-to agency for federal incident response and cybersecurity mitigation guidance but it has generated controversy in some circles for not providing substantial ROI for its multi-billion-dollar annual budget.

According to published reports, US Coast Guard veteran Sean Plankey has been tapped as the nominee to replace Easterly at CISA.  Plankey previously served in Trump’s Energy Department as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response.  

Separately, the Trump administration revoked Biden’s executive order on AI safety,  a document that attempted to establish safety guidelines for the use of generative-AI technologies.

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