The new Trump administration has terminated all memberships on advisory committees reporting to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Acting Secretary said, “Consistent with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s commitment to eliminating misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security, I am retiring all existing memberships on advisory committees within DHS. “I am giving instructions to end it with immediate effect.” Benjamin C. Huffman said in a memo dated January 20, 2025.
“Future committee activities will be focused solely on advancing our critical mission of defending the homeland and supporting DHS’s strategic priorities.”
This includes members of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), which last year issued a scathing report blasting Microsoft for a “cascade” of avoidable errors that led to the collapse of its infrastructure. Was misused by a China based company. The nation-state group called for Storm-0558 to breach dozens of organizations in July 2023.
In July 2022, it published its findings on vulnerabilities associated with the Apache Log4j library and the steps taken to mitigate them. It described the Log4Shell flaw as an endemic weakness that will continue to plague organizations for years.
Then in August 2023, the board investigated an intrusion linked to the LAPSUS$ cybercrime group, calling out its “effectiveness, speed, creativity and courage” and its ability to weaponize a “playbook of effective techniques.”
The CSRB was established in February 2022 as a public-private initiative to assess critical cybersecurity incidents and provide recommendations on improving cybersecurity and incident response practices. At present it is not clear how the investigating body will be reorganized.
According to independent security journalist Eric Geller, the CSRB was said to be in the midst of an investigation into recent cyberattacks targeting telecommunications providers in the US. The activity has been linked to a Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon.
Some of the other advisory boards that have been disbanded include the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board, the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, and the USS Cyber Investigations Advisory Board.
“This is a huge gift to Chinese spies who targeted top political figures,” US Senator Ron Wyden said in a post on BlueSky. “Killing the board that pressured Microsoft to increase its cybersecurity feels to all the world like retribution for Microsoft’s million-dollar gift to Donald Trump’s inaugural committee.”
US President Donald Trump has also rescinded the Biden administration’s executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) security, which, among other things, advocated for the safe, secure and trustworthy development and use of the technology.
