In weighing the prospect of a larger and more diverse workforce against the benefits of accessing classified intelligence, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency may be realizing it can do more with less.
“I think agencies like CISA are going to shift from a way of working where we had to be in one place or a couple of places and those places relied heavily on classified information,” said Bryan Ware, assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA. “I think what we’re already learning right now is how much insight we can get from commercial information.”
Ware spoke Tuesday along with CISA Director Christopher Krebs during the annual Billington cybersecurity conference, where they addressed challenges related to the pandemic and plans for the future.
“There’s still a gap between classified and commercial information but we had a chance to rethink the way that we work and where we work,” Ware said. “If we can work remotely right now, then we don’t need to hire all of our employees from the national capital region. We probably don’t need to require all of our employees to have top secret clearances if they’re not accessing top secret information.”
Ware said the agency would be able to scale its operations more effectively by leveraging commercial and open-source data.
“Those things are going to open up a whole new workforce, reduce our facilities, costs, and I think give us the chance to really accelerate innovation and mission,” he said.
Ware’s comments echoed those Krebs made in June regarding the benefits of expanding the geographic reaches of the talent pool for cybersecurity workers.
To account for a more dispersed workforce, the CI ..
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