The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, that the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) will lose its federal funding and cooperative agreement with the Center for Internet Security. MS-ISAC’s mission “is to improve the overall cybersecurity posture of U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) government organizations through coordination, collaboration, cooperation, and increased communication.”
According to its website, MS-ISAC is a cybersecurity partner for 17,000 State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) government organizations, and offers its “members incident response and remediation support through our team of security experts” and develops “tactical, strategic, and operational intelligence, and advisories that offer actionable information for improving cyber maturity.” The services also include a Security Operations Center, webinars addressing recent threats, evaluations of cybersecurity maturity, advisories and notifications, and weekly top malicious domain reports.
All of these services assist governmental organizations that do not have adequate resources to respond to cybersecurity threats. Information sharing has been essential to prevent government entities from becoming victims. State and local governments have relied on this information sharing for resilience. Dismantling MS-ISAC will make it harder for governmental entities to obtain timely information about cybersecurity threats for preparedness. It is an organized place for governmental entities to share information about cyber threats and attacks and to learn from others’ experiences.
According to CISA, the dismantling of MS-ISAC will save $10 million. State representatives rely on the information shared by MS-ISAC. It may save the federal government minimal dollars, but when state and local governments are adversely affected and become victims of cyberattacks, this savings will be dwarfed by the amount spent on future attacks without MS-ISAC’s assistance. Responding to state and local government cyberattacks still expends taxpayer dollars. This shift is an unhelpful one that will leave state and local governments in the dark and at increased risk. This is a short-sighted strategy by the administration.