Homeland Security Chief Unveils New Cybersecurity Vision at SF Symposium

Key points

• Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem laid out her vision for cybersecurity at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
• She called for faster threat sharing between government and industry.
• She said CISA should get back to its core mission.
• She urged Congress to reauthorize the cyber threat information-sharing law.

Noem’s message to the security industry

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem took the stage at the RSA Conference in San Francisco to set out how she wants the department to approach cybersecurity. Threats to national security and the economy keep growing. Noem’s address aimed to rally industry and government, and with attacks becoming more frequent and more sophisticated, the security professionals in the audience were listening closely to what the department’s new leadership would prioritize.

Faster sharing with the private sector

A central part of Noem’s message was closer work with the private sector. She called for faster sharing of threat information between government and companies so threats can be stopped before they escalate.

CISA’s “core mission”

Noem said the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) needs to return to its core mission. In her view, that means hunting threats and hardening systems, along with supporting small businesses and state and local governments and coordinating the resilience of critical infrastructure. She criticized the agency’s past work on disinformation.

Renewing the information-sharing law

Noem also urged Congress to reauthorize the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, the 2015 law that gives companies legal protections when they share cyber threat data with the government. The law was due to expire later in 2025. Without it, she argued, the threat-sharing she wants would be harder to sustain.

How the industry reacted

Industry leaders and security experts at the conference were watching for signs of how DHS would treat CISA under new leadership. The answer matters to every company that relies on the agency’s alerts and guidance.

What comes next

The stakes in cybersecurity keep rising. Noem’s address set out priorities for DHS and CISA, and the next test is whether Congress acts on the information-sharing law and how CISA’s work changes.

Turning that vision into results will depend on cooperation between government and industry. Global networks remain the backbone of modern infrastructure, so how well that partnership works will shape how safe it stays.

Frank Jones, CISSP

Frank Jones has loved computers from the age of 13. Frank got his hacking career started when he downloaded a war dialing program that he used to detect dial up modems in his hometown of Chicago. Frank Jones now works as a JAVA coder and cyber security researcher.