US gov shutdown leaves IT projects hanging, security defenders a skeleton crew

Summary

The US government shut down at 1201 ET on October 1, halting non-essential IT modernization and leaving cybersecurity operations to run on skeleton crews. President Trump has made overhauling government technology a priority for his administration - at least sort of - since coming into office. The Trump-created, formerly Musk-helmed not-quite-a-government-department, DOGE, was given a broad mandate to modernize IT systems when it was stood up in January. In the process, the government's tech transformation team 18F was shut down allegedly under DOGE's pressure, and it has made closing IT deals more difficult. Likewise, a lot of IT staff have been laid off since the Trump team took the reins. Despite that, IT modernization projects have continued apace. The feds have signed numerous contracts that speed the entry of AI into the federal workforce, and have struck a growing number of deals with agencies transitioning to modern cloud infrastructure as well. In short, whether there are IT personnel manning the help desk or not (or perhaps because many have been laid off), the Trump administration is still trying to get rid of outdated systems. Toss a shutdown into the mix, however, and things start to get complicated. "With the shutdown now underway, the immediate impact is clear: non-essential IT modernization projects have stalled, creating backlogs in areas such as infrastructure upgrades, cloud migrations, and system updates," Former Acting Social Security Administration Chief Information Security Officer Timothy Amerson told The Register in an email. Amerson, who now works as a federal government security analyst at GuidePoint Security, told us that things won't get any better if this shutdown drags on, which it seems likely to do. "Every day of delay compounds long-standing legacy challenges and drives up future costs," the former acting CISO said. "Beyond the immediate disruption, this shutdown risks long-term setbacks." Beyond the immediate disruption, this shutd...