Securing America: Readiness, Response, and Resilience for Critical Infrastructure Defense
Black Hat USA 2025 · Day 1 · Briefings
Despite budget cuts, voluntary departures, and intense public scrutiny, CISA's operational leadership insists the agency is accelerating — not retreating. In a frank Black Hat keynote, Acting Cybersecurity Division head Chris Butera and CIO Bob Costello detailed new tools, emergency directives, and a shift toward "quality era" vulnerability management, while calling on the security community to deepen engagement with a leaner but still-active agency. ---
AI review
CISA leadership stands at the podium and tells you they're not retreating. The 80% ICS removal success rate is a genuine number worth noting, the Thorium release is real, and the 24-hour KEV entry is a milestone. Everything else is institutional reassurance pitched at a skeptical audience. This needed to be a press conference, not a Black Hat briefing.