When I walk At Jen Easterly’s office on a bright January day in Arlington, Virginia, I am greeted by a giant shark head hiding on the floor. I immediately see a Rubik’s Cube – an Oriental feature – with the logo of the organization she has been running over the past three and a half years – the CyberSecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or Cisa, which President Donald Trump created during his first term.
Easterly, who is 56 years old, jumps on her feet to greet me. The first thing that strikes me is her denim shorts, which has a dragon on one leg and a snake on the other. Then she starts with updates on CISA’s animated “Secure Our World” video series and regrets in the same breath that in weeks she didn’t have time for a private guitar lesson. Apparently a regular day on work for her except for one thing. From January 20, inauguration, Easterly’s time would be over at CISA. Trump fired the agency’s first director, Chris Krebs, after Cisa refused to question the integrity of the 2020 elections, and Easterly now says she was not asked to stay. Rumors are swirling that CISA programs-or even the entire agency-may soon be on Trump’s cutting block.
The timing cannot be worse for the nation to lose its top cyber security police. A Beijing-linked group called Salt Typhoon went through US telecommunications for months and purified call logs, surveys, text messages and even possible location data. Many experts call it the biggest hack in US telecommunications history. Easterly and her agency unknowingly detected Salt Typhoon activity in federal networks early last year – warning signs that eventually accelerated the unraveling of the spying campaign.
The work of banning Chinese spies from victim networks is not over yet, but the walls are already closing CISA. Trump’s nominee to manage the Department of Home Security, Cristi, told a Senate Committee last week that CISA should be “smaller” and “more agile”. And a day after the inauguration, all members of the Cyber Security Review Board – appointed by Easterly and actively investigated the salt typhoon offenses – were let go.
When Easterly officially became the agency’s second director in 2021, the government was still working on another Blockbuster-Hack-Solarwinds. Kremlin-backed invaders have compromised widely used software to infiltrate the networks of US agencies and other targets. Helping US institutions defend themselves has become an even more urgent and challenging project. CISA does not enforce laws or does not collect intelligence; His task is to evangelize digital security measures and offer free services so that institutions can see what they need to do not to be hacked or – more realistic – less hacked. Easterly has started working to build relationships across the federal government and with state and local officials, corporate managers and utility managers. In crises such as the Salt Typhoon campaign, these relationships are crucial to limiting the damage quickly.
It requires a determined person, and perhaps a charismatic one, to build a relationship with such a widespread group of people. Easterly has the background for this: she worked in the military (with multiple deployments), the National Security Agency and the National Security Council under Barack Obama, and she was in charge of Morgan Stanley’s global cybersecurity for almost five years. She also helped establish the US cyber command within the Department of Defense. However, somehow she is chill. To break the ice, and probably to make an impression, Easterly leaned in her passions while she was in the office, and spent with drivers and utility operators across the country. And, yes, there is her eclectic style – high fashion (at least according to cyber security standards) mixed with bells and Birkenstocks – but also her quiet, intense obsession with trying to solve the digital defense puzzle.
This interview was edited for length and clarity, by combining on-camera and outdoor camera sections. Look out Wired ‘‘s YouTube channel For the video.