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August 31, 2025 - In late August 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem took the rare and decisive step of firing two dozen staffers in FEMA's IT department following a cybersecurity breach that put the entire Department of Homeland Security at risk. No sensitive data was stolen, and no citizens were directly impacted. But the breach exposed a glaring failure of basic protections that DHS found unacceptable.
The DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer, during a routine review, uncovered "significant security vulnerabilities" at FEMA including lack of multi-factor authentication, reliance on outdated legacy protocols, failure to patch known issues, and poor operational visibility all combined to leave the agency's systems dangerously exposed.
According to DHS's statement, "The investigation uncovered several severe lapses in security that allowed the threat actor to breach FEMA's network and threaten the entire Department and the nation as a whole."
DHS Secretary, Kristy Noem, did not mince words: she blamed FEMA's IT leadership for "failure," "neglect," "incompetence," and even dishonesty—accusing them of "downplaying how bad the breach was" and obstructing DHS's efforts to fix the problem. Among those terminated were FEMA's Chief Information Officer, Charles Armstrong, and Chief Information Security Officer, Greg Edwards, alongside 22 other IT workers.
Beyond the personnel shake-up, FEMA had already spent close to half a billion dollars on IT and cybersecurity in fiscal year 2025 — a budget that now looks like it wasn't enough to ensure basic protections were in place.
This incident isn't an isolated embarrassment—it's part of a chronic trend across U.S. government agencies. A June 2025 study found that 75 percent of government websites had experienced data breaches, over half had credentials stolen, and many suffered from reused passwords and poor patching practices. More than 50 percent of agencies earned a cybersecurity "D" or "F."
In recent memory, the 2015 Office of Personnel Management breach exposed more than 21 million personnel and background investigation records—including Social Security numbers and 5.6 million fingerprints—after repeated warnings went unheeded, according to OPM's official Cybersecurity Resource Center and a House Oversight Committee report. Then in 2020, the SolarWinds supply-chain hack infiltrated federal systems for months before detection. CISA issued an emergency directive ordering agencies to disconnect compromised software, and a joint statement from the FBI, CISA, and ODNI confirmed federal networks had been affected. GAO later attributed the operation to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service. More recently, in 2023, the MOVEit software vulnerability exposed tens of millions of sensitive records across sectors—including multiple government entities.
This pattern makes the FEMA firing painfully necessary. Government IT teams regularly get the budget, and warnings, but often fall short on follow-through. FEMA wasn't unique—it was just next in line.
In response to the breach, DHS's actions send a clear signal: accountability—swift, public, and in-your-face—is no longer optional. Large-scale firings on principle may be rare, but they speak to rising pressure to take cybersecurity seriously. The stated goal: rebuild trust and shore up defenses before "the American people" actually are impacted.
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Identity Theft 
