DHS Secretary Noem Fires Two Dozen FEMA IT Leaders

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has fired two dozen FEMA IT personnel, including some senior leaders, for allegedly violating security procedures, permitting delicate data to be compromised, and mendacity when confronted about it..

“FEMA’s career IT leadership failed on every level. Their incompetence put the American people at risk,” said Secretary Noem. “When DHS stepped in to repair the issue, entrenched bureaucrats labored to stop us from fixing the issue and downplayed just how dangerous this breach was. These deep-state people have been more in masking up their failures than in defending the Homeland and American residents’ personal data, so I terminated them immediately. The American people deserve outcomes from their authorities.”

I’ve to admit that seeing federal IT varieties fired for incompetence does give me hope that there’s a new day dawning in Civil Service.

At this level, the main points are sketchy, but given Noem’s nuclear response, I’ve to assume there have been huge issues. This is how DHS describes it.

While conducting a routine cybersecurity review, the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) found vital security vulnerabilities that gave a menace actor access to FEMA’s community. The investigation uncovered a number of extreme lapses in security that allowed the menace actor to breach FEMA’s community and threaten the complete Department and the nation as a entire.

The entrenched bureaucrats who led FEMA’s IT group for many years resisted any efforts to repair the issue. Instead, they averted scheduled inspections and lied to officers about the scope and scale of the cyber vulnerabilities.

Failures included: an agency-wide lack of multi-factor authentication, use of prohibited legacy protocols, failing to repair identified and crucial vulnerabilities, and insufficient operational visibility.

FEMA spent almost half a billion {dollars} on IT and cybersecurity measures in Fiscal Year 2025 alone and delivered just about nothing for the American people. Despite burning tons of of thousands and thousands of taxpayer {dollars}, FEMA’s IT management still uncared for its basic duties and uncovered the complete Department to cyberattacks.

According to a FEMA spokesman, “DHS was able to identify and finally get the bad actor. But they turned off their credentials and then, somehow, the FEMA IT team turned their credentials back on.”

The speculation is that the hackers were based in China and targeted Microsoft SharePoint servers.

While Secretary Noem may be correct that the American people got nothing for the expenditure of half a billion dollars,  that isn’t to say that the money bought nothing. It padded the resumes of the people allegedly overseeing the contracts, employed contractors, and likely purchased equipment that hasn’t been installed. That contractor money, in return, probably went to well-heeled Democrat donors. So, it wasn’t a total loss, after all.

While the proximate cause of the firing of the Dirty Two Dozen was a failed response to a cyberattack, it is all a part of Trump’s and Noem’s efforts to convert the bloated, effervescent puddle of FAIL that is FEMA into an effective agency. We had a demonstration of just how inept FEMA is at carrying out anything that doesn’t resemble a coffee break or nap time last summer during Hurricane Helene.

RELATED:

FEMA Illustrates Perfectly What’s Wrong With Government When Hurricane Victim Asks for New Window – PurpleState

North Carolina Whistleblower: FEMA Has Housing Units but Has No Timeline to ‘Release’ Them – PurpleState

FLASHBACK: Was FEMA Punishing Trump Supporters in North Carolina? – PurpleState

The administration appears to be making some progress; see After Decades of Failure, the Trump Administration is getting FEMA Back on Track | Homeland Security.

Two extra stray threads. Earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took motion to keep distributors situated in China from making adjustments to DOD cloud computing systems. In the method, he intimated that DOD was working with other companies, which suggests that the issue is a authorities issue, somewhat than a DOD issue. It could be attention-grabbing to know if international nationals also keep FEMA’s IT systems; see Did Pete Hegseth Just Save the Day, Or Is He a Contender for the ‘Too Little, Too Late’ Award? A second potential data level comes from the U.S. Navy: Navy’s top cybersecurity official abruptly leaves.

The Department of the Navy’s chief info officer left her post after almost two years. Jane Overslaugh Rathbun, who served as the Department of the Navy’s top knowledgeable for cybersecurity, electromagnetic threats and privateness, abruptly announced her retirement last week. She is the latest senior Navy official to depart or be fired this month.

Rathbun shared the news in a LinkedIn post on Aug. 22, saying that it was onerous to sum up more than three many years working in national security.

“It is with gratitude, pride, and humility that I close out this chapter of my career as a civil servant,” she wrote.

In her post, Rathbun didn’t give a purpose for why she was retiring or if she was leaving the post immediately. However, a Navy official confirmed to Task & Purpose that she has since left her place. 

While the occasions will not be associated, Hegseth pulling the plug on Chinese distributors, Noem firing two dozen FEMA IT people over security points, and the abrupt, no-notice retirement of the Navy’s top cybersecurity official appear too carefully associated to be explained by mere serendipity.

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