WASHINGTON, DC – Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), Ranking Member of the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection & Innovation Subcommittee, delivered the following opening statement in a subcommittee hearing entitled, “The Cyber Talent Pipeline: Educating a Workforce to Match Today’s Threats.”

Ranking Member Garbarino’s Opening Statement (as prepared for delivery)

Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this critical conversation regarding our Cyber Talent Pipeline and our shared efforts to develop a robust cyber workforce. And I’d like to thank our witnesses for being here today. I look forward to a constructive dialogue on this important issue.

Everyone in this hearing should understand the multitude of issues contributing to our cyber workforce shortage, which is particularly acute in the federal sector. Lack of exposure, uneven education, and federal agency onboarding issues all contribute to the problem.

Fortunately, President Biden’s choices for the top three cyber professionals in the administration are real professionals, and there is a wealth of private and federal sector experience among them. I am confident that Jen Easterly, Anne Neuberger, and Chris Inglis have the experience, the talent, and drive to address this issue as well as the many others facing our nation in the space.

The Administration’s work has already been seen in CISA’s deployment of stopransomware.gov, the U.S. Government’s official one-stop location for resources to tackle ransomware more effectively.

But their work is not done. CISA has been plagued by hiring delays, elongated onboarding processes, a lack of professional human resource specialists, and duplicative and arbitrarily onerous vetting requirements.

It is important that we continue to hold CISA and the Department accountable when it comes to these troubling issues, and I appreciate the Chairwoman working with me on our oversight of the Cyber Talent Management System rollout. I am pleased that CISA Director Jen Easterly has said this will be a top priority during her tenure.

Our concerns are particularly relevant to today’s hearing, because no matter how much education we provide to our students, no matter how much interest we cultivate, none of it matters if we can’t bring qualified and interested individuals into government service in a professional and timely manner. Quite simply, we will continue shouting into the wind until we fix these issues.

I look forward to exploring all of these issues with our witnesses today and I hope to hear about concrete proposals for oversight and legislation, not just broad strokes ideas, which have been the output of similar hearings in the past and have proven ineffective.

I again thank the Chairwoman for holding this timely and important hearing today.

###