The cyber agency also clashed with President Donald Trump, who fired former CISA director Chris Krebs after debunking the president’s conspiracy theories about the election.
Woltornist wanted CISA to deliver information that companies shared with the agency related to the SolarWinds campaign, according to the second person.
A DHS spokesman confirmed that the department made the request, but not that it involved SolarWinds.
“DHS headquarters has been asked to request CISA in all areas of critical infrastructure and the contractual measures taken by CISA to protect private sector information,” said spokesman Chase Jennings. “With the scale of the recent cyber breach, sharing threat information across the U.S. government, while protecting contractual obligations, is a top priority for the department. DHS headquarters is responsible for overseeing the operational functions of all its components, including CISA. “
Technical data on cyber intrusions sometimes reveals proprietary information about the organization that shares it. When CISA requests this information from companies as part of its effort to understand cyber threats, it usually promises not to share confidential data with other agencies.
A CISA spokesman, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that “CISA regularly shares operational information with DHS leadership”, but did not respond to that specific request.
The dispute, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, increased tensions between Trump loyalists within the government and CISA, which won the president’s ire by unmasking the false allegations of electoral fraud he and his conservative allies promoted. to discredit President-elect Joe Victoria de Biden.
In addition to firing Krebs, the White House also expelled his deputy and another senior CISA official. On Tuesday, the White House dismissed Sara Sendek, CISA’s director of public relations, who joined the government alongside Krebs and worked closely with him to promote CISA’s electoral security work.
One of the people familiar with the matter linked Woltornist’s requests for confidential data to the friction that led to Sendek’s resignation.
“DHS political leaders were trying to interfere with [CISA’s] operational relations with private sector partners, ”said this person,“ and I think it was the last straw. “