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This Week in Government Tech Media – October 24, 2025 

By Brad Bass /

Government tech publications continued to cover the government shutdown, with a focus on the effects on the jobs of government workers. We also saw quite a bit of troubling news related to cybersecurity this week. For details and links to articles, read on.

The Shutdown: Week 4

This second longest government shutdown in U.S. history drags on. We saw several pieces of coverage on layoffs at a variety of government agencies, as well as activity on Capitol Hill to ensure government workers will continue to get paid. Much remains to be determined, but here’s a quick roundup of some of the coverage as of right now:

  • The ongoing shutdown and accompanying furloughs have taken “an unimaginable toll” on federal workers, according to court testimony recounted by Jory Heckman in Federal News Network. 
  • Heckman’s colleague Drew Friedman noted that Congress remained far from an agreement to end the shutdown this week, meaning that hundreds of thousands of federal employees were expecting to miss their first full paychecks. In a separate piece, Friedman wrote about a Republican bill to immediately pay federal employees who are working throughout the government shutdown — with Democrats working on an alternative that would include compensation for furloughed employees as well. In a subsequent article in Nextgov/FCW, Eric Katz and Erich Wagner reported that both ended up defeating the other party’s plan to pay federal employees on time, though they appeared to open the door to bipartisan negotiations as of late in the week.
  • In other coverage related to layoffs at federal agencies, Heckman also reported in Federal News Network on how federal layoffs have specifically targeted IT workers at the IRS.
  • The shutdown is stalling the Federal Aviation Administration’s plans to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system and leaving employees without pay or training, according to a report by Grace Dille in MeriTalk.
  • Jeff Foust of space industry publication Space News interviewed scientists and observers who expressed concern about the shutdown’s immediate effects on NASA operations – and even greater concern about the administration’s proposed budget cuts to space-related programs.
  • Looking at the shutdown’s impact on government contractors, Pat Host of ExecutiveGov spoke to a couple of knowledgeable experts who explained what contractors need to know to succeed during this challenging period. Host also published a helpful “Government Shutdown Survival Guide” in GovConWire, outlining who does and doesn’t remain on the job during the shutdown and when they get paid.

Cyber Warnings

The news related to cybersecurity wasn’t great this week either. We saw broad coverage of the repercussions of a significant cyberwarfare attack on the U.S. as well as a widely noted report stating that the country is moving the wrong way with regard to cyber protection. Here’s a sample of those articles:

  • The shutdown and federal layoffs are complicating federal cybersecurity response activities, including the recent nation-state breach of network devices from vendor F5 Networks Inc., by a nation-state actor, Kimberly Underwood reported in SIGNAL Media’s The Cyber Edge.
  • Reporting on an emergency directive about the F5 attack issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Justin Doubleday of Federal News Network noted that the attacks highlighted ongoing concerns about the security of technology that underpins both government networks and critical infrastructure systems.
  • Sam Sabin wrote in Axios that industry sources expressed concern this week that CISA was failing to share information with them about the attack, possibly due to personnel and budget cuts made to the agency.
  • The attack highlighted weaknesses in CISA’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program to increase visibility into the federal government cybersecurity posture, as noted in an analysis by Tim Starks in CyberScoop.
  • Starks also covered the release of a broadly noted report by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a congressionally-mandated cyber policy body, stating that the U.S. government is “slipping” with regard to cybersecurity and the White House needs to reverse course on its plans to cut cyber personnel and programs.
  • Writing in Nextgov/FCW, David DiMolfetta reported that the annual report shows that the federal government’s cyber policy posture has regressed by roughly 13% on advances made in prior years.
  • The report also said U.S. federal cybersecurity progress has declined for the first time since the commission began tracking reforms in 2020, citing leadership churn, workforce cuts and waning political will, according to a piece published by Chris Riotta in GovInfoSecurity.
  • Weslan Hansen reported in MeriTalk that the report found that just 35% of the commission’s 82 recommendations for improving U.S. cybersecurity are fully implemented – down from 48% last year.
  • In his take on the report, Doubleday of Federal News Network quoted Sen. Angus King, stating, “At a time when we’re seeing the cyber threat increase dramatically, we’re unilaterally disarming, and we’re not making the progress that we ought to make.”
  • Eric Geller of cyber news outlet Cybersecurity Dive wrote that, contrary to the commission’s recommendation, the White House effectively closed the division of CISA that coordinates critical infrastructure cybersecurity improvements with state and local governments, private businesses and foreign countries.
  • Reporting on a related development, Hansen of MeriTalk noted that House Democrats demand answers from the Department of Homeland Security about the reassignment of CISA employees to immigration enforcement roles during the government shutdown.
  • In other federal cybersecurity news, the Environmental Protection Agency found major security gaps in internet-exposed operational technology assets at water and wastewater systems, Dille wrote in MeriTalk.
  • In light of the reduced federal role in cybersecurity, state governments are establishing their own vulnerability disclosure programs, providing white-hat hackers an official avenue to share security issues they discover on the state’s websites and other online properties, according to a report by Colin Wood in StateScoop.

Upcoming Industry Events

Even with the government shut down, there are still opportunities for you to join your peers and colleagues at government/industry events. Here are a few on the horizon for next week:

That should do it for this week. If you’re interested in a peek behind the scenes to hear about how the leading reporters and editors in government tech media operate, listen to W2 Communications’s “Gov & Beyond” podcast. In our latest episode, hosts Luca Pagni and Joyson Cherian interview George Seffers and Kimberly Underwood of SIGNAL Media – who, in turn, interview Luca and Joyson about how they do their jobs!

Do you have any thoughts on news topics I might be missing? Issues you’d like to see more of in this newsletter? Media outlets I might have overlooked? I invite you to email me at brad.bass@w2comm.com with any feedback you might have. As always, I encourage you to subscribe on LinkedIn or via the form below.