CISA has spent 2024 pushing the agency from incident response into proactive national cyber defense. Expect the agency’s Year in Review to highlight hardening at scale: larger exercises, new policy tools, industry engagement on secure product design, and the operationalization of early warning programs that actually reach operators where they work.
This year’s national exercise cycle tested those transitions in a visible way. Cyber Storm IX in April exercised cloud-focused, cross-sector incident response with more than 2,000 participants, using a scenario that stressed coordination across federal, state, local, private, and international partners. The results will show where shared responsibility models still break and where playbooks and vendor relationships are paying off.
On the regulatory and reporting front, publication of the CIRCIA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was a clear signal that incident reporting is moving from voluntary practice to formal obligation. Organizations should expect continued emphasis on timely reporting and on the data flows CISA will need to scale national detection and early warning. That NPRM and the public comment process are central to how CISA plans to improve visibility into major incidents.
Operationally, the Pre-Ransomware Notification model has been a practical growth story. What started as a pilot to warn organizations before encryption has already become a repeatable tool for saving entities time and money. This is the kind of pragmatic outreach that turns intelligence into defensive action on the ground. If the Year in Review focuses on measurable outcomes, expect examples drawn from those early warnings.
CISA is also expanding its influence upstream. The Secure by Design pledge launched during RSA 2024 asks product vendors to make measurable changes in how they ship and sustain software. Moving threat reduction into the manufacturer lifecycle is exactly the macro shift defenders need if we want to stop fixing the same classes of vulnerabilities year after year. That initiative is one to watch for concrete vendor commitments and early transparency reports.
Finally, keep an eye on how CISA is treating emerging technology like AI. In August the agency created a dedicated chief AI role to bring focus to both using AI defensively and managing new AI risks to critical infrastructure. Expect the Year in Review to treat AI as an operational priority rather than an academic topic.
What this means for practitioners and buyers: assume the federal posture is shifting toward earlier detection, mandatory reporting pathways, and product-focused mitigation. That combination will change procurement checklists, incident plans, and vendor engagement. If you are running security for an organization, make the practical bets now: review your incident reporting processes; ensure you can act on external early warnings; require vendor Secure by Design commitments in procurement; and begin mapping where AI tools touch your critical systems.
The Year in Review will be the snapshot that shows whether these efforts produced durable defense improvements. For implementers, the takeaway is straightforward. Stop treating the agency as only a responder. Start treating it as a partner in prevention and as a force shifting responsibility toward producers and early detection systems. That is where the most durable reductions in risk will come from.