DCSA Industrial Security Spending Surged to $163 Million in FY2025 — But Field Staffing Barely Moved
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency spent $163.2 million on its industrial security mission in fiscal year 2025, a sharp jump from $102.8 million in FY2023 and the highest figure in the five-year period the GAO examined. But the spending increase tells only part of the story — and the more revealing part lies in where the money and personnel did not go.
From FY2021 through FY2024, total industrial security personnel remained essentially flat, ranging between 394 and 412. The FY2025 count of 479 represents a 19 percent increase over FY2024, but 42 of the 76 new positions were added at headquarters — partly to support a statutory expansion of DCSA’s entity vetting mission, not to put more boots on the ground for security reviews. Regional field personnel grew from 319 in FY2021 to 329 in FY2025, an increase of roughly 3 percent over four years.
The spending increase from FY2023 to FY2025 was driven in large part by initial research and development costs for the replacement of DCSA’s industrial security data system, NISS, and by the new headquarters positions. DCSA officials themselves acknowledged that from the agency’s establishment in 2019 through 2023, funding dedicated to the industrial security mission had remained relatively flat while agencywide funding and personnel grew substantially to support personnel vetting — a mission that consumes approximately $1.2 to $1.3 billion annually, dwarfing industrial security by nearly an order of magnitude.
The training picture is similarly constrained. DCSA reported 677,748 completions of NISP-related training courses in FY2025, but less than 10 percent of the agency’s total annual training budget — itself ranging from $29.2 to $43.8 million across all mission areas — is dedicated solely to industrial security training. One notable expansion: in October 2024, DCSA established a Security Academy providing a three-phase Industrial Security Essentials Curriculum for new Industrial Security Representatives, standardizing foundational training that had previously been inconsistent across regions.
The gap between resources and requirements is not a matter of interpretation — it is quantified in DCSA’s own documents. A 2023 manpower assessment concluded that DCSA was resourced to conduct required oversight of only 25 to 30 percent of the cleared industrial base. In FY2023, the agency completed roughly one-third of required security reviews, according to an internal report. Against that backdrop, a 3 percent increase in field personnel over four years is not a response commensurate with the identified risk.