The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published a list of best practices for securing election systems on May 21.
“By adhering to cybersecurity best practices, election organizations – including state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments – can improve the security of their election systems,” the guide says.
The list was compiled by the CISA Hunt and Incident Response Team and pulls from lessons learned by working with SLTT governments, election officials, and other stakeholders. CISA noted that governments can implement the best practices, “which harden enterprise networks and strengthen election infrastructure,” for little or no cost. However, CISA did note that “due to variances among enterprise networks and associated election infrastructure, organizations should not consider these best practices a prescriptive solution for all cybersecurity risks.”
The topics covered in the guidance are software and patch management, log management, network segmentation, blocking suspicious activity, credential management, establishing a baseline for host and network activity, organization-wide it guidance and policies, and notice and consent banners for computer systems.
The guidance also provides a fairly lengthy list of additional election security resources from DHS, the Center for Internet Security, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.
