With just 50 days left until the 2024 presidential election in the United States, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly emphasized today that election infrastructure has never been more secure.
During a virtual CISA Live event, Easterly honed in on the point that the threat environment around elections has never been more complex, but election officials are more prepared than ever to achieve smooth performance.
“What I’ve said repeatedly is that election infrastructure has never been more secure, and the election stakeholder community has never been more prepared,” she said. “The threat environment that they’re facing has never been as complex as it is now – whether that’s cyber threats or physical threats.”
The CISA lead pointed to three specific reasons as to why election infrastructure is more secure than ever before.
“First of all, you hear a lot about paper ballots,” Easterly continued, “we’re at a point now where there’s now 97 percent of registered voters will cast out some jurisdictions where they have a paper record that they can verify themselves, that can then be counted and recounted and audited to ensure accuracy.”
“Two, it’s also important to know that when we cast our ballots, those machines are not connected to the internet, and that’s a very important control in place to keep voting equipment safe from cyber threats,” Easterly said.
“And then also, it’s important to understand that there are multiple safeguards that election officials have put in place – from things like testing equipment prior to putting it in use to ensure that it is accurate, multiple cybersecurity protections, physical access tools, and then, of course, all the audits that happen after an election to ensure accuracy,” she concluded.
Easterly said that CISA has been working closely with the intelligence community – particularly the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) – to inform the public of the “very real and incredibly present” threat that malicious foreign actors pose to elections.
Iran and Russia in particular, Easterly said, are aiming to undermine U.S. elections and sow partisan discord.
Cait Conley, CISA’s senior advisor to the director for election security, said during today’s event that foreign adversaries have worked harder this election cycle to “hide their hand” in the activities to spread disinformation about U.S. elections.
“One of the things we’ve seen this year, maybe more so than prior cycles, is our foreign adversaries attempting to really obfuscate or hide their hand in these activities,” Conley said. “We’ll see them do that through cutouts, utilizing public relations firms or commercial firms to promote their messaging and taking these activities on, or in some cases, using unwitting or witting influencers on different social media elements to again propagate these messages to give it a degree of authenticity, so the American public may not even realize that the message they’re receiving is coming from Russia.”
CISA, in partnership with the FBI and ODNI, launched the campaign – #Protect2024 – to inform the public about some of the most common tactics foreign adversaries either have or may use in this election cycle.
Launched in January, #Protect2024 is intended to be a one-stop shop for election officials and has three main lines of effort: information sharing; voluntary, no-cost services – including cyber and physical security assessments; and voluntary, no-cost trainings.
Most recently, CISA released election security focused checklists for both cybersecurity and physical security as part of its #Protect2024 effort.
Despite malicious actors’ attempts to sway the U.S. elections, both Easterly and Conley emphasized that “it’s not going to have any bearing on the security or integrity of the actual vote casting or vote counting processes.”
“Look, things will go wrong. They always go wrong,” Easterly said. “But the good news is these will not … impact the integrity of the vote, how votes are passed, or how those votes are counted, but our foreign adversaries will try to make us believe that they will, and it really takes all of us to come together to protect and preserve our democracy.”
