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Some of the nation’s top cybersecurity leaders are warning state and local election officials of ongoing foreign and domestic national security threats to election systems, urging them to upgrade their defenses ahead of next year’s presidential election.
At separate conferences this month, federal officials warned gatherings of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors that they must be vigilant in securing their state’s elections systems and building resilience to prevent attacks.
Many election officials, overworked and frightened by personal threats, left the field following President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020. In light of that turnover, national security officials wanted to emphasize that local election officials can use federal resources to build defenses and educate front-line staff.
Although foreign cyberattacks did not disrupt November’s midterm elections, China, Iran, North Korea and Russia remain threats to U.S. election systems, said Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division.
“We have no evidence that a foreign government or other actors compromised election infrastructure or manipulated election results during the 2022 elections,” Kaiser told the secretaries of state. Still, she added, “We need to remain vigilant.”
A year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, national security officials remain concerned Russia may attack critical U.S. infrastructure, including elections, said Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also known as CISA.
“That has not, thankfully, manifested in any significant way,” Easterly told the secretaries of state. “We’ve not seen anything here, but I’d like to end with the word ‘yet.’”
She emphasized that preparation is key in preventing malicious efforts such as so-called denial of service attacks, which made a handful of state and local government websites unavailable in the weeks before the midterms.
To run safe and secure elections, Easterly recommended that state and local election officials train staff to use multi-factor authentication and to avoid clicking on suspicious email links. She also advised them to replace outdated software and use available federal resources.
There was “sophisticated” activity from foreign governments before and on the day of the 2022 midterms that should be a cause for concern, Kim Wyman, senior election security adviser at CISA, told a nearby conference of the National Association of State Election Directors.
Foreign actors scanned state and local government websites, even though election systems weren’t targeted, she said. While scanning a system doesn’t necessarily compromise it, she said, it could be preparation for a future attack. Local election offices can be “target-rich, cyber-poor” entities, she said, warning that cybersecurity still is not a top priority for many small- and medium-sized jurisdictions.
“The 2024 election for president is fast approaching,” Wyman said, “and this year is really that window of opportunity that you all have to gear up and make strides in reducing your risk.”
In addition to cybersecurity, national security officials stressed the importance of protecting the physical security of voting system storage locations and election offices by, for example, using locks that only a limited number of people can open.
Layering an approach that considers both physical and cybersecurity is challenging, said Bill Ekblad, Minnesota’s election security cyber navigator, who through the secretary of state’s office coordinates an election security strategy with local election offices.
“We continue to see threats compound,” he told Stateline after one session. “We have to take those two concerns with us and be ready for whatever else comes. Everything we heard from our federal partners shores up that perspective that it’s all about readiness, communications, preparing to react and planning, because we can’t predict what the trends will be.”
Presidential primaries are less than a year away for many states, he added, so election officials must prepare now.
This story has been edited for length. Read the full story at Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
