T
he 2016 Presidential election had a
number of results that most of us were not
expecting. Beyond the obvious, we found
out we’d been owned by foreign operatives not
only spreading disinformation and sowing discord
over our social networking platforms but also
attacking our election infrastructure. It seemed
almost unbelievable, but the Senate’s Select
Committee on Intelligence report in 2018
FRQ¿UPHGLW)URPWKHUHSRUW “Russian activities demand renewed attention to
vulnerabilities in U.S. voting infrastructure. In
2016, cybersecurity for electoral infrastructure at
the state and local level was sorely lacking; for
example, voter registration databases were not as
secure as they could have been. Aging voting
equipment, particularly voting machines that had
no paper record of votes, were vulnerable to
exploitation by a committed adversary. Despite
the focus on this issue since 2016, some of these
vulnerabilities remain.”)RXUORQJ\HDUVODWHUDQRWKHU3UHVLGHQWLDOHOHFWLRQ
is directly in front of us. Our Senior Security
$QDO\VW0D[(GG\ZDQWHGWR¿QGRXWZKHWKHUWKH
US is better prepared now than we were then to
deal with malicious interference. Through contacts
made at the RSA Conference and Black Hat 2020,
he met and talked to people in the cybersecurity
business and to others who know about election
infrastructure in detail. Our cover story, “Election
(QJLQHHULQJ +RZ86&\EHUVHFXULW\([SHUWV$UHSafeguarding
Our Vote
CAROL MANGISFIRST WORD