The nation\u2019s cybersecurity agency on Thursday released an election infrastructure security plan 40 days before November\u2019s midterms, laying out potential threats to election systems and listing services it would offer to election officials to protect the vote.<\/p>\n
\n
Election officials said the plan is both inadequate and belated after the administration gutted the agency\u2019s election security work last year, prompting the officials to pay for private services to ensure they were prepared for the upcoming elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor them to come in five weeks before the election, yeah, nice effort,\u201d said Nevada\u2019s Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who added that he would have liked to see the federal government provide more funding for cybersecurity, rather than Nevada taxpayers having to pay for it.<\/p>\n
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had originally promised to release the plan by mid-August as part of the Trump administration\u2019s move to kickstart election security assistance after a hiatus. He announced the plan at the same time he threatened election officials for not cooperating with the administration\u2019s preferred methods to hunt down noncitizen voting, a phenomenon that research shows is extremely rare.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, has since its founding in 2018 helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments.<\/p>\n
But CISA, as it\u2019s known, was largely absent from that role in last year\u2019s elections after the Trump administration dismantled much of its role in election security. The administration cut some 1,000 employees from CISA and slashed $10 million from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.<\/p>\n
CISA has also gone the entirety of Trump\u2019s second term without a Senate-confirmed director, instead cycling through a series of acting leaders.<\/p>\n
Plan refers to \u2018consistent\u2019 support that many election officials say has been lacking<\/h2>\n
The 13-page document released Thursday warns of various threats to election security, including software vulnerabilities, hacks of voter registration databases, insider threats and physical security incidents, such as bomb threats that targeted several polling locations in the 2024 elections.<\/p>\n
But it affirms that many longstanding election practices can address such threats and says the agency\u2019s goal is \u201cto ensure the American people can trust voting systems and know that physical safety measures will be in place when they go to their assigned polling locations to cast their votes.\u201d<\/p>\n
It states that DHS has \u201cconsistently supported CISA\u2019s delivery of cybersecurity and physical security services to election officials,\u201d something numerous election officials around the country have said isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
Multiple secretaries of state told The Associated Press that services previously provided by CISA, such as live tabletop exercises and penetration tests to evaluate security of their systems, were not available in the lead-up to this year\u2019s midterms.<\/p>\n
Minnesota Secretary of State Scott Simon, a Democrat, said in August that his office expects to spend roughly $250,000 on private vendors to conduct penetration testing, which can expose security vulnerabilities and recommend actionable fixes.<\/p>\n
Shenna Bellows, the Democratic secretary of state in Maine, told the AP the same month that communications with CISA had been \u201csporadic and irregular, to say the least.\u201d She said it would be helpful if the Trump administration could restore intelligence briefings that used to be granted to election officials about threats from foreign adversaries, but noted that trust with federal officials had been broken with the cuts to the agency.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s plan doesn\u2019t mention any specific 2026 threats from adversaries like Russia, Iran or China, all of whom have sought to meddle in U.S. elections \u2014 either directly through hacking or indirectly through influence campaigns.<\/p>\n
Kris Warner, the Republican secretary of state in West Virginia, said Thursday that some of CISA\u2019s assistance to his state had been continual throughout the Trump administration, including no-cost reviews of its public-facing websites for cybersecurity issues.<\/p>\n
Warner acknowledged CISA had cut back under the Trump administration but said he views the agency \u201cas a resource and not as a service provider\u201d and said his office had last year hired a departing CISA election security adviser who has helped fill any gaps that may exist.<\/p>\n
Report follows August call between CISA and election officials<\/h2>\n
In early August, two CISA officials \u2014 acting director Nick Anderson and assistant director for integrated operations Jim Harrell \u2014 joined a National Association of Secretaries of State call attended by a bipartisan group of secretaries of state, according to several election administrators.<\/p>\n
The call grew tense when Arizona\u2019s Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes voiced his concerns about the withdrawal of federal resources.<\/p>\n
Fontes told the AP at the time that he told the CISA officials he didn\u2019t trust them. He said it seemed to him the officials were there \u201cto cover their butts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey even acknowledged on the call that it was too late for them to do anything for 2026,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Simon said the officials appeared interested in rebuilding relationships and previewing their future plans, which he appreciated. But he said the effort at goodwill came later than election officials needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecretaries of state have already moved on and sought other partners and other resources for the services that CISA has retreated from over the last year and a half,\u201d Simon said.<\/p>\n
In Michigan, a voting rights group has tried to fill the gap<\/h2>\n
In Michigan, where mail ballots have already been sent out for the Nov. 3 elections, Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie said the state\u2019s relationship with CISA has been \u201cnonexistent\u201d this year despite working together closely in previous election cycles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the federal government wants to be helpful, they can\u2019t do so at the 11th hour,\u201d the Democrat said.<\/p>\n
Ashiya Brown, the Michigan state director of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, agreed. She noted the new plan says CISA has 10 regional directors to support election administrators but still doesn\u2019t answer her biggest question.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes CISA still have the people and capacity to provide that support when clerks need it?\u201d she asked. \u201cI\u2019m glad CISA has put forward a plan, but what matters now is whether the support described in it reaches local election officials before November.\u201d<\/p>\n
CISA has been hiring on its website for new positions, Brown said, but it\u2019s unclear whether they are all staffed yet.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Brown, a former security official with the Michigan Department of State, said her group has hired former CISA employees to help provide training and other support to election clerks and fill the gap.<\/p>\n
Edevbie said even without collaboration with CISA, he is confident the state\u2019s elections are secure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are always prepared to defend our elections and to ensure that every voter who is eligible to cast a ballot can do so here in Michigan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Federal #cyber #agency #unveils #midterm #plan #days #weeks #election #yeah #nice #effort<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The nation\u2019s cybersecurity age… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3404,1303,1333,273,1042,4847,419,5263,1017,8400,154,687,5276,971,5077,2067,8399],"class_list":["post-5330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-agency","tag-cyber","tag-days","tag-donald-trump","tag-effort","tag-election","tag-federal","tag-federal-government","tag-midterm","tag-nice","tag-plan","tag-u-s","tag-u-s-midterm-elections","tag-unveils","tag-voters-and-voting","tag-weeks","tag-yeah"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n