Why getting election security right for 2020 matters

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3410577/why-getting-election-security-right-for-2020-matters.html

By J.M. Porup
Senior Writer
CSO
July 22, 2019

How much election security is enough? The answer: Enough to convince a losing
candidate that they lost. Will that happen for the 2020 elections? Probably not.

"Is it enough? How much is enough?" Herb Lin, Senior Research Scholar at the
Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and
co-author of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center's "Securing American Elections"
report, asks. "Unfortunately it's not a technical answer. Enough means you've
done enough so that you can persuade the loser of an election that in fact the
voting machines weren't hacked."

"You have to take into account the possibility that the loser will rally his
troops and complain about the result," he adds. "The election machinery, both
organizational and technical, all of that has to be of sufficiently high
quality, and resistant to attack, that you can persuade the loser of an election
that they fairly lost."

That makes election security as much of a political problem as it is a technical
problem. Voters must have confidence that the voting was fair, regardless of how
much money is spent or what security controls are put in place. That makes
securing election infrastructure categorically different than almost any other
information security challenge today.

[...]



--
Subscribe to InfoSec News
https://www.infosecnews.org/subscribe-to-infosec-news/
https://twitter.com/infosecnews_