National: Vulnerability Scanning and Tools for Election Security Description Vulnerability | Phil Goldstein/StateTech Magazine
With 2020 political campaigns in full swing, the conversion of election security has again come to the fore. How can state and county election officials help secure their voting systems ahead of the 2020 elections? Vulnerability scanning is a good place to start. Such scans are a Software as a Service function that helps discover weaknesses and allow for both authenticated and unauthenticated scans. In June, perennial swing state Florida announced a $5.1 million investment into election cybersecurity following disclosures in May that two counties in the state fell victim to a spear phishing attack by Russian hackers in 2016. How dangerous is the election security threat landscape? It’s complicated and it covers everything from outdated voting machines that may be vulnerable to hacking to the networks used to process and transfer voting totals and voter registration rolls. Vulnerability scans and assessments of election infrastructure are critical, because “from a cyber perspective, every part of the election process that involves some type of electronic device or software is vulnerable to exploitation or disruption,” as a 2018 Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs report notes.