lection officials across the US are inundated and confused by the plethora of free cyber-security offerings that the private sector has made available in the past months, a Department of Homeland Security official said last week. … But while the actions of these companies were driven by a desire to help, a DHS official says these free offerings have managed to create confusion with some election officials. “So what we’ve seen is a lot of the cyber-security companies and the IT companies offering free services, which I think is a great move forward,” said Christopher Krebs, Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate at the DHS, in an interview on the Cyberlaw Podcast, last week.
“One thing that I am seeing with a lot of these companies offering free services is that the election officials down range are being inundated and they can’t really kinda contextualize this service vs that service, [and] what does it get them,” he added.
Krebs suggests that these free cyber-security offerings should be provided to the DHS, which in turn, should work to distribute them in a more organized manner.
“We need a more coordinated, almost holistic approach, but that’s tough,” Krebs said. “But if it’s free and presumably not a loss leader free, then there’s probably a better way we can do this so we can use some of our coordinating mechanisms through DHS and the critical infrastructure partnerships to figure out what this suite of services looks like.”
Full Article: DHS: Election officials inundated, confused by free cyber-security offerings | ZDNet.