A lack of security clearances among some state and local election officials shouldn’t hinder the Homeland Security Department from responding speedily to Election Day cybersecurity threats, the department’s top cyber official said Wednesday. Even if state and local election officials don’t have the necessary authorizations to view a particular piece of threat information, Homeland Security Undersecretary Chris Krebs said he’s confident those officials will start trying to mitigate the threat if he asks them to. “I’m confident that if I had a piece of information right now …I could say: ‘Look, I’ve got something you need to see. You need to take action. It’s going to take me a day or two to get you the information, but, in the meantime, you need to take action,” Krebs during an election readiness summit hosted by the Election Assistance Commission.\ “We have trust established so there would be at least the beginning of an article of faith that they would do something,” he said.
Homeland Security has secured full clearances for 100 state and local officials so far, an official told Nextgov Wednesday. That’s a major jump from about 20 cleared officials in March.
The slow process on security clearances irked some lawmakers who worry about a repeat of 2016 when it took Homeland Security months to share information with some states about Russian efforts to probe their election systems.
Full Article: Security Clearances Won’t Get in the Way of Responding to Election Cyber Threats, Officials Say – Nextgov.