There has been significant midterm elections cybersecurity news happening around the country.
And in the battle of elections officials versus hackers, a lot of places will have an extra line of defense. Some will have two extra lines of elections cybersecurity.
Interestingly, both of these developments are around information sharing and threat intelligence that can lead to a rapid response by elections officials.
The Department of Homeland Security has created an online chat for elections officials for all 3,000 of the counties, parishes, and boroughs across the United States, where officials can report even the smallest of irregularities.
Nextgov reported on how Homeland Security's top cyber official, Chris Krebs, views the elections security group chat:
“The idea is the broader DHS mantra of ‘see something, say something,’” Krebs said. “Any indicator, no matter how small… may be part of a broader operation. So, we’re really trying to encourage folks: If you see something, share it. It might be happening in another state or another jurisdiction.”
The National Situational Awareness Room, as it is officially called, is the federal government's effort to get information on election hacking into the hands of elections officials right away. It is a new line of defense which did not exist during the 2016 election.
And in Illinois, the state is calling the National Guard into action for election day. It is a second line of increased cyber defense against hackers, utilizing the Guard's IT experts.
If needed, they won't depend on rifles and bayonets but will be armed with laptops and IT expertise.
The unprecedented move comes after cyber attackers, believed to be Russians, hacked the official Illinois voter database before the 2016 presidential election.
"We can have a guardsman-expert dispatched within an hour to anywhere in Illinois. We'll have boots on the ground in whatever county, in whatever election authority, is affected within an hour," said Chuck Scholz, a board member of the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Many states are also spending federal dollars to improve the cybersecurity of the elections process. Arizona just issued a new elections security report on efforts there.
But there are a lot of security researchers still pointing out that their biggest concerns about elections hacking, demonstrated at DEF CON 2018, are still active vulnerabilities in a number of states.