Cybersecurity experts say voters shouldn’t worry about large-scale election hack

With a successful hack of voter registration databases in Illinois and the Obama administration accusing Russia of hacking U.S. emails in order to possibly interfere with the election process, voters are understandably nervous about foreign or domestic attacks on the electoral cybersecurity system.

But Clayton Hicklin, the director of business innovation for Huber and Associates – a Jefferson City-based company that specializes in helping its clients address cybersecurity issues upfront – said Thursday that voters shouldn’t worry about a large-scale attack on the system.

“It’s something we need to be concerned about and try to address as a country and as a government to make sure the systems that we rely on for these sorts of things are as secure as possible, but I don’t think it’s something that should shake our confidence in our system,” he said.

Some concern, he said, should still be there though because in reality, in the world of cyber security, nothing is ever really secure.

“It’s certainly possible for a foreign actor to potentially access IT systems or other voting/election related systems,” Hicklin said. “There’s probably a number of different ways an election could be influenced, whether that be directly accessing voting data, or as we’ve seen with some of the email breaches, bringing to light things that might sway voters one way or another.”

But he said that’s what foreign and domestic groups are trying to do everyday anyway.

“This is nothing new. It’s been occurring for years and it’s going to continue for years,” he said.

But there are ways to protect against hackers and address them, and they require ongoing diligence, he explained.

“It’s not, check it one time and everything looks good, and you stop,” he said. “You need to continually assess your environment and the risks that you see. New ones may pop up and you address those as you become aware of them.”

One way Missouri is trying to address those issues that may pop up within the electoral system ahead of Election Day is accepting assistance from the Department of Homeland Security. The department announced last week it’s now helping more than 30 states to protect the systems.

“These resources include cover ‘hygiene’ scans of internet facing systems, risk and vulnerability assessments, information sharing about cyber incidents and best practices for ensuring the security of voter registration databases and addressing potentially cyber threats,” said Stephanie Fleming, the director of communications at the secretary of state’s office, in an email.

Hicklin said the simplest way to protect the system is to not allow network access or connectivity to the systems, which is just what the ballot system does.

“As far as I understand it, the voter ballot systems are generally not connected to the network or if they are, they have very limited connection and access to them for that very reason,” he said.

In a broad sense, experts say it would be difficult for hackers to affect the outcome of the election, but local officials should still be concerned about little hacks and can work to prevent those by constantly checking the systems or, as Missouri has done, partner with the Department of Homeland Security to do that.