Tabletop Exercise Tests Election Security

This article is published by GCN staff. Here is an excerpt:

Federal, state, local and officials recently participated in tabletop election security exercise with private-sector partners, working through hypothetical scenarios that might impact election operations and sharing best practices around cyber and physical incident planning, preparedness, identification, response and recovery and information coordination.

The fourth annual Tabletop the Vote event, hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in coordination with the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, drew more than 1,000 participants. Attendees learned how to plan, prepare and respond to various situations through modules that helped them identify their election processes’ strengths and weaknesses.

Last year’s event, which was held ahead of the presidential elections, drew 2,100 participants and focused on effects the pandemic could have on election processes, including the confusion around absentee voting and delays in reporting complete results. Participants also discussed how adversaries cloud try to exploit that confusion to spread disinformation or distrust in the elections process, CISA reported. 

Read the full article here.