we're just a matter of days away from the 2020 u.s presidential election
and it may be too late to secure physical voting infrastructure
but that doesn't mean that election officials and cyber security experts alike are not concerned
about security threats around the election let's dive into those and more stick around
hi everyone welcome back to today in tech i'm julia poshimp and i'm so excited to be
here today with the former deputy cio of johnson county kansas brian thomas brian
thank you so much for joining me today i really appreciate it
thank you julie i appreciate the opportunity to be here thank you so i think at first glance when
you know you're the everyday voter hears election security i think it can be common to think
you know security of the physical voting machines that's perhaps the you know that's
your entry point to election infrastructure right but is there really a concern around the security
of these physical voting machines that's a great question and and i think what i'd like to add or
provide to this audience your audience today juliet is that that's always a concern of course
but since the 2016 general election there's been a lot of concern about uh hacking from outside
outside country or influencer like russia so security teams have gone through a stringent
process to obviously harden their network but let me take it a step further these voting machines
these electronic voting machines actually are several vendors in the united states every state
and county uses a different vendor typically but at the end of the day these systems are
proprietary hardware and software the data that's on each individual machine is encrypted they
actually use a flash drive that is proprietary and will not work in any other computer and vice versa
and also this data is tabulated at the end of the night of an election at the main election facility
again this is all on a closed network there are no external access to the internet to any other
network in the voting system at the county again every state and county is different but where
i worked and where i had experience was the the county runs the elections in the state of kansas
so so essentially with a hard and closed network it makes it hard for people to to actually hack
the system obviously at the end of the night when it's tallied it does have to be transported
securely through a connection to the state of kansas and again that data is encrypted nobody
has access to that physically so it'd be very hard to obviously hack or get into that system
not to say it could never happen but i would say the measures around these systems now are are very
strict in fact like i said they have to go through the eac which is the federal election assistance
commission that certifies these machines so it makes it very hard so i want to put people at ease
obviously there's always that risk but we put a lot of effort into securing these
uh machines to put to put voting uh where it needs to be at the top of basically
the priority list when it comes to voting yeah absolutely i'm curious to hear too in your
experience you have experienced working with your local election officials in the midterm elections
in 2018 and i'm curious about what some of the cyber security threats were then and what steps if
any election officials or even more broadly you know internet company social media companies
have taken to make to minimize those threats and risks sure so from a county election system
in fact because of the disinformation that was coming out and obviously a lot of
uh partisanship that was going on during the midterms uh in fact you know people were very
vocal even in our county about hey how do we know this is a valid election who's checking
who's watching the watcher of course there's a whole process around this we talked about the
machines themselves and how they're hardened and secured and encrypted but what's the process well
of course we have a lot of volunteers but we do have employees that work at the county that are
there to ensure that the election goes smoothly and that there is no disruption to that process
you know we require an id obviously to validate that the person is who they say they are
as far as other types of influence like again cyber security is always a risk and we look we
take that very seriously but there's also other out external influencers for example
social media regardless there's there is a lot of myths or disinformation out there on social
networks whether it's coming outside the united states or within the united states
it's there and people need to be aware that they need to work with their local officials
and uh maybe their parties to understand exactly what the threats are as far as that is because
there is just a lot of i guess you know as some people would say there's a lot of fake news out
there and you just got to be careful of what you're doing but i want to put people at ease
that the election voting systems in my experience have been very uh well ran there's a there's a
very disciplined and structured process around it and that equipment is federally certified and uh
it's all encrypted when it comes to the issue of foreign interference ii i think a lot of people
what obviously comes to mind when it comes when people think of foreign interference in elections
i think a lot of the time they think of russia's successful at times attempt to influence
the 2016 presidential election and i'm curious what advice you would offer to just the general
public when it comes to combating disinformation and misinformation online i think in some ways
the onus is being put on social media companies to flag incorrect content or take it down but i think
the public still there is still a responsibility for the public to look at things with a healthy
dose of skepticism which can sometimes be really difficult so i'm wondering what you would advise
the public to be aware of in these just few days leading up to election day
absolutely i think in this political environment we live in and this frenzy everybody's you know
excited about one candidate or another is go out and you know do your own homework research
you can't just pick one source of information uh and some people literally take their twitter
feed as source of information and i found that twitter and i i'm a very active user on twitter
i find that a lot of things on twitter on both sides of the aisle
are completely false i i fact check myself going out to various different websites news sources etc
there's always going to be that type of influence and what i would suggest to the average american
citizen is to go out and do their own research and not just believe everything
that their neighbor or their colleague says and really do your homework research it uh
there there are a lot of organizations uh big companies that have influence in these elections
and people need to do their homework and i would leave it at that it's pretty straightforward
if everybody gets involved in their elections we will have fair legitimate elections great so
before i let you go we've already touched upon the fact that you know physical voting machine
infrastructure is in your experience quite secure i think before i let you go i'd like
to know maybe just the top you know two or three cyber security concerns that really are front of
mind or cyber security threats that are front of mind right now as it pertains to election security
sure again with the advent of the new tools that are out there it's costing companies more
to protect their data and that goes for election systems that data even
though it's on a closed network proprietary encrypted we always have to be working hard
to secure all perimeters including physical access physical access is a big part of this
and physical security uh will always be part of the elections a chain of custody signatures um
you know lockers safes the whole the whole nine yards uh are covered from an election
standpoint but the top cyber security threats again is just a matter of what i would say
could be a cause at some point is is malware has become very prevalent and somehow if a piece
of malware gets somewhere on some device that brings down an election system during let's say
election night would would be pretty devastating obviously people would want to understand is that
once you come out of the mess and fix it is that data still good do we need to revoke that
sort of thing so i would i would suggest that you know just like anything else be careful
what you open in your emails clicking on links that sort of thing is probably top of mind but
security professionals are always on the alert looking at some of the latest threats out there
and sometimes they come from foreign governments they you know a lot of times great well thank you
so much brian i think this is really insightful and can both make sure that you know our everyday
voters american voters who may be watching can have faith in the elections because you know
there is no democracy of course with fair and um elections that have integrity so i think that this
has been really insightful and i hope that you know everyone's fears are eased and they just feel
more knowledgeable about what types of threats are out there so thanks so much i really appreciate it
thank you julie i appreciate it have a great day thank you and thank you all so much for
watching this episode of today in tech if you liked this video be sure to give it a thumbs up
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single time we post a new video if you have any specific questions about election security threats
or if you have sort of seen or even been the target of any sort of misinformation campaign
online ahead of the us presidential election i'm really curious to hear your experience
so let me know in the comments below thanks again for watching and i'll see you next time