America’s lead cybersecurity agency on Friday made one final scream into the impending truth void about election security and the role CISA plays in maintaining it.
The 2024 election cycle was the “most challenging threat environment” the United States has ever faced, said Cait Conley, who, as senior advisor to CISA Director Jen Easterly, helped oversee the agency’s election security mission.
These threats spanned envelopes mailed to election offices containing “suspicious white power,” sometimes laced with fentanyl; election officials being swatted at their homes; ballot drop boxes being blown up; ransomware gangs targeting election vendors and offices; and criminals trying to knock election-related websites offline.
Plus, CISA and friends saw a ton of attempts by foreign trolls to unduly influence and divide Americans going to the polls.
“We also observed the most aggressive use of foreign malign influence campaigns in an election cycle, largely led by Russia and Iran,” Conley added.
We do not have evidence of any malicious activity that had any material impact
To combat these and other threats, CISA worked with election officials and conducted more than 700 election infrastructure cybersecurity assessments, weekly vulnerability assessments, 200 election security tabletop exercises, and more than 500 training sessions.
The end result of these efforts, according to Conley: “We can affirm that we do not have evidence of any malicious activity that had any material impact.”
Conley wrote this in a Friday afternoon essay, quite possibly on her way out the door for good. Biden-appointed federal staff, including those at CISA, will by and large have left their posts by the time President-elect Trump is sworn into office on Monday next week.
And from that day, some of CISA’s efforts including combating election disinformation may also be shuttered.
At her confirmation hearing in Congress on Friday, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Dept of Homeland Security, indicated she would make cuts to the cyber-agency.
Homeland Security oversees CISA, and CISA’s focus on countering online disinformation — especially as it relates to election security and Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020 — has drawn the ire of the president-elect.
Noem on Friday essentially said that countering online foreign influence in US elections isn’t CISA’s problem.
“CISA’s gotten far off mission,” Noem said during questioning by senators. “They’re using their resources in ways that was never intended. The misinformation and disinformation that they have stuck their toe into and meddled with should be refocused back onto what their job is.”
CISA’s job, she added, is preventing cyberattacks, and working with critical infrastructure along with state and local governments to ensure they can protect their systems against foreign intruders.
This mission, in Noem’s estimation, does not extend far enough to underpin CISA’s pledge to “counter efforts by our foreign adversaries to undermine trust and confidence in the American democratic process.”
Conley, on the other hand, counts these counter-efforts as the agency’s “most important” steps taken during the 2024 elections alongside other federal agencies, including the FBI.
“As a federal government, we are committed to defending election infrastructure against all threats, including those posed by foreign influence operations,” Conley said. “Elections are political, election security is not.”
Noem, the new boss, believes otherwise. ®
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