Top Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) officials highlighted today that the agency has been working with critical infrastructure operators across all sectors to ensure that election day runs smoothly on Nov. 5.
“At CISA, we have been working with critical infrastructure partners and leaders across other sectors, things like energy [and] communication … to ensure their readiness to support the execution of this incredibly important mission – and that is the security and resilience of our nation’s elections process,” Cait Conley, CISA senior advisor to Director Jen Easterly, said during a Monday afternoon call with reporters.
Conley highlighted that during CISA’s tabletop exercises, the agency brought together local election officials, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure providers to “ensure that we are planning for how to maintain continuity of critical operations … if disruptions were to occur.”
CISA has helped election officials engage in key conversations with critical infrastructure operators by providing a cross-sector checklist that identifies key services that would need to be prioritized for restoration.
Conley said they have already seen successful collaboration across the southeastern U.S. when disruption from Hurricane Helene caused massive outages just two weeks before early voting was slated to begin.
“Through tremendous collaboration and cooperation, we had seen emergency management offices, chief election officials all the way down to the local offices, coordinating across public and private sector entities to restore critical services and enable a very successful pre-election period of early voting and Election Day tomorrow,” Conley said.
Both Conley and CISA Director Easterly noted that the intelligence community has been monitoring small-scale incidents from foreign adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran – notable distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks – but drilled in the notion that it has not resulted in any significant impact to election infrastructure.
“We expect that these types of incidents and other forms of disruption will continue on election day and the days that follow. It’s important to remember that disruptions happen in every election – it’s why election officials invest so much into incident response, preparation, and contingency plans,” Easterly told reporters. “We’ve activated our Election Operations Center and are actively monitoring potential threats of disruptive activity to our nation’s election infrastructure. At this point, we see no evidence of activity that has the potential to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election.”
CISA’s Election Operations Center is made up of officials across the intelligence community, the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), and private sector partners.
The center is actively publishing and updating the threats it has observed leading up to election day and will continue to do so through tomorrow. Easterly noted that, depending on the outcome of Nov. 5, the center might stay intact for a few more weeks.
Easterly reemphasized that Americans should look to their state and local election officials for accurate information.
NASED and NASS issued a joint statement today, homing in CISA’s message that the election is secure.
“Election officials make it possible for Americans to safely and securely participate in tomorrow’s General Election. Planning for tomorrow’s election began four years ago, and the election community is prepared. Our members, along with their colleagues at the local level, have devoted extensive time, energy and resources to safeguard America’s elections,” the associations said.
“As with any Election Day, it is important to note operational issues may arise: for example, voting locations could open late, there could be lines during busy periods, or an area could lose power. These are inevitable challenges that will arise on Election Day, but election officials have contingency plans for these and other scenarios,” they said. “Americans can have confidence the election is secure, and the results will be counted accurately.”
