Today, the MN Senate Committee on Elections learned about Impact of cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It’s a lot to take in but valuable. I’ve tried to take notes and screenshots but the video is probably best, if you want the details. But one important note is recognizing the efficiency and power of aggregating the needs of each state with centralized help that the Secretaries of State have had for many years.
Location: Hybrid Hearing 1200 Minnesota Senate Bldg. and Remote
Chair: Senator Jim CarlsonAgenda:
Call to order
Impact of cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
CISA-NASS-Board-Letter-to-Sec-Noem.pdf
States-Newsroom-Election-officials-blast-Trumps-retreat-from-protecting-against-foreign-threats.pdf
Notes:
- Everything changes after 2016
- Post 2016 – elections systems becomes critical infrastructure and falls under Department of Homeland Security
- Eventually election protects falls under SICA – to protect state and local elections. It’s not mandatory but to provide services.
- Many of those services relate to cybersecurity or domain name support. (Also includes physical security support.)
- We know there are changes in the process we have had. Personnel have been put on leave, ended the funding for some services and an evaluation report is expected March 6.
- We should know more after March 6
- The Election security has had good support since the onset (going back to Obama) but we’re not sure what will happen.
- There is broadband support for services to continue.
- We have sent a letter to the Administration asking to keep election services
Questions:
Q: What’s the impact on protesting election workers?
It is a concern. We would feel some degradation of support.
Q: From digital perspective is voting polls and communication to upload data to SOS. Are those protected?
We have confidence in the security of data upload. SICA tests that hardware and we are better with them. We don’t think that will degrade; we may learn more after March 6.
Every year we get a report on our vulnerability – where the feds try to break in.
Q: How protected are systems from hacking? Are they part of a network?
Let’s take that offline.
Q: Our state is spending money like mad. I’m glad we’re looking at this – but we don’t need to fear monger.
Q: We aren’t fear mongering.
SOS:
- We need to focus on the services we want/need.
- We see that some services seem to be in a precarious position