Election Security , Fraud Management & Cybercrime , Government

CISA Ramping Up Election Security Warnings as Voting Begins

With early voting now open in 28 states, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is ramping up its warnings of potential election interference and influence campaigns in the lead up to the November vote. But voters can be assured their ballots are secure and will be counted as cast, the agency said.

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The nation's top cyber defense agency has issued a steady stream of advisories and guidance in recent months to raise awareness of interference attempts by Iran, Russia and China (see: Inside CISA's Unprecedented Election Security Mission).

The agency ramped up its election security warnings in recent days, releasing a joint public service announcement with the FBI on foreign disinformation that included a video message to election officials nationwide about growing cyber and physical threats ahead of the upcoming vote.

CISA Director Jen Easterly described foreign threats to the election as "very serious" during a Saturday interview with NPR's Weekend Edition but added that the election community is "prepared to meet the moment on the 5th of November."

"We know that our foreign adversaries - Russia, Iran, China - are intent on malign influence operations," Easterly said. Online influence campaigns seek to undermine confidence in the electoral process and sow partisan discord, she said. "What we're focused on is that state and local election officials across the nation have the resources, the information, the capabilities that they need to be able to reduce risk to elections."

CISA's joint news release on Friday was the fourth and final installment for a series of advisories warning of the tactics foreign actors have been using to spread disinformation in the lead-up to the general election. Cait Conley, a senior adviser for the agency tasked with spearheading election security operations, said in an accompanying statement that foreign adversaries have been "looking to attack our democratic process to further their own objectives."

"Americans should be confident that their votes will be counted as cast," Conley said. "They should also know that our foreign adversaries will try to make them believe otherwise."

The Department of Homeland Security warned in an October report that foreign adversaries and domestic violent extremists will "almost certainly" continue attacking the integrity of the electoral process long after election day. The report said that foreign adversaries have never successfully disrupted voting tallies or the transmission of election results, but noted extremists could "react violently should their preferred candidate lose" and "could seek to exploit possible civil unrest if there are perceptions of election fraud" (see: DHS Warns Election Security Risks May Persist Into 2025).