The New Hanging Chad
Introduction
One of the most significant examples of America’s Democracy is our open election and voting system for the most powerful position in our nation. The ability for each citizen to cast a vote for who they believe to be the most qualified or best suited to be the President of the United States is the quintessential definition of our freedoms. One of the biggest concerns for both candidates as well as the Federal Government during the 2017 Campaign has been the alleged hacking and cyber melding of the databases and electoral systems. The current speculation that a nation state is trying to manipulate the election result either through actual vote count or simply swaying voter opinion of one candidate over another …show more content…
As previously stated the U.S. voting system is not identified as critical infrastructure and has become outdated even with the limited resources that individual states have invested into them. The cybersecurity is ineffective and cannot keep up with the pace of the current threat. Ultimately the decentralized nature of each state operating and maintaining their own system is impractical and considerably more expensive than single centralized system. Unfortunately this problem is both a strength and a weakness at the same time. “America 's diverse election systems across its cities, counties and states bring both pros and cons. The biggest pro is that there isn 't one giant national system that could be hacked at once (unlike, for example, Estonia’s centralized system). The con is that there may be less-secure systems that could be individually attacked.” (CNBC, 2016) The system is extremely vulnerable due to the age and design, but since the system is so segregated from state to state the overall impact is greatly reduced and much easier to identify by a vigilant security team. A system with a common standard and operating system would help to administrators maintain the infrastructure of the database and control the risk by quickly updating the system as a whole, conversely nothing remains secret or secure indefinitely on the internet and a single system offers a much deeper penetration to vital information once
Introduction
One of the most significant examples of America’s Democracy is our open election and voting system for the most powerful position in our nation. The ability for each citizen to cast a vote for who they believe to be the most qualified or best suited to be the President of the United States is the quintessential definition of our freedoms. One of the biggest concerns for both candidates as well as the Federal Government during the 2017 Campaign has been the alleged hacking and cyber melding of the databases and electoral systems. The current speculation that a nation state is trying to manipulate the election result either through actual vote count or simply swaying voter opinion of one candidate over another …show more content…
As previously stated the U.S. voting system is not identified as critical infrastructure and has become outdated even with the limited resources that individual states have invested into them. The cybersecurity is ineffective and cannot keep up with the pace of the current threat. Ultimately the decentralized nature of each state operating and maintaining their own system is impractical and considerably more expensive than single centralized system. Unfortunately this problem is both a strength and a weakness at the same time. “America 's diverse election systems across its cities, counties and states bring both pros and cons. The biggest pro is that there isn 't one giant national system that could be hacked at once (unlike, for example, Estonia’s centralized system). The con is that there may be less-secure systems that could be individually attacked.” (CNBC, 2016) The system is extremely vulnerable due to the age and design, but since the system is so segregated from state to state the overall impact is greatly reduced and much easier to identify by a vigilant security team. A system with a common standard and operating system would help to administrators maintain the infrastructure of the database and control the risk by quickly updating the system as a whole, conversely nothing remains secret or secure indefinitely on the internet and a single system offers a much deeper penetration to vital information once