(Radio Iowa) – State officials say Iowa elections are more secure than ever due to many layers of security. Secretary of State Paul Pate is the state’s commissioner of elections. “I want Iowans to hear this clearly: when you cast your vote in June for the primary, your vote will be counted fairly, accurately and securely,” Pate said. Pate held a news conference this (Tuesday) morning in the Iowa National Guard’s Emergency Operations Center.
Brigadier General Mark Kappelman says it’s where a team of experts will gather on Primary Day to monitor what’s going on throughout the state. “This joint team of Army and Air National Guard professionals will work side-by-side with state IT personnel to monitor and defend critical election networks,” Kappelman said. “Our Guardsmen have supported multiple election cycles and regularly train in national exercises to stay ahead of emerging digital threats.”
Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management John Benson says his staff will be there, too. “If we’re bored, we’re having a great day,” Benson says. “…I’m completely happy to have my people here all day and have nothing for them to do that’s related to the election, but if something does happen, we can have those conversations with our partners right here and figure out what we need to do to address any situations that do arise.”
Shane Dwyer, the Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Iowa, says preparation for the next week’s Primaries is well underway. “We have security officials working around the clock before, during and after Election Day,” Dwyer said. “You may not see us, but we are working.” Officials from the U-S Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — known as CISA — have in past joined Pate for these pre-election briefings, but last year the agency’s programs that monitored election-related cyberattacks and potential foreign interference in elections were shut down.
“We’ve learned a lot during our time in partnering with CISA and we’ve taken those skills and we’ve, I think, built a pretty independent operation here with the team you see,” Pate says. “We’e still received federal assistance in different ways, so I’m pretty comfortable with what we have.” Eugene Kowell, the Special Agent in Charge of the F-B-I’s regional office in Omaha, where an Election Command Post is operating. “We’re focused on threats from adversarial nation states, we’re focused on cyber threats from criminal actors and we’re focused on cyber threats from ‘hactivists,'” Kowell said.
Hactivists are computer hackers who are part of small groups with a shared ideology, often associated with foreign adversaries.
