STATE WIDE–Your vote is safe and secure, says Sec. of State Connie Lawson. Her office is in charge of running elections for Indiana, and she says they’ve contracted with a company that specializes in detecting security threats like hackers.
“We’ve taken recommendations from the FBI, the Dept. of Homeland Security, our own Indiana State Police and our own Indiana Information Sharing Analysis Center,” said Lawson, talking to IndyPolitics.
Lawson said her office has entered into a contract with security company Fire Eye, which specializes in security for elections. Indiana has enough federal money to keep them on until at least 2022, and the service is offered for free to all 92 counties.
“They understand what’s happening. They surveil the dark web so that if any state is mentioned they know that or if any county is mention, they know that.”
She said it’s for detection of activity, it’s for prevention of the activity of hackers and it’s for remediation, or fixing the problem, in case anything does happen. “They’d be right there,” she said.
She said Fire Eye could gather forensic evidence and would also notify all other counties what to watch for.
She said it’s unlikely that Indiana would have such a security breach nbecause even though many counties have electronic machine, they are not connected to the internet. And, counties are in charge of their election precincts.
Lawson also said state and federal money is helping more tyhan half of counties to have a verified paper trail from those machines by the general election in November.
PHOTO: Chris Davis/Emmis
