With just over a month until Election Day, the state is ramping up security efforts once again.
We just recently learned that the Connecticut National Guard will review election cybersecurity infrastructure for any city or town that requests it.
NBC Connecticut's Mike Hydeck spoke with Deputy Secretary of the State Scott Bates about it.
Mike Hydeck: So most of us don't even really know what cybersecurity infrastructure is. And for years, we've said, well, Connecticut has so much on paper. What kind of cybersecurity is involved?
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Scott Bates: Well, since the 2016 elections, we've been on notice. And it was the Obama administration, the Trump administration and the Biden administration, have told us that there are malicious foreign actors that may be trying to test our election systems. So we've made sure that we're hardening our cyber systems at the state level. But you know, towns have a hard time competing against, let's say, Russian intelligence. So what we've done is partner with the Connecticut National Guard to provide cybersecurity audits to any town that would ask for them. And it's specifically about their election officials' offices. So we're making sure that the cybersecurity in, you know, town hall that pertains to elections, is as good as it can be.
Mike Hydeck: So they'll go and look through holes in their firewalls and things like that, to try to make sure when say, the town of Monroe reports to the Secretary of State's Office, that connection is secure?
Scott Bates: That's absolutely right. We're only as secure as all the links in the chain. So in Connecticut, all towns administer their own elections. So we have to make sure that every town is in as good a shape as they can be. And we did this with the Guard last election cycle. We had about 65 towns that took us up on the offer. And National Guard cybersecurity teams worked with the towns to make sure everything was as secure as it could be. So we wanted to make sure we could do it again this year.
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Mike Hydeck: So now oftentimes, when the federal government says, 'Hey, you need to do this,' they don't necessarily pay for it, how's it getting paid for?
Scott Bates: You know, we actually put together the money. So we had some leftover funding from 2020. So we applied those funds and got a federal grant to work with the guard this time. We did get a million dollars from the federal government to help run the elections this election cycle. We sent every penny of that, our office did, to town clerks across the state. And that's designed to make sure that they can handle an increase in absentee ballot requests. So you know, it's really a partnership. And at the end of the day, we need partnerships from the state, local and federal level to make sure that we're serving the voters as best we can.
Mike Hydeck: So on election night, Connecticut can be notoriously slow reporting results, will this speed anything up?
Scott Bates: You know, I can't guarantee anything, but I can guarantee if we don't do the right things in cybersecurity, it would really mess with that. And we're at a point now where we're all in this together as Americans to make sure regardless of party affiliation, or point of view, people have confidence in the system, that we're secure against malicious foreign actors and they are out there. And the partnerships we have with the Connecticut National Guard, Department of Homeland Security and the Registrars of Voters in every town, are really working out to make sure that Election Day is without incident.
