Lawmakers press officials on 2020 election security

Lawmakers questioned officials over the importance of passing election security measures ahead of the 2020 presidential contest during a hearing Thursday.

Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security, testified during the House Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday that the federal government is “light years ahead” of where it was in 2016 when it comes to communicating with state and local officials.

However, he said that improving outreach and communication with those officials is a top priority for his department ahead of the 2020 election.

And Krebs said that being able to audit elections is also a pressing issue for his agency. He said that records of votes, like a paper trail, will help officials confirm the results of elections.

The DHS official also said that basic cyber hygiene for election officials remains a crucial issue, adding that he fears those gaps could expose vulnerabilities in systems that could be abused by bad actors.