ELECTION CYBER SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES

Authors: Andro Gotsiridze
Affiliation: Business and Technology University - BTU

Category:

Keywords: Cyber security, security, best practices, elections, warfare, hybrid.
ABSTRACT. Elections as the core attribute of democracy is one of the main target of Russian hybrid warfare. Lately, elections, referendums, or other process expressing free will of a society appear as a target of Russian cyber operations. Russia attempts to manipulate elections with cyber operations having technical and psychological effects. While standard cyber-attacks achieve technical effects, Kremlin backed actors using information operations achieve psychological effects, such as alter of perception, manipulation, and distrust. Cyber-attack often serves as a serious tool for information warfare and is used to take advantage on adversaries. Sometimes, cyber-attack is implemented parallel to psychological operation. For example, the one can use cyber-attack for unauthorized gathering of information from target`s email or social media. Then, the attacker can use this information as an authentic or fabricated and disseminated to denigrate the target. The article discusses cyber-attacks and information operations, threats, threat actors, techniques and risk mitigation best practices. At the end, it delivers practical cyber hygiene advises for election administration staff.

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