What Mississippi is doing to keep elections secure

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – The November election is less than 100 days away, and two federal agencies are making a public service announcement to explain that while some cyber attacks are possible, not all pose a threat to the security of your vote.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) jointly released information on DDoS attacks on July 31.

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service and works by overwhelming websites with traffic, making them inaccessible.

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson says it may sound familiar to you.

“We saw this directly here in Mississippi a couple of years back in an election,” explained Watson.

The DDoS attack happened in 2022 and kept many people from accessing the Secretary of State’s website at different times on election day.

“It was only our public facing website,” noted Watson. “No election information was breached. What we did was harden our system with some new tools to make sure if that’s the attack that happens, we see it. We can tell exactly what’s going on, and we can further defend ourselves from it.”

However, many question the integrity of the ballots being cast and counted.

“When it comes to elections, you don’t want just secure elections,” said Sen. Jeff Tate, former Senate elections committee chairman. “You want the perception of your elections to be secure. Also that’s very important.”

There were already some security measures in place to keep hackers out of the equation in Mississippi.

“Unless you could hack into a plug in the wall, you couldn’t hack into those machines,” said Watson.

In 2022, legislation was passed that adds some back-up security.

“The counties were due for new equipment,” explained Tate. “One of the mandates that we put with this money is that it had to be purchased by 2024 it had to have a paper trail, and it could not have the capability of being hooked up to the Internet. So, not only can it not be hooked up to the Internet, it can’t have the capability of being hooked up to the Internet.”

Secretary Watson notes that election interference will likely come in many forms, including misinformation.

That’s why he is encouraging you to reach out to his office or your local circuit clerk before you go sharing the latest election-related rumor you see on social media.

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