February 8th is Safer Internet Day, an education and awareness event celebrated around the world. For the most part, the day has been focused on children’s online safety. However, in recent years the acknowledgment of the day has broadened to a more general effort to keep people and organizations safer and more secure online.
Today, in honor of Safer Internet Day, Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) is proud to be included in a new effort to cyber secure our democracy. Today, Google announced The Campaign Security Project a series of partnerships between Google, DDC, and organizations that recruit, train, and support people running for office. The goal is to help the campaigns and candidates that work with these organizations adopt better cybersecurity practices and in doing so protect an essential element of our democracy.
In this new effort, DDC will be collaborating with:
Veterans Campaign
Collective Future
Women’s Public Leadership Network
LGBTQ Victory Institute
Center for American Ideas
Emerge
Latino Victory
Campaigns happen in every community in America. Candidates seeking elected office are the backbone of our democracy, and where the marketplace for ideas about governing faces their first test. Disrupting that process could be the goal of a variety of bad actors from nation-states not wanting our democracy to thrive to hacktivists who do not want ideas they disagree with to prevail to cyber criminals wanting to steal data and monetize it.
This new collaboration builds on the important role that partnerships have long played in achieving better cybersecurity. The effort announced today brings cyber expertise to a diverse set of organizations committed to reaching as many of their campaigns and constituents as possible with training, information, and education on strengthening their cybersecurity posture.
At DDC, we are open to collaborating and partnering with groups that support candidates. We work with nonprofit organizations, digital firms, other vendors in the political space, and state parties. Feel free to reach out to us at info@defendcampaigns.org if you are interested in a collaborative relationship.
Our mission is to protect political campaigns from cybersecurity threats and bad actors. The efforts announced today augment DDC’s nonpartisan, nonaligned core efforts providing eligible entities (national committees, state parties, and federal campaigns) with free cybersecurity products, onboarding support, and training. You can learn more about eligibility here.
DDC conducts regular training for candidates, campaign staffers, and organizations in the political sphere that is widely available. The current training schedule can be found at www.defendcampaigns.org/events.
We applaud the great work going on around the world on Safer Internet Day. You can follow along on social media at #SaferInternetDay and #SID2022.
Michael Kaiser
President & CEO
Defending Digital Campaigns