For political Campaigns, Even Free Cybersecurity Is Still a Tough Sell

Attackers are targeting campaigns and political parties more than election infrastructure, according to a recent report from Google.

Michael Kaiser knows that cybersecurity is often not the top priority of a political campaign—or at the very least, it ranks below winning.

That’s why Kaiser’s nonprofit, Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC), provides free and low-cost defenses like email authentication, hardware keys, and website protection to political teams that have data, credentials, and money at stake.

But free cybersecurity isn’t as easy a sell as it sounds. Understaffed campaigns move quickly, and cyber is one more item on a lengthy agenda.

“You have to make it so easy—which is what we try and do—so that it doesn’t take too much time [away] from winning,” Kaiser, DDC’s president and CEO, told IT Brew.