Written by Paul Roberts

In this week’s episode of the podcast (#171): as voters go to the polls in the UK and primaries loom here in the U.S., we sit down with Michael Kaiser, the CEO of a new group: Defending Digital Campaigns and Joel Wallenstrom, the CEO of secure collaboration platform Wickr to discuss efforts to extend an information security lifeline to political campaigns in an era of epidemic campaign hacking and online disinformation.

Cyber attacks on high profile political campaigns aren’t just an artifact of the 2016 presidential campaign in the U.S. or the 2015 Brexit referendum in the UK. In fact, attacks on campaigns – at home and abroad- predate those events and have now become more the rule than the exception. Just in the last year, there is evidence of campaign hacks and damaging leaks in the US midterm elections and in the lead-up to this week’s Parliamentary elections in the UK.

Written by: Ron Gula

Earlier in 2019, I joined the Defending Digital Campaigns board and helped recruit a leadership team and an initial set of cyber vendors to help any federal candidate protect their campaign from cyber threats.  We recently announced Michael Kaiser as the DDC CEO. Michael agreed to answer a variety of questions about campaign security and how the DDC can help in an interview for the Gula Tech Adventures blog.

Q1 - What is the mission of Defending Digital Campaigns? 
Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) goal is making our political process more secure by providing political parties and 

WRITTEN BY: By Bob Stevens, Vice President, Lookout

[excerpt] … Ahead of the 2020 election, presidential campaigns need to embrace mobile security solutions that secure devices and internal app stores to protect data from compromise. These solutions should be capable of preventing members of the campaign from tapping malicious URLs that hide inside apps, SMS, messaging platforms, corporate and personal email.

As such, Lookout is one of several companies partnering with Defending Digital Campaigns, a non-profit with the goal of ensuring the cybersecurity of election campaigns, offering free or low-cost email security, encrypted messaging and security training. As part of the partnership, Lookout is providing mobile security solutions for free to help protect personal devices… (cont.)

[excerpt] … However, Taylor stressed three actionable steps that can be taken to better secure campaigns.

First, he said, non-profits should be utilized to support campaigns. “Non-profits avoid misgivings campaigns may have about utilizing Federal government and for-profit resources directly,” he said.

Badanes agreed with Taylor and stressed how the private sector, as well as nonprofits, can help campaigns. She said campaigns “will benefit from industry partners providing access to tools that support these efforts. They will benefit from NGOs like Defending Digital Campaigns and Cyberdome who can help filter and provide tools at affordable rates.”… (cont.)

Written By: Derek B. Johnson

[excerpt] … a number of new and existing groups have stepped up over the past three years with programs in an effort to change that.

The Harvard Belfer Center teamed up with Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook and Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign manager Matt Rhoades to develop a comprehensive playbook for protecting political campaigns from foreign intelligence operations. An offshoot organization has since been formed, Defending Digital Campaigns, that partners with IT companies to provide free or low-cost cybersecurity products to many political campaigns. (cont…)

Written By Sean J. Miller

Cyber threats are a growing market this cycle. Security vendors, some free or low-cost, are stepping up to provide services for campaigns and groups to help protect themselves from hacking, which could come from a lengthening list of foreign adversaries.

Still, awareness and adoption remain uneven, particularly down-ballot.

Now, the industry vulnerabilities that exist aren’t just being probed by Russians. Other state actors are trying their hands at election inference, according to Matt Rhoades, co-founder of the non-profit group Defending Digital Campaigns, Inc.

“We know that the Chinese play this game. But if you’re a Republican too, you know that the Iranians are now fully invested in this kind of effort, and they’re going to be targeting Republicans, especially, who have been hardcore on things like the Iranian nuclear deal,” Rhoades said last month during a panel at the George Washington University’s GSPM. “You have to look past just Putin.”

Written By Joseph Marks

THE KEY: Political campaigns are flocking to encrypted messenging apps to avoid being the next big target after the Hillary Clinton campaign's emails were exposed by hackers in 2016. But these apps are far from a panacea if other campaign security practices are subpar. 

That’s the blunt assessment from Joel Wallenstrom, chief executive of encrypted messaging app Wickr, one of seven cybersecurity products the nonprofit group Defending Digital Campaigns is offering candidates at a steep discount in an effort to level the playing field between often-scrappy campaigns and sophisticated nation-state adversaries trying to compromise them.

WRITTEN BY: JOSEPH MARKS

THE KEY: Securing political campaigns against cyberattacks is about to get a lot cheaper.

A nonprofit group that won permission in May from the Federal Election Commission to provide campaigns with free and reduced-price cybersecurity help is announcing its first slate of services this morning, including email security, encrypted messaging and security training for staff.

Defending Digital Campaigns, which was co-founded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook and Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager Matt Rhoades, is basically … (cont.)

WRITTEN BY: William Turton

Robby Mook and Matt Rhoades are from different sides of the political aisle. Mook, a Democrat, was campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Rhoades, a Republican, ran Mitt Romney’s presidential run in 2012.

But the two men share a common experience: both of the campaigns they ran were targeted by foreign adversaries. Now, Mook and Rhoades are doing something about it.

They created a nonprofit, which opens for business Thursday, with the goal of providing free or low-cost cybersecurity services to congressional and presidential candidates. Called Defending Digital Campaigns, … (cont.)

WRITTEN BY : BRIAN KREBS

The U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) said today political campaigns can accept discounted cybersecurity services from companies without running afoul of existing campaign finance laws….(cont.)

WRITTEN BY: JOSEPH MARKS

The Federal Election Commission gave the go-ahead this week to a nonprofit organization seeking to offer free cybersecurity services to political campaigns, upending rules that typically consider such free services illegal campaign contributions.(cont.)

WRITTEN BY SHANNON VAVRA

The Federal Election Commission has decided that a nonprofit spinoff of Harvard’s Defending Digital Democracy Project may provide free and low-cost cybersecurity services to political campaigns without violating campaign finance laws, given the fact that there…(cont.)

WRITTEN BY: TIM STARKS

STICKING POINT — FEC commissioners punted yet again on Thursday on granting a nonprofit election security group permission to provide free and low-cost cybersecurity help to political campaigns…(.cont)

WRITTEN BY: AARON MAK

Campaigns have been largely responsible for funding their own cybersecurity, even as the risk has grown and the potential harm from election interference has become clearer. Though these costs are just pocket change for presidential candidates who… (cont.)