The Illinois Board of Elections is being recognized by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for its cybersecurity efforts.
The State put together the Cyber Navigator Program in response to a hack of the Board of Elections in 2016. Public Information Officer Matt Dietrich said it provides training and equipment to all 108 local election authorities, but also encourages collaboration.
“By teaming up with the Department of Homeland Security and its election security infrastructure and academia, corporate watchdogs on cybersecurity, we’ve really been able to keep an eye out for potential threats.”
State authorities are also included.
“We have tremendous intelligence resources coming through the state police. We have tremendous technological IT skills through the Department of Innovation and Technology and they’ve worked with us -- since we administer the elections -- they’ve worked with us to put all this into place within the election infrastructure in Illinois," Dietrich said.
For these efforts, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission awarded the Board of Elections a Clearinghouse Award for “Outstanding Innovation in Election Cybersecurity and Technology.”