Bomb threats and cyberattacks: How election officials prepared for the 2024 election

This year’s presidential election was the most secure on record, according to John Cohen, executive director of a program for countering hybrid threats at the nonprofit Center for Internet Security. On StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Cohen explains that despite receiving more than 100 bomb threats, years of preparation for Election Day 2024 enabled local election officials and law enforcement to continue voting operations with minimal disruption. “We looked at potential for physical threats, cyber threats, we looked at efforts to undermine confidence in the election process or confuse voters by foreign intelligence services and non-state threat actors. And then we began looking at potential for disruptive events, the use of swatting, bomb threats, white powder envelope, suspicious devices that would be used to disrupt voting and vote tabulation,” he says. Joining him is Marci Andino, senior director of CIS’s Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, who says that the threats election officials saw on Nov. 5 were precisely what they had been preparing for.

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