CrowdStrike’s Rob Sheldon on election security, cybersecurity during pandemic

Tech industry professionals and government officials often like to refer to cybersecurity as a “team sport.” That analogy extends to election security, says Rob Sheldon, the head of technology strategy for public sector at CrowdStrike.

“Everybody who has a role, whether you’re a campaign, a campaign security person, an election volunteer or administrator, everybody’s got things they need to do,” Sheldon says in a video chat with CyberScoop Editor-in-Chief Greg Otto. “Election security is the most central issue we have to deal with today. Elections generally are also a big logistics challenge, so there are a lot of different entities involved in administrating them and making sure they work properly and in a way that there’s assurance in the result.”

Sheldon also says COVID-19 has upended the cybersecurity industry, especially as it pertains to a workforce that’s now largely remote. As many others have said, the pandemic’s forcing millions of employees to work from their homes has opened networks up to all sorts of vulnerabilities that weren’t previously part of the equation.

“The assumptions we’ve made about our workforce might be challenged,” he said. “How do we make systems more robust? Because cybersecurity is an exercise in risk mitigation. It’s accelerated timelines more. People are more federated now.”

This video was recorded as part of CrowdStrike’s 2020 Fal.Con for Public Sector Virtual Cybersecurity Conference, produced by FedScoop & CyberScoop.