Event today starting with the panel that you see before you which are going to focus on safeguarding Election Security to the integrity of the e Electoral Systems and process. We have a second panel that will begin at 3 15 on the problems of tackling disinformation, the implications for the Election Campaign that were in the midst of for the election in 2020. Werere delighted to be able to start off today with keynote remarks from someone whos on die front line of this, a great thlleague of mine, chris krebs, who is thee director for Cyber Security and infrastructure security of the department of ry Homeland Security. He has a whole agency he directs that is completely devoted to the subject of todays panel, and were really grateful as chris iss coming right from thei frontlines of dealing with these issues that hes got some time o to spend with us today. Chris is going to give us an overview of what the government is trying to do to tackle this issue head on. And then were going to go into a discussion with mark harvey, another colleague who most recently was also in the National Security council along with me, the senior director for resilience, so the person who ie in charge of coordinating all the initiatives and chris and other colleagues were engaged in that are directly related to Election Security and integrity. Mark, after leaving the National Security atcouncil, spent the t several months as a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of politics where he was also d trying to work to create a sort of Public Outreach on these issues is that people would understand whats involved and the various issues of election interference and the firms weve all been concerned about since the 2016 elections and the 2018r midterms. Mark will also be t joined by d david becker. David becker is the executive director and founder of the center for election innovation and research, a nongovernmentaln agency devoted to this issue today. He spent many years at the pew opsearch foundation looking at polling and Public Opinion skpat tuesdays towards voting in elections. And then last but not least, brookings colleague susan ou hennessey who is deeply in the legal aspects of elections and voting. Many of you in the audience will know from her work on the various issues related to affa governance and legalir affairs. So, without any further ado, ill turn it over to chris. Thank you, again, chris, for joining us today. Well go straight into the panel discussion. Ive also received many swer questions from audience members in advance, and well go straight into answering some of these questions. I want to thank everyone for being so diligent in sending in questions ahead of time. Chris, over to you and thank you so much everyone for joining us today. Fiona, thank you. Its great to see you again. Spe thanks to brookingsnt for havin me on. Election security is an issue that ive spent an incredible amount of time on for the last 3 1 2 years. Securi my tenure year at the department and Homeland Security is the leader of cyber the infrastructure security agency, youngest agency in the federal government about coming on two years Old Established by law in november of 2018. We are the nations risk adviser, just the simplest way to put our role. The things we do are in support of state and local governments, the private then to sector and o federaln. Partners wechlt don. We dont have a compulsory mission. We are engaged in Public Private partnerships on a daily basis. Elections have been one of our Top Priorities since 2016. Had i one of the issues that the way that i the ways i describe what happened in 2016 n and why its so top of mindi describe it or lichen it to 1957, a sputnik moment almost for us. In 57 when the soviets put sputnik into lower earth orbit it was pretty chilling for the United States. It wasnt as much the fact that the soviets beat us to space, beat us in getting a satellite space. E. And but they clearly demonstrated the capability that could overcome the defenses weve built, the natural and geographic defenses we have in the atlantic and pacific and polar icecaps to defend us against an assault by a foreign adversary. That missile that put sputnik into space demonstrated an ability to reach out and touch us. 2016, i think, was a similar a sort of wakeup call for the lyb United States and theer america people. Previously, Cyber Security had been an issue that you heard ans about in terms of attacks on banks, theft of intellectual property, of hacking sony because you didnt like a videoy this was truly an affront to th American People because it demonstrated the potential tense yallty to undermine democracy at large. Thats why we take it as seriously as we do here with ou partners in the federal th government. So, what i want to talke laal y today are where have we been over the last several years, where i think we need to go in the next couple of months, and close out with a few thoughts on what you as an American Voter in particular can do. So, first and foremost, when i think about the work weve done over the last 3 1 2 years, weve developed what didnt exist before. And really more than anything, that is a vibrant election practice. Ommunity of there have always been experts in Election Security. David becker on the panel here is going to be one of those folks that will talk to you about elections. Previously theyve been excelling effectively in pockets. But what weve been able to create through Partnership Mechanisms is sector coordinating councils, bringingi allssue levels of government ane private sector together to work on these thorny issues, to understand threats, to isolate and identifyo trends to, develop best practices and investment nr guidance. That has led to another key achievement. These are the sorts of information sharing mechanisms that every other sector has had or has. Prior to 2017, no such isac existed for the election infrastructure community. So, we established that isac with the help of our partners at the multistate isac in upstate new york. We have all 50 states. And thousands of local jurisdictions that participate in this partnership where we can share information, get, again, trend information out there, emerging threats and risks and share quickly and effectively with our partners. The second piece is weve absolutely improved the Cyber Security and resilience posturee of american elections. Ive said it before and ill say it again. The 2020 election will be the. Most secure election in modern history. Why is that . Well, in part, its because through this vibrant election t Security Community of practice, weve been able to truly raise the awareness of Cyber Security threats with our partners. They get it. Are theyve gotten it for a while, but they get it and theyre ple taking action. Just a great example is the patch rates, the patch cycles, the time to patch for critical vulnerabilities has been cut in laugh over the past year and a half over the state and local vg election tcommunity. E that is a a critical step towar. Improving the hygiene of the wh networks that were going to rely on here. The other aspect is we have more sensors in fact we have sensors s on intrusion detection sensors on every single state election network, 7 all 50 states n. Fact, in the state of florida, all 67 counties have these intrusion detection systems. Theyre called albert sensors. So, compared to every other Critical Infrastructure sector or subsector, we have the best comprehensive visibility across thewe election Infrastructure Sector than any other sector out there. So, if theres a tremor out there in the force, we feel it and we can act on it. So, that is an absolute metric of success. Another metric of success or on progress over the last several years has been the 2016 election, about 80 to 82 of votes were cast with an why i associated paper record. Why is a paper record important . Because itt leads to auditability. Auditability is a key element ot being able to determine the sue vote, to roll he it back, make sure you got the results. And more than anything proving through an audit postelection audit process that the votes arere counted as cast. Where were we for 2020 . Well, we were on track for aboun 92 of states. Theyve retired a number of the systems that dont have paper ballots associated with it. But in part because what were seeing with covid, i think, and an expansion of absentee ballots, well probably see increase. We may be over 92 because of increase in absentee ballots. S again, that ability to audit, to conduct postelection audits is critical to, again, establishing the integrity of the election. The last thing ill mention on what weve done over the last ee several years is weve truly eft developed a unified United States government effort in support of our partners in the state and local government. Isnt just a sisa mission. Muniw we absolutely have coordinated support from the Intelligence Community. I work day in and day out with the National Security agency. But others in the Intelligence Community are out supporting infrastructure very active participation and engagement you heard director ray two weeks ago mention it to kick off chinese related counterintelligence every ten hours the third pieces the department of defense so when they go out there they work in the sphere of influence of russia and Ukraine Northern macedonia work in the sphere of influence of russia, ukraine, northern macedonia, montenegro, and they get on there and see activity of foreign actors, were able to ae not just take the Cyber Security aspects, the indicators of compromise, but we can look and see what the playbook is, what are the targets of concern of ukraine and elsewhere and we can bring abasesback. Tha if were targeting Voter Registration databases, those p are the sorts of tips that we can provide our state and local partners here where they can funnel or vector their investment. So, again, the top three things i think weve really done over the last several years, develop that community of practice. Increased the cyber cy security hygiene posture and we have a unified usg effort behind this measure. To, where do we need to go with the next several g months . Were about 100 and some odd st days out from november 3rd. Early voting starts in under 70 days. So, were absolutely in the pipeline toward a very significant election. What are the three things we need to do. First and foremost, change is ii ther an air. Change is absolutely in the airn the air. Change is absolutely in the air. I mean that literally, covid. Covid is changing pretty much how every election across this great country will take place in november. Its critical that voters understand that Election Officials can share the information on what is happening in these elections and how the changes have happened. I will come back to that in just a minute. Also, i have to say that compared to where things were in 2016, were not seeing that level of coordinated determined cyber activity from adversaries. We absolutely have better visibility across the networks and we are not seeing that same level of activity that we saw in 2016. Im paranoid by nature, so i start read teaming and threat modeling and say, hey, what do we think the bad guys can do . Last summer we started an initiative that was primarily informed by the increase of ransomware attacking state and local networks. What we said is, one to be a pretty bad day if Voter Registration database, which is highly network and centralized, was attacked by an incentivized actor like a ransomware actor in the months ahead of the 2020 election. We kicked out this initiative with our state and local partners to increase the posture, improve the cyber hygiene of the databases and make sure that they are not the next on that list of ransomware targets. But we do anticipate if they were going to do something in the next couple of months, and im not just talking up to november 3rd, but in the period after the election. Its absolutely ripe for a destructive or disruptive act attack by capable adversaries. We have to be ready and that is why we put so much emphasis on paper backups and ought ability and the system. The last thing we will talk about is educating voters. Let me take it back to covid. As i mentioned, covid has changed the way everyone across this country is going to vote. Whether its a consultation of Voting Centers, the number of volunteers that typically support elections deciding to stay home because they may be at risk. Theres absolutely going to be changes. People are expanding early voting and absentee voting. There are going to be changes, so its critical that our state and local partners get the information out there. But also private sectors, social media platforms take a role in educating and informing voters. Weve been working closely through our Government Council with our state and local partners with the cdc and hhs to get good guidance out there to local officials on how they can disinfect and sanitize and implement good social distancing and other rules on election day like masks. I understand they will use other types of voting including absentee. One of the good security protocols they can put in place. Its critical to understand that any kind of voting has risks. The issue is identifying the appropriate security controls and processes you can put in place to manage that bisque. Again, to the extent that we can expand rapidly any sort of paper ballot backup, that is going to lead to post election audit success. I want to leave you with a few parting thoughts. First, our top priority in our Election Security effort is to ensure that American Voters decide american elections. There is no greater priority for us. To do that and to ensure that, weve taken unprecedented steps across the u. S. Government, all levels of the u. S. Government, whether its dhs, the Intelligence Community, the department of defense, law enforcement, in support of our state and local partners to make sure we achieve that top line goal of American Voters deciding american elections. Weve also taken incredible steps in the state and local communities to include that cyberSecurity Posture. To make it that much harder for the bad guys to achieve their successes. We are not fooling ourselves here. There are bad guys that want to do bad things. Russia wants to destabilize. China wants a more compliant state. Iran probably wants a little bit of both. We will be prepared. We have the defenses up and we are ready for it. I will tell you what, the American Voter has a role to play here. What we are looking for is a prepared voter. Police, make sure you have a plan. Educate, understand how things may have changed in your state or jurisdiction. If you have a normal polling place you are ready for and ready to go to, make sure that its still that location or you may go to another place. We also want participating voters. We are going to need hundreds of thousands of election volunteers to help support the election in november. So please, if you are interested, if you have the ability to do so, i encourage you to volunteer to be an election official. Im sure david becker has a couple of thoughts on that as well. The last thing is we need patient voters. This is a time of change. Processes are going to change. It may not be the case that we have all the information to determine the voter on november 3rd. So we are going to need patient voters to understand the changes and that it may take a little more time. Those are the keys to success for 2020 and a secure and safe election. With that, back over to you fiona. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the group tonight. Thats fantastic chris. I think the three piece are important to bear in mind. The election this year is more of a process than an event. In terms of expecting quick returns on the voting results. I think all of our panelists will speak to that. I will ask if you could elaborate, chris, a little because weve had so many questions coming in on a couple of the issues youve just talked about. Weve had lots of people coming in wanting to volunteer and asking what they can do as citizens. I think you partly answered that. Hopefully, david, whose member of an ngo can give some concrete answers on this. Weve had people wearing exactly on the consolidation of polling places. A retired analyst asked us about what we are going to do if polling places are reduced to two instead of 20 . Someone whos thinking clearly in your terms about planning and preparing. A spokesperson for democrats thinking about the vote that get lost in other places. If it is there an effort to actively recruit and train younger volunteers . Getting to your point about participation. This is often a big difficulty of retirees are retirees often have more time on their hands. Unfortunately, many people have more time on their hands because of covid19. University students may not be able to return in person to the universities. Maybe theres other things that we can think of in ways that people can get involved. Im sure that david, in particular, has talked about this. Weve had a couple of people worrying about the mailin voting and paper ballots. This is something we havent thou