CISA Director Sees No Threats Impacting Election Outcome

The top official from the U.S. cyber defense agency said Monday she has seen “no evidence of activity that has the potential to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election.”

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Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters during a media briefing a day ahead of the vote that her agency has not identified any threats capable of swaying the overall outcome despite former President Donald Trump’s escalating claims of fraud.

“It’s important to note that disruptions happen in every election,” Easterly said. The agency and local election offices have invested significantly in developing incident response preparations and contigency plans, she added.

CISA has activated its election operations office which is now “actively monitoring potential threats” against election infrastructure nationwide. The temporary office was established in late October amid escalating cyber and physical threats, including ballot drop box fires in the Pacific Northwest and foreign influence operations targeting both campaigns (see: CISA Opens Election War Room to Combat Escalating Threats).

Reports in recent days have shown typical examples of disruption and human error that can often be resolved without having an impact on the vote, including the Colorado Department of State accidentally posting a spreadsheets online that contained partial login information for certain components of the state’s voting systems. The Colorado state government said in a statement the incident “does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted.”

CISA has hosted hundreds of tabletop exercises throughout the last year with state and local election officials – as well as local authorities – and rolled out a series of initiatives to help secure the vote (see: Inside CISA’s Unprecedented Election Security Mission).

CISA has released an election cybersecurity toolkit through its Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative and launched a “Rumor vs. Reality” platform to counter election-related disinformation. Over the past six years, the agency has provided no-cost services like vulnerability scanning, physical security assessments, and .gov domain adoption to secure election infrastructure and bolster public trust in official information.

Chris Krebs, Easterly’s predecessor and the ex-director of CISA under Trump, was fired by the former president after issuing a statement in the wake of the 2020 election that hailed the nationwide vote as “the most secure in American history” (see: Trump Fires Christopher Krebs, Head of CISA). On Monday, Easterly assured reporters that she would continue to issue similar statements while monitoring the security and integrity of the vote.

“As election officials know: Elections are political, election security is not,” she said. “These officials are the single best source of accurate information on elections in their jurisdictions.”