How Cyber-Tech Advancement Threatens to Hamper Elections

As technology is evolving, we are getting dependent on it for even the mundane tasks. Even the politicians are depending on it for branding and marketing and the same could be said for our elections process. 

Elections are now getting too dependent on modern technology, but everything comes at a price and in this case, it’s the cyber threat. Thus, it is now more than important to shield the election process through securing the firewalls and other loopholes within the process through the implementation of cybersecurity procedures. It’s vital even to avoid election violence, vote manipulation, and other illegitimate practices. 

Though vendors and officials designated for election process vouch for the EVM machines to be hack-proof, recent security reports portray a completely different story altogether. As per the reports, multiple voting machines (EVMs) are connected with the internet for several years.

 It’s a major loophole that has alarmed the security experts. Connected EVMs allow the hackers to inject malware within the process which could majorly disrupt the vote count changing the election outcome completely. A major question that we must ask ourselves at this juncture is: 

Aren’t these hackable and unsecured EVMs already influencing our Maharashtra, Haryana Assembly election results 2019?

No matter which domain or industry, cyber-attacks are always discouraged as they pose a threat to the general workflow of the system. With these attacks becoming more prominent in the elections, they pose a threat to both nascent and mature democracies. They hold the power to trigger election violence, influence the outcome or even waiver the citizen’s trust in the process.

2019 elections held in Ukraine and Indonesia are live examples of how cyberattacks can demolish even the stable democracies. 

Election officials have been constantly working on creating advanced technologies to make the voter registration and result management process foolproof. However, every technology comes with its own set of loopholes due to a lack of technical expertise, cyber hygiene, and modern equipment. 

There are many concerns which the election commission of every country needs to fight with. Some notable examples include:

1. Manipulation/Alteration of votes by influencing the registration process
2. Targeting the official election commission websites
3. Data theft 
4. Compromising the parties influencers or campaigns via Social Media before the election 

Though there’s no evidence to date, it’s always better to stay protected and be prepared in advance by following mandatory precautions.

There are multiple ways by which a government can foolproof the system and minimize the attacks. Some important precautions include:

1. Treating elections as an important part of the infrastructure
2. Implementing proactive services for pre-election activities to cut down the risk factors involved. It can be one via Table Top Exercises, Red Team Assessment or Compromise Assessments.
3. Using Threat Intelligence to identify all possible threat actors, malware and tactics and being aware of the necessary precautions

A combination of all these factors along with many others included can bring down the cyber issues for security personnel and others involved in the process.

Since the technology is improving at an alarming rate, we must take steps and invest our time to counter future attacks rather than repairing the past vulnerabilities. Preventing cyberattacks of any scope requires not only the right amount of funding from the Election Management Bodies but also educating the general public and citizens of the country. It’s important to educate both the public and the election staff about the complexities that might arise, about the risks involved and how best can one tackle it.