As the 2024 election season winds down, the extent to which communities and organizations faced a multitude of relentless threats from foreign and domestic threat actors has come into sharper focus, leaving officials and the public to contend with the best path forward.
Threat actors exposed their willingness to aggressively exploit new technologies and use online platforms to conduct unlawful operations and promote their messages aimed at the election landscape.
Over a year ago, the Center for Internet for Internet Security (CIS) began working with state and local law enforcement and election officials to better understand the potential threats to the election and the impact to Americans.
We focused on four multidimensional threats: physical violence; cybersecurity threats; foreign information operations intended to undermine confidence in the election process; and efforts to disrupt the election, such as bomb threats, white powder envelopes and swatting calls.
We saw, through our analytic efforts, examples of each and every one of the anticipated threats come to fruition.
Threats to public officials, communities and voters were widespread and persistent, including two separate assassination attempts directed at President-elect Donald Trump during his race for the White House.
Election officials across the country were targeted and tested. For example, polling stations in five key swing states, including Georgia, received false bomb threats, which led to temporary shutdowns of polling locations in some areas. “We’re battle tested,” said Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who noted that although some precincts had to stay open late, counties reported results on time.
In September, suspicious packages containing powder were sent to election officials in at least six states, though none of the powder was determined to be hazardous. A week before voters went to the polls, incendiary devices damaged ballots at a drop box in Portland and another in Vancouver, Washington. On Election Day, several high schools in Maine were targeted with “swatting” incidents – false reports of a threat intended to cause a law enforcement or SWAT response.
Meanwhile, foreign nation states spread AI-generated content intended to undermine confidence in the election process.
The experience of the 2024 election is a strong indication of the future threats facing Americans, providing insights into how threat actors, whether they be hostile foreign powers, foreign terrorist groups, violent domestic organizations, or criminal groups, will operate in the months and years ahead.
But despite the onslaught of cyber, physical and information operations aimed at the election, the process was safe, secure, and conducted with minimal disruption. We can attribute this to the election officials, law enforcement agencies and other operational leaders who anticipated the threats they would face and worked together to address them. They planned, they prepared, and developed communications and contingency plans ahead of Election Day, and they stayed informed of the evolving threat environment throughout the election cycle.
These remarkable collaborative efforts were empowered by the leadership of groups like the Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA), the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) and the National Fusion Center Association (NFCA). CIS is proud of the role it played in supporting these groups and other law enforcement and election officials across the Nation by providing real-time threat information regarding cyber and physical threats.
The 2024 election proved the real-world value of real-time, relevant and actionable intelligence on evolving cyber, physical and information operations incidents and threats.
At CIS we believe that risk mitigation is fundamental to every successful organization both public and private. But you can only mitigate the threats you are aware of. To support risk mitigation efforts of organizations of all sizes, both public and private, CIS has developed a low-cost subscription based intelligence service to inform leaders on the emerging threats they should know about.
ThreatWA™ is an exclusive subscription service that combines threat data and expert analysis of cyber, physical and information operations threats to deliver insights leaders need to protect their people, facilities, systems and operations. Through a proprietary blend of intelligence backed by expert analysis, ThreatWA delivers the insights needed to stay ahead of multidimensional threats, whether online or on-site, all for less than the cost of a daily coffee run.
The contemporary threat environment is multidimensional and public and private industry leaders alike should look to the 2024 election for an example of how a national-level event that was highly targeted by multidimensional threats remained secure through effective collaboration with law enforcement and effective intelligence sharing.
