On Saturday, Secretary of State Michele Reagan issued a concern over potential cyber threats to Arizona’s election system. Reagan ordered a complete top to bottom review of the online systems, specifically those related to elections.
The report is paid by a special fund allocated for these types of security improvements. The report did identify security gaps and details out recommendations for more secure software, hardware and infrastructure, in addition to responsible human management.
The report details that the Arizona elections system security continues to be at a reactive level. The issue was brought to the Maricopa County recorder’s attention and questions were raised on if voters need to be concerned. In addition, inquires on how to get the election system to a “proactive” level.
“The reality is that we are under threat from foreign actors, we have been since before the 2016 election and we have to be vigilant,” says Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes.
Fontes agreed with Reagan but he’s also emphasized that state officials are doing working on the situation.
“We’re taking this all very, very seriously and we’re going to do real well by the voters,” he said.
Fontes’ office did not release the report and cannot speak specifically on it, he is confident about how his office and Maricopa County is handling the upcoming election and what they are doing to heighten cybersecurity to protect voters.
“We have a lot of auditing that happens inside of the elections itself and by the way, none of our tabulation systems are connected to the internet,” he said.
“Being reactive and being proactive can really happen at the same time. We’ve been very proactive in a lot of different areas such as the types of screening that we do on interactions that our systems have with outside systems and then we’re reactive when we see a phishing attack or someone’s trying to get our folks to open up email attachments, they shouldn’t be opening, we gotta react to that. We’ve got really, really secure system that folks can be confident in and we’re excited about November’s elections,” says Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes.
Fontes encourages voters to consider casting an early ballot as that is one of the ways voters can help eliminate some of the threat.
