Illinois National Guard taking steps to assist in election security

With the election drawing nearer, the Illinois National Guard is assisting election officials to avoid any cybersecurity issues.

Major General Richard Neely, the adjutant general of Illinois and commander of the Illinois National Guard, joined other National Guard leaders Friday to discuss cyber support for the election. Neely said recent history in Illinois makes this an important issue.

“We saw the challenges that came out of the 2016 election, and for us in Illinois that is something that caught our attention,” said Neely.

Neely was referring to a Russian hack into the Illinois election database. The personal information of about 500,000 Illinois voters, including names, addresses and driver’s license numbers, were exposed in the hack.

Twelve Russians were charged in the attack, which election officials said was not an attempt to change the outcome of the election.

“Not one vote was attempted to be changed,” said Matt Dietrich from the Illinois State Board of Elections. “That was not the object.”

After the Russian hack, officials said they installed new firewall hardware and software to shore up voting systems to prevent another attack.

Cyber security is apparently on the minds of many election officials around the country. According to a report by NBC, more than 100 state and local election jurisdictions that reached out to the federal government for help ensuring the digital security of their election-related systems are now on a waiting list just ahead of the midterm elections.

Neely said cyber security is still in its infancy.

“Cyber is that new domain, it's a manmade domain, so it's different than land, sea, air, space, and because of [that distinctiveness], I think each of our states, our nation and the entire world is trying to get their arms around security and what that means,” said Neely.

The National Guard provides cybersecurity and information technology support to the Department of Defense and all 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia.