McAfee has democracy on its radar

THE chief executive of McAfee believes cyber security firms like his will see higher demand for election protection as authorities in countries such as the US and UK try to protect “integrity” at the ballot box.

Chris Young said there was a growing trend for attacks targeting “major events” like the Winter Olympics, with the next big focus likely to be November’s US midterm elections.

“We’re now at a point where you could almost be certain that any notable event will have a corresponding set of cyber attacks with it,” he said, adding that “election protection is going to be big”.

“Not just here in the US but certainly in the UK, Germany and France, in any developed country there is much more heightened awareness in and around making sure the integrity of our elections is solid,” Mr Young explained.

He said the targets could be far more subtle than ballot count tampering, and could result in issues like incorrect voting instructions on election day.

“Very simple things, even websites for example being manipulated locally to send people to the wrong polling places – those are the kind of things we’ll be looking out for. It’s something we do in different countries where we may or may not have closer relationships with law enforcement and it depends on the needs of a locale.”

McAfee said there was no further information it could share over whether the firm was working with UK authorities to safeguard the country’s own elections.

In December, Labour MP Chris Bryant made headlines when he claimed Russia was targeting UK politicians on a “regular daily basis” in the hope of undermining the UK’s democratic process, and that there had been interference concerning Brexit.

Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom responded by saying that the Government was investing nearly £2billion to protect the UK from cyber attack as part of the national cyber security strategy.

She explained that the Government was undertaking work to ensure there was no interference in the electoral process.

Mr Young said his firm was less concerned with pinpointing the source of an attack than preparing countries or companies for a threat.

‘There is more awareness around the integrity of our elections’