Campaign cybersecurity shapes up as significant hurdle

WASHINGTON — Whether presidential campaigns have learned from the Russian cyberattacks in 2016 is a critical question ahead as the 2020 election approaches. Preventing the attacks won’t be easy or cheap.

“If you are the Pentagon or the NSA, you have the most skilled adversaries in the world trying to get in, but you also have some of the most skilled people working defense,” said Robby Mook, who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. “Campaigns are facing similar adversaries, and they don’t have similar resources and (they have) virtually no expertise.”

Traditionally, cybersecurity has been a lower priority for candidates, especially at the early stages of a campaign. They need to raise money, hire staffers, pay office rents, lobby for endorsements and travel repeatedly to early-voting states.

Particularly during primary season, campaign managers face difficult spending decisions: air a TV ad targeting a key voting demographic or invest in a more robust security system for computer networks?

“You shouldn’t have to choose between getting your message out to voters and keeping the Chinese from reading your emails,” said Mook, now a senior fellow at the Defending Digital Democracy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.

Mook has been helping develop a plan for a nonprofit to provide cybersecurity support and resources directly to campaigns.

The Department of Homeland Security’s cyber agency is offering help, and there are signs that some Democratic campaigns are willing to take the uncomfortable step of working with an administration they are trying to unseat.