Election is a legally governed process for choosing public officials or deciding a question through voting, with rules for registration, ballot creation, voting, counting, and certification. Its cybersecurity scope includes the digital systems supporting those stages—not only voting devices, but voter-registration databases, election-management systems, poll-worker accounts, result-reporting networks, and public information services.
Security priorities are preserving vote and result integrity, keeping essential services available, and protecting voter and worker information from unnecessary exposure. Material risks include unauthorized changes to ballot definitions or tallies, compromise of privileged accounts, disruption of reporting systems, and exploitation of software or network vulnerabilities. Defenses include least-privilege access, multifactor authentication, network separation, tested backups, vulnerability management, and paper records or other independent evidence that supports verification. Election security also requires documented procedures for detecting, containing, and correcting incidents without undermining lawful certification.