MINNEAPOLIS — With widespread security concerns over next week’s U.S. presidential election and the Canadian federal elections in 2025, panelists at last week’s GridSecCon said the institutions serving electric reliability are “absolutely critical” for ensuring the elections remain safe and secure.
The Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), which co-sponsored the 13th annual conference with the Midwest Reliability Organization, decided to hold an election security panel after repeated warnings about the “complex and dynamic” threat landscape facing U.S. and Canadian election infrastructure, according to E-ISAC Vice President of Security Operations and Intelligence Matt Duncan.
“It’s more than just a presidential election that can be influenced,” Duncan said, reminding the audience of warnings from security experts and the federal government about cyber campaigns by foreign adversaries including China and Iran. (See Agencies Describe a Year of Iran Cyber Attacks.) “We have very close races in the House and Senate and state houses across the country, and our adversaries know that.”
The links between election security and grid security go beyond the fact that both are critically important, panelists said. Timothy Davis, senior elections cyber threat analyst at the Elections Infrastructure ISAC (EI-ISAC), observed that threat actors “use a lot of similar tactics, no matter who they’re targeting,” which means security professionals in both sectors can share their experiences to strengthen each other.
Spencer Wood, an election security adviser for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said physical security is as important as electronic hygiene. Describing the “horrid amounts of violence and rhetoric” that he has seen directed against election workers across the country, Wood added that state officials also need to be prepared for disruptions to the grid — both deliberate and accidental.
“There will be power outages on election day. A squirrel will decide to jump on a transformer. There will be a tree that will fall somewhere, or an accident that will happen, or at a polling location, someone will plug in a Crock-Pot, and that will be enough to trip the breakers at the polling location,” Wood said. “That’s why you … have an incident response plan. But really the … trusted source of information is the state and local election officials.”
Davis agreed with Wood’s recommendation for incident response plans, saying he and his colleagues at the EI-ISAC “hammer those over and over again.” Knowing whom to contact — especially on Election Day — is essential to resolve issues as quickly as possible. He said electric utilities should feel as comfortable interacting with the EI-ISAC as they do with its counterpart in their sector.
Brandi Martin, assistant director of the Energy Security Policy and Partnerships team at the Department of Energy, said utilities should be prepared to coordinate with federal officials as well. She reminded attendees that a well-organized response plan can summon responses from a wide range of organizations, as happened during the recent reactions to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“We have a lot of these practiced mechanisms, whether it’s a wildfire … hurricane, or polar vortex. So on Election Day, if we have a weather event, a cyber event or a physical event, we’re ready there to stand up those coordination calls and mechanisms as well,” Martin said.
