This Playbook is intended for leaders at every level who play a role in running elections. While the future threats elections face are multifaceted, one principle stands clear: defending democracy depends on proactive leadership. This Playbook focuses on the U.S. experience, but it is also relevant to election officials around the world facing similar threats. We have designed it to identify risks and offer actionable solutions that will empower state and local election officials to protect democracy from those who seek to do it harm.

This Guide is primarily intended for use by the EI-GCC to coordinate multiple voices (and multiple facts) in an election cyber incident that crosses traditional jurisdictions. We are releasing the Guide publicly, because a range of officials may be interested in learning more about how state and local leaders can, and should, coordinate their communications in the event of this type of cyber incident. We hope this Guide becomes a starting point for the EI-GCC to establish its role as a central communications node in the event of an election cyber incident.

This Plan Template document is primarily intended for use by state and local election officials as a basis for developing their own communications response plans, which include best practices for use in an election cyber incident. We are releasing the Plan Template publicly, because election officials are among those best prepared and always looking for industry best practices, as well as practical checklists. This plan will aid in that effort.

When the stolen information was exploited to generate news coverage or concoct “fake news” – such as that Democratic operatives were running a sex ring out of a pizza parlour – we learned some hard lessons in why privacy really matters. I worry the current rhetoric around encryption is ignoring that lesson.

To mark their states' candidate-filing deadlines, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic Secretary of State of Kentucky, and Mac Warner, the Republican Secretary of State of West Virginia, are distributing the "Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook" to candidates in their states seeking to be on the ballot in 2018.

The Belfer Center is pleased to welcome a number of high-ranking former officials who have joined the Center as Senior Fellows in the past few months. Each brings valuable experience and expertise in critical issues of concern to the Center that they share with students, faculty, and the larger community through their research, seminars, presentations, and various events.

In July, the Belfer Center launched a new, bipartisan initiative called the Defending Digital Democracy Project  (D3P). Led by Belfer Center Co-Director Eric Rosenbach, along with the former campaign managers for Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, the project aims to identify and recommend strategies, tools, and technology to protect democratic processes and systems from cyber and information attacks.

Emboldened by their successes in recent years, malicious actors are stepping up their attacks on a particularly soft target: US political campaigns. Though the risks – and consequences – of infiltration are increasing, campaigns can greatly reduce their vulnerability with a few simple steps. That’s the impetus for “The Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook,” a new guide published online today by the bipartisan Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The information assembled here is for any campaign in any party. It was designed to give you simple, actionable information that will make your campaign’s information more secure from adversaries trying to attack your organization—and our democracy