Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney has again authorized the formation of an Elections Operations Center chartered to simultaneously centralize focus on the election, increase awareness, aid in decision making and facilitate the execution of actions on Election Day.
With a heightened awareness to potential interference from Nation-state actors, cyber criminals and other rogue groups or individuals, the objective of the EOC is to provide the Secretary and his staff with a way to closely monitor the election and receive fact-based information to respond quickly to high-level election related incidents or events.
The EOC will be staffed on election day with experts from a diverse group of organizations to deal quickly and effectively with any problems that might be encountered. Active participants will include professionals representing the Idaho Secretary of State’s office; the Idaho Office of Emergency Management; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA); the Idaho Fusion Center; the Idaho National Guard; and the Idaho Courts.
Additionally, the EOC will have engineers available on-call throughout the day from vendors supporting critical elections infrastructure, as well as specialists from the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
Participants are chartered to provide a single point of contact for issues that might arise on election day, including but not limited to cyber security, election law/statues, internet connectivity, election infrastructure functionality and national incident reporting trends.
The EOC will be operational from 8:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. Pacific time on Election Day.
