New Guide for Political Campaign Cybersecurity Debuts

Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager and strategist for her 2016 presidential bid Robby Mook has helped create a new cybersecurity guide for political campaigns in his current role at the bipartisan Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) group at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook, published today, is a "living and breathing" guide to assist US political campaigns, candidates, and their families, in better securing their data and online accounts, according to the D3P. The group - which consists of co-directors Mook and Eric Rosenbach and Matt Rhoades, former campaign manager for Mitt Romney - worked with former director of the NSA Information Assurance Directorate Debora Plunkett, who gathered input from cybersecurity leaders, business executives, and attorneys, for the guide. 

Facebook CISO Alex Stamos, Google's manager of information security Heather Adkins, and CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch, were among the cybersecurity leaders who contributed to the playbook. The guide recommends among other best practices that campaigns institute user training, commercial cloud services, strong passwords, and an incident response plan.

"Cybersecurity is an issue that every campaign professional now needs to take seriously, but it can be daunting for people who aren't IT professionals," said Mook, a senior fellow with the Belfer Center. "This playbook gives candidates and campaign staff without a technical background the tools to take responsibility for their cybersecurity strategy and significantly reduce risk."

See more information on the D3P Playbook here.

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