26 DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 www.vanguardcanada.com
T
he Communications Security
Establishment (CSE) released
a report a few months ago
warning that cyber capabili-
ties will likely be used in an
attempt to influence the Canadian demo-
cratic process. In light of events during the
recent American and French elections, this
report is accurate, credible, and most im-
portantly, gives Canadians time to prepare.
The CSE report, Cyber Threats to Can-
ada's Democratic Process, highlights three
aspects of the democratic process that are
likely to be targeted: elections, political
parties and politicians, and media.
While election processes vary across fed-
eral, provincial/territorial, and municipal
jurisdictions, the report examines three
ThreaTs
to Canada's Democratic
process
essential and common phases: registering
voters, voting, and disseminating results.
While some of these processes are still
paper-based, others rely on electronic sys-
tems. Key threats detailed in the report in-
clude preventing citizens from registering,
preventing voters from voting, tampering
with election results, and stealing the voter
database.
According the report, "While there is a
risk that cyber capabilities could be used
to covertly change the vote count and lead
to a different election winner, we assess
that this would be very challenging for an
adversary to accomplish if elections were
conducted in a manner that includes cy-
bersecurity best practices and paper pro-
cesses that occur in parallel. In general, it
BY ERIC JACKSCh
Cyber
