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WPCNR ALBANY ROUNDS. From the Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. May 30, 2018:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that the State Board of Elections—in concert with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—will host a first-of-its-kind series of tabletop exercises focused on protecting the integrity of New York’s electoral systems against cyber-attacks. Partnering with the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, State Police, and State Intelligence Center, the tabletop exercises will identify areas for improvement in cyber incident planning, preparedness, and response through simulation of realistic scenarios attempting to undermine voter confidence, interfere with voting operations, and affect the integrity of elections.

“We have witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences a compromised election has had on our nation and New York will not stand idle and allow our democracy to be infiltrated once again,” Governor Cuomo said. “The people of New York deserve an open, transparent election process they can trust, and these exercises are an integral part of restoring voter confidence and the integrity of our election infrastructure.

State and local officials, led by the State Board of Elections and new DHSES Cyber Incident Response Team, will utilize information gleaned from six regional tabletop exercises with state, local, and federal stakeholders to identify risks and develop necessary steps to safeguard the election process against a cyber-attack. Exercise dates and locations are below:

• May 31: Albany County – Times Union Center
• June 6: Monroe County – Board of Elections
• June 7: Onondaga County – Syracuse University, Dineen Hall
• June 11: Nassau County – Morrelly Homeland Security Center
• June 12: Orange County – County Department of Emergency Services
• June 18: Broome County – Floyd L. Maines Veterans Memorial Arena

The regional tabletop exercises will cover all of New York’s county election jurisdictions. The exercises will be substantively similar, with several scenarios contoured for each region. The scenarios will be based on a combination of real world events and potential risks facing our election infrastructure. This includes possible social media manipulation, disruption of voter registration information systems and processes, voting machines, and the exploitation of board of elections business networks.

These tabletop exercises are part of the Board’s cybersecurity plan that was approved on May 3, 2018, to further strengthen cyber protections for New York’s elections infrastructure through the Board’s Secure Elections Center. The plan, dubbed ARMOR has four elements:

• Assess the risk to State and County Elections Systems;
• Remediate the vulnerabilities;
• Monitor ongoing Operations; and
• Respond to incidents.

WPCNR COMPUTER INTELLIGENCE. By Aaron Woodin, PC Ventures. May 30, 2018:

Aaron Woodin, (center), in an appearance on People to Be Heard on White Plains Television with John Bailey and Jim Benerofe.  Mr. Woodin is founder of PC Ventures of White Plains, has begun a private service for his clients in which he alerts clients like the CitizeNetReporter on disturbing trends he encounters in his current business. The following is reprinted with permission of PC Ventures on current issues he finds affecting his clients:

This week, he addresses three situations he has been seeing a lot of:

1. Phone scams – Many clients of mine are receiving calls from people claiming to be from iCloud, Apple or “The Windows Department” (Microsoft).  Any inbound call you receive from these companies is fraudulent, and you should hang up without any hesitation.

Their objective is to take over your computer and pretend to fix an array of nonexistent problems.  Next, they ask for payment via credit card for this phony service, and aggressively sell a worthless “support” plan.

If you haven’t hung up yet, certainly DO NOT give these strangers any sort of payment information.  If you have encountered this situation and feel like your computer may have been compromised, call me so I can check to make sure no “back doors” have been left on the computer to allow the scammers future access.

2. Windows 10 updates.  A Windows update early last week (Around May 20) rendered two otherwise fine computers useless and in need of replacement.  I’ve seen this happen to other clients’ computers.  Microsoft is clearly  (apparently) NOT vetting their updates properly before release, so I’m recommending that if you are prompted for an update, say no.

If you are repeatedly prompted, or want to completely quash updates, I can either talk you through it over the phone, or stop by for a quick tech visit, although this is an option best done if other tech issues need to be dealt with.

3. Backups.  Computers are relatively cheap.  Your data – documents, digital pictures, music, etc are precious and essentially irreplaceable.

I highly recommend buying an inexpensive external hard drive, like the Western Digital Passport (around $60-$75), at the very least.

For additional peace of mind, I recommend an online backup service called Carbonite, currently $72.00 a year.

I prefer my clients go for both of these solutions, but if you choose one, choose Carbonite, because it works automatically in the background.

I’ve seen unfortunate situations in which a computer dies, and it turns out that the backup hard drive was detached, broken, or full.  This shouldn’t happen with Carbonite.