Blake Dowling
Only in the world of politics can an election take place with both sides claiming they got the W.
In college football, it’s simple; you win or you lose — unless you are a Tennessee fan, then you get to be a “champion of life.”
I am sure Tennessee Coach Butch Jones meant well when he muttered those words last year, but come on man.
Back to politics. The special election (Karen Handel versus Jon Ossoff) in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District this week had everyone chattering.
Democrats say it was a close race in the heart of a deep-red district, meaning great things for 2018.
Republicans say they won even though they were outspent 5-1.
Regardless of your position, the Republican Party did “Handel” the competition. (Nice name, Karen; campaign slogans are endless.)
If I were her campaign manager, we would fire up crowds with the Black Crowes’ “Hard to Handle” blasted before every event.
However, one thing unheard (for once) is technology interfering with the election. Apparently, Russia doesn’t care about what goes on in Georgia.
A ZDNet headline this week said this: “198 million Americans hit by ‘largest ever’ voter records leak.”
Which is interesting because the potential exposure was discovered by a security expert and locked down before the information was leaked or stolen.
Was this a fake news headline, pure clickbait?
Here’s what went down. A company named Deep Root Analytics tracks voter information — not just names and addresses, but how the voter feels about issues — compiled using specific social engineering software (see my next column in INFLUENCE Magazine for a trip down that rabbit hole).
Deep Root had a terabyte of data sitting on an Amazon server that was potentially easy to breach. That was bad. On the bright side, it was good that the breach was discovered by a white-hat hacker before that info spilled.
Keep in mind, however, in states like Ohio you can already access every voter (names, addresses, etc.) in the state without needing to hack anything. So, another massive leak was avoided (maybe).
Our voter tech is behind, as is everything else we are plugging into the internet without giving it much thought.
This is called the “Internet of Things.”
For example, on the homefront: “Good news, Mrs. Wife! I can control our air conditioning through my iPhone!”
Is it password protected? No? FAIL.
You just created another vulnerability making both you and your data a big target. We, as Americans, regardless of political opinion or party affiliation, must band together to put a massive defensive strategy in place to keep the really bad guys out when 2018 rolls around.
Old voting machines … exposed servers in the cloud … external hard drives with unencrypted data … using free Wi-Fi without passwords … ransomware … threats are everywhere and we must “Handel” this situation with care.
HAHAHA!
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Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies. His heroes are Bill Murray and Megan Fox and can be reached at [email protected].
