Political campaigns could lose more than donations if they don’t secure their data

The focus on dangers posed by AI for U.S. elections this year is understandable, but it might overshadow more mundane ID authentication risks that are nonetheless critical.

A poll paid for by authentication hardware vendor Yubico and a federal elections nonprofit advocacy group indicates that 85 percent of respondents lack high confidence that political campaigns can effectively shield their personal data.

Michael Kaiser, CEO of Defending Digital Campaigns, a nonprofit supplying free security tools and resources to campaigns, said the organizations this year “risk not only losing valuable data, but losing voters.”

The survey was carried out by market research firm OnePoll and collected the views of 2,000 registered votes.

Forty-two percent of respondents who had donated money to a campaign said they would seriously reconsider giving again if they hear that the organization had been hacked. They might even not vote for the campaign’s candidate.

Half of all respondents told pollsters that they received text or email come-ons that they suspect of being part of a phishing campaign.

Forty percent want campaigns to operate more responsibly — employ multifactor authentication and train staff when not to cooperate with a data request, for example.

Yubico says it has donated “tens of thousands” of security keys to Defending Digital Campaigns and related organizations to preserve the integrity of voting in the U.S.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometric security key  |  cybersecurity  |  elections  |  multifactor authentication  |  Yubico