US 2020 Presidential Campaign Cyber Security Examined
The US Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (OTA) is a cross- industry organisation which identifies and promotes security and privacy best practices that build consumer confidence in the Internet.
They have recently conducted an evaluation of the 2020 US presidential campaigns, examining three main categories:
- Privacy – data sharing, retention, notice, and third-party restriction policies in the privacy statement, as well as analysis of third-party tracking on the website
- Website Security – server security, use of encryption for web sessions, protections such as firewalls and potential site vulnerabilities
- Consumer Protection – protection of email via authentication and encryption between servers, and protection of domains from hijacking
As with making any payments or donations, or signing up for any online service, users are encouraged to evaluate campaigns to see if the published practices are consistent with their individual expectations regarding the collection, use, and sharing of their data.
As outlined in this report, the published privacy statements vary significantly, from stating that they disallow any sharing to language effectively enabling campaigns to share personal information broadly with any third party.
As cyber threats increase and privacy concerns heighten, the relevancy and timeliness of this report is significant, underscoring the imperative that data security, protection, and privacy need to be integrated into every service, business process, website, and mobile application, whether commercial or political.
Source: Internet Society
All campaigns listed in the failure column had a failure in the privacy category, and two campaigns also failed in the consumer protection category.
Overall, the survey found that campaigns have strong website security, reasonable email and domain protections, and poor privacy scores. Privacy statements are the biggest concern, causing failure for 70% of the campaigns.
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