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ST. CLAIRSVILLE -- The Belmont County Board of Elections has taken steps toward fulfilling the Ohio Secretary of State's mandate to increase cyber-security in preparation for the next election and future elections.
Robert Roeschenthaler, chief information officer at Eastern Gateway Community College in Jefferson County, introduced himself Tuesday to the full election board of Frankie Lee Carnes, Cynthia Fregiato, Robert Quirk, Michael Shaheen, Director William Shubat and Deputy Director Kelly McCabe to review the status of those preparations.
Eastern Gateway will be responsible for evaluating the board's cyber security. The college was one of the evaluators approved by the secretary of state's office and close by to Belmont County.
Roeschenthaler also spoke with Aaron Moore, the board's information technology specialist.
"We would be a consulting service to help you with this implementation," Roeschenthaler said. "Basically ensure that everything in the (state) notice has been implemented, do an assessment on everything, make recommendations and do a final report."
The final completion date is Oct. 15. Roeschenthaler said the bulk of the security measures have been put in place. The improvements are grant-funded at no cost to the county, and Roeschenthaler said Eastern Gateway will complete the evaluation at no cost.
Moore said the board has completed some of the state requirements, including taking measures against phishing -- the practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable sources in order to trick recipients into revealing personal information -- and other potential vulnerabilities, such as increasing security of the website. Other measures, such as incorporating the protective services Cloudflare and Google Project Shield, will be left up to Triad GSI, the company that operates the Board of Elections website.
He said the board work will work with the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center to perform regular scans and vulnerability checks.
"(The mandate) is asking question to validate that you have everything in place," Roeschenthaler said. "That all election software is safe. There is no way to cheat…There is no way someone could come in from the outside and actually access the data and modify it."
Fregiato said the election operations have not been connected to the internet.
"Nothing is connected to the internet when our people vote," she said. "They vote on machines, on paper in each precinct and it comes up on a memory card, and those memory cards are not uploaded to anything. Even our server is not connected to the internet. We upload our information to the secretary of state's server."
Roeschenthaler said the board's use of thumb drives to transfer the information is still a point of vulnerability. He said a thumb drive also can be corrupted. In addition, he said the state may be working toward a mandated update to direct transmission.
Carnes said the board has adopted a policy that jump drives -- another name for thumb drives -- may only be used one time, and may not be copied over.
In other matters, logic and accuracy testing continues on the voting machines. The board is preparing to hire about 17 part-time seasonal workers for the elections, the same as in prior years. The board has also selected the nursing home team that visits nursing homes with ballots for residents wishing to vote. Poll worker training will be held the week of Oct. 22. Carnes said the new security measures will require no additional training. The county police departments have also been contacted to provide security for the polling stations.
The next meeting will be held 4 p.m. Oct. 15.