Shiu-Kai Chin
Around half of states typically considered battleground states are facing cybersecurity challenges that put them at increased risk of a cybersecurity breach.
Shiu-Kai Chin, Ph.D., is a professor of electrical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence. Professor Chin’s research interests include cybersecurity, systems assurance and formal verification.
Dr. Chin offered his perspective:
“The primary mission is to maintain the integrity of the voting process, particularly in terms of (1) assuring access by all registered voters to cast votes in a timely fashion, (2) ensuring each legitimate vote is counted without undue delay and (3) being able to provide an accurate accounting of the process to demonstrate trustworthiness.
Certainly, cybersecurity plays an important role and I would assume that all jurisdictions have contingency plans to mitigate loss of power, computers and networks. That is, the voting process does not depend entirely on one technological aspect, in this case one particular set of computers or networks.
For a relevant example, the financial services industry, particularly the use of consumer credit cards, demonstrates that a reliable and trustworthy service can be delivered using a combination of imperfect technology (e.g., a three-digit verification number on the back of a credit card), surveillance (e.g., consumers being able to monitor their accounts 24/7) and policy (e.g., questionable transactions being removed from customer accounts pending investigation). I would imagine that the voting process has all these capabilities in place and more.”
