Assignment $4-$ Election Cybersecurity

Background: It is time to pick a new Senator. The state of New Jersey is concerned that their elections are not secured. You are hired as a cybersecurity consultant to provide them with actionable intelligence about if this is something they should be concerned with, and what they can do$.$ The budget is of no concern.

Objective: Perform a detailed investigation of a designated country's cyber capabilities, especially focusing on state$-$sponsored activities, using both current events and scholarly sources. Apply this research to devise a protective strategy for a state's voting infrastructure in New Jersey, against cyber threats potentially posed by the assigned country.

Instructions:

Country Research: Investigate your chosen country's recent cyber activities and capabilities. Focus on identifying the tools, techniques, and strategies used by state$-$sponsored cyber attackers. Incorporate a variety of sources in your research, ensuring to include at least two peer$-$reviewed articles. Please do not use sources older than $10$ years. For more information regarding your assigned country, please check on groups under the people link.

Peer$-$Reviewed Articles: Understand that peer$-$reviewed articles are scholarly papers reviewed and validated by experts in the same field. These articles, found in academic journals and databases, provide reliable, high$-$quality research and are crucial for your analysis. If you are not sure what a scholarly article is$,$ please reach out to the Rowan Librarians for assistance.

Current Events Analysis: Analyze recent global cyber incidents, specifically those attributed to your assigned country. Utilize respectable news outlets for current events. Please do not use sources older than $5$ years. Identify tools, technologies, methods, and prevalent tactics used by the attackers, combining this information with insights from peer$-$reviewed research.

Application to Election Security: Hypothesize how the identified cyber tactics could be applied to disrupt or manipulate an election in New Jersey. Examine all aspects of election infrastructure, such as campaigns, voter databases, vote$-$counting systems, and websites that display the results.

Mitigation Strategies: Formulate a comprehensive set of practices and recommendations to safeguard New Jersey$$s voting infrastructure. Your strategy should be informed by your research findings and cover both technical and non$-$technical aspects of cybersecurity.

Report and Conclusion: Present your research, analysis, and strategies in a structured report. It should include:

An introduction to the country's cyber capabilities based on your research.

Analysis of potential threats to election infrastructure.

A detailed mitigation plan based on the threats identified

Analytical Conclusion: Conclude with a paragraph analyzing the motivation and likelihood of your assigned country targeting elections. This should be your well$-$reasoned opinion, based on your research findings. No citations are needed for this part, but your argument should be logical and reflect the evidence and insights gathered during your research.

Expectations:

Depth and Quality of Research: Your analysis should be grounded in robust research, with an emphasis on peer$-$reviewed sources supplemented by current events.

Realistic and Informed Threat Assessment: Ensure your threat assessment is plausible, and informed by your research findings.

Comprehensive Mitigation Strategy: Develop a thorough, multifaceted approach to protecting election infrastructure.

Cohesive and Logical Conclusion: Your concluding paragraph should logically interpret the motivations and likelihood of cyber$-$attacks based on the evidence you have gathered, showcasing your analytical skills.

Sample:

Country X has used ransomware as evident in this specific event and here are the details $($newspaper article$).$ They have also used this APT as evident in this other totally unrelated event with the details being here $($another newspaper article$).$ This country has shown that they will use social engineering as shown in this other incident details $($another article$).$

To combat ransomware, the state of NJ would need to employ this very specific technology that is relevant to the election framework $($peer$-$reviewed journal$).$

$1)2)3)$

To combat the APT that is very specific to the NJ election architecture, the state would need to do these very specific things: $($peer$-$reviewed journal$).$

$1)2)3)$

To combat the social engineering that is very specific to how NJ runs it's elections, the state would need to do these very specific things: $($peer$-$reviewed journal$).$

$1)2)3)$

The conclusion is that even though Country X has these technologies, and they've used them in the past, they have nothing to gain from hacking NJ$,$ but NJ should still harden themselves as a target.