Less than a week before the 2024 presidential electioninfrastructure has “never been more secure,” according to the head of the federal agency tasked with America’s cyber defense.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cyber ​​Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas that she has “incredible confidence” in election security.

“I understand why some Americans have questions, because they’ve been subjected to a firestorm of misinformation for years and it’s undermined trust in our election systems and our democratic institutions, but I’ve spent so much time on the ground. the past three-plus years with state and local election officials who are on the front lines of running, managing and defending the election infrastructure, and I can tell you that I have incredible confidence that our election infrastructure has never been more secure,” said Easterly during an interview at CISA headquarters.

“Election officials have never been better prepared to hold safe and free and fair elections for the people,” she said.

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For example, she said 97 percent of registered voters will vote in jurisdictions where they get a paper record they can verify themselves, which is “incredibly important,” she said.

The voting machines are not connected to the internet and this is a “big source of protection”.

This disinformation is amplified by foreign adversaries, according to Easterly, who pointed to various examples of disinformation already debunked — such as a fake video of the ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

She said foreign adversaries have two goals: to undermine Americans’ confidence in the election and to sow discord in the country.

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“One day, the federal government used our tools, our forensic analysis, to say that it was a fake video, that it was a Russian-made video,” she said. “So at the end of the day, we’re going to lean forward a lot when we see inaccurate information that could undermine Americans’ confidence in the election.”

CISA is also responsible for advising election officials on the physical security of their elections.

“As a retired Army officer, as a combat veteran who’s been in very dangerous places where I’ve had flak jackets and, you know, been behind layers of security, it’s disconcerting to me as an American to see offices elections with bulletproof glass and panic buttons and barbed wire fences,” Easterly said. “This is not the way it should be in America, and we know that these threats, harassment, bullying, beatings, threats of violence against election officials and their families, election officials in both parties, stem largely from baseless claims that the election from 2020 were defrauded. .”

She said poll workers are not “faceless bureaucrats” but rather friends and neighbors.

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“I don’t do it for the pay or the glory. I do it because I believe in our democracy and it deserves respect, it deserves gratitude and it deserves to be safe,” she said.

The director said that recent incidents such as ballot boxes being set on fire in Oregon and Washington, and the denial-of-service attack against the Georgia secretary of state’s office is expected to happen, but voters should be reassured that it has no impact on their election.

“What Americans should understand is that these incidents will not affect the security or integrity of the votes cast or those votes that are counted as cast. And election officials have trained for this, exercised for this, prepared for this – all kinds of scenarios, whether it’s ballots that need to be replaced or cyber security threats that need to be dealt with or for criminal activities such as fraudulent registrations to be investigated. Perpetrators prosecuted, election officials are ready for this moment.

Electoral infrastructure “has never been more secure”, says CISA chief originally appeared on abcnews.go.com