The US intelligence officials on Wednesday warned that election hacking by foreign threat actors as an inevitability that needs to be accepted, while the real focus of the government’s defensive efforts should be on making systems resilient enough to rule out catastrophic consequences.
While addressing a House Oversight and Reform subcommittee, Adam Hickey of the Justice Department’s national security division stated that “systems that are connected to the Internet […] will be breached” if they are targeted by a determined and sophisticated threat actor. However, he emphasized the “need to have confidence in our elected representatives and our state officials that they’ve got this,” because he believes that a lack of confidence in the current system will benefit America’s adversaries.
Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Chris Krebs agreed that “100 percent security is not the objective. It’s resilience of the system. So even if you do have a bad day, it’s not a catastrophic day.”
Read more: US Officials Say Foreign Election Hacking Is Inevitable
