WASHINGTON (AP) — Encrypted messages. Two-factor authentication. Real-time monitoring of social media for malicious internet bot activity.
This is the new reality for candidates running in 2018, scared of email hacks and elaborate misinformation schemes like the ones Russia used to disrupt the 2016 campaign.
And many candidates say they’re concerned they can’t rely on Congress or the White House for advice, or protection.
Gareth Rhodes, a Democrat running for an upstate New York House seat, said this week he’s put his campaign staff through rigorous cybersecurity training. The national campaign committees supporting Democrats and Republicans for House and Senate have brought on special staffers to prevent hacks.
But special counsel Robert Mueller revealed a trickier problem for campaigns in his elaborate indictment of the Russian Internet Research Agency: Misinformation.