ISACs, MS-ISAC, and ISAOs, what are these and why should you care? As a quick answer, if you are an election official or administrator, these entities are about to impact your work. Today’s blog explains how.

Do conversations about critical infrastructure sometimes seem like they are happening in another language? If so, today’s quick, but important, blog post is just for you. To help get your bearings with regard to critical infrastructure concepts and terminology, I hope you’ll check out the EAC’s new critical infrastructure resource, Starting Point: U.S. Election Systems as Critical Infrastructure

When it comes to Critical Infrastructure, everything isn’t sectors and sector specific agencies. There are other truly important entities in a sector. These councils are not the “of Troy” type, but they are just as important if you’re in a sector. There are too many variations of these councils to discuss them all in one post, so I’ll focus on two types as examples. The others function similar to these.

This post focuses just on defining sectors and subsectors. My next post will focus on how SSAs and sectors interact. It’s worth spending two installments on critical infrastructure sectors as a concept because that’s “critical” to understanding how this designation may impact the election community. Let’s dig in.

The definition of critical infrastructure has changed over time. The first formal federal definition of “critical infrastructure” was developed in 1996 when President Clinton signed Executive Order 13010. EO 13010 established a national commission on critical infrastructure.

This series will regularly discuss critical infrastructure, the designation of elections as critical infrastructure, the issues surrounding the designation, the goal is to share what we know about critical infrastructure so our stakeholders can be more informed.