Write a paper on Public-Private Partnerships for Election Systems Cybersecurity.

Write a paper on Public-Private Partnerships for Election Systems Cybersecurity. This assignment should be approached from a
non-partisan perspective and, to the maximum extent possible, resources used
and cited should be from non-partisan, independent sources.
Background
The 2020 elections were like no others in recent times
due in large part to the global pandemic and increasing societal impacts as
rates of infection from the COVID-19 virus increased rapidly across the United
States. Individual states, who are responsible for running state and federal
elections, had to pivot from primarily in-person voting to a mix of
face-to-face, absentee, and mail-in ballots. The vote counting processes had to
change as well since absentee and mail-in ballots usually required additional
steps to verify the validity of individual ballots. Central to many ballot
challenges were the technologies used to verify signatures and record votes
from physical ballots. If you’re not familiar with some of the issues that
arose during the post-election vote tallying, this analysis from the
Constitution Center is a place to start https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/faq-what-happens-next-in-the-presidential-election-process
In addition to concerns raised by state governments,
think tank after think tank has studied the problems of election security for
years now. For example, the National Academy of Sciences published a report in
2018 that detailed many cybersecurity concerns which arose during the 2016
election (See https://www.nap.edu/read/25120/chapter/7
). A more recent analysis by the Brennan Center was published in September 2020
detailed additional election processes that “need improvement.” (See https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/our-election-system-resilient-still-has-room-improvement
).
Clearly, there are differences of opinion as to what
the problems were with the 2016 and 2020 elections. But, there seems to be
growing agreement among the state governors and the Secretaries of State who
are responsible for running elections at the state level – something needs to
be done to improve election security in the future. Public-private partnerships
are a tool that state governments and the federal government have used with
success in other areas to encourage the participation of businesses and others
in developing solutions for public-policy problems.
Your Task
For this research project, you will help identify
best practices and strategies for encouraging business participation in public-private
partnerships designed to improve cybersecurity for the US Elections System.
Your deliverable will be a research report that provides an overview of
existing public-private partnerships (focus on Election Security), the types of
cybersecurity improvements such partnerships address, the potential benefits to
industry partners, and the potential risks and/or costs in resources. Your
report should also address the types of due
diligence activities a company should engage in before committing to
participation in information sharing and other public-private partnership
activities.
Research:
1.
Read / Review the Weekly readings.
2.
Research the concepts and structures for
public-private partnerships as a means of furthering public policy goals. Your
starting resources are:
a.
What are
Public Private Partnerships (World Bank)
https://ppp.worldbank.org/public-private-partnership/overview/what-are-public-private-partnerships
b.
The Policy
Cycle
https://www.policynl.ca/policydevelopment/policycycle.html

3.
Research existing or proposed public-private
partnerships in cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection for
Elections Systems Security. Here are
some sources to get you started:
a.
https://gcn.com/articles/2020/02/20/government-industry-partners-election-security.aspx
b.
https://www.lawandsecurity.org/Portals/0/Documents/Cybersecurity.Partnerships.pdf
c. https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2020/04/role-dhs-can-play-election-security
4. Research
the DHS-led public-private partnership for Critical Infrastructure
Cybersecurity improvements in the area of Election Systems Security. You should
also review the requirements and provisions of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework
for Critical Infrastructure Protection. Research why DHS is encouraging the
adoption of the NIST framework.
a.
https://www.dhs.gov/topic/election-security
b. https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/tips/ST19-002
c. https://us-cert.cisa.gov/resources/cybersecurity-framework
5. Find
additional sources that provide information about public-private partnerships
for cybersecurity, i.e. Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) or
Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations. Here are two overview/directory
web pages to help you get started.
a. https://www.dhs.gov/isao
b. https://www.cisecurity.org/ei-isac/
Write:
Write a five- to seven-page
research report that includes a summary of your research. At a minimum, your report
must include the following:
1. An
introduction or overview for public-private partnerships that provides
definitions and addresses the laws, regulations, and policies that permit this
type of cooperation between federal, state, and local governments and private
companies. This introduction should be suitable for an executive audience.
2. A
separate section that provides an overview of public-private partnerships for Elections
Systems cybersecurity that addresses the types of activities contributed by a company
(e.g. information sharing, development of threat intelligence, development of
risk profiles, etc.). You should provide
three or more specific examples.
3. An
analysis of whether participation in a public-private partnership in the area
of Elections Security is likely to have benefits for businesses (with specific
examples of those benefits). After you address the benefits, address the
problem of costs and/or risks which a company could expect to face (with at
least three or more specific examples). (One risk to consider is how a partnership
exposes information about company operations to the federal government.)
4. A
set of recommendations or best practices for companies to engage in before
committing to participation in a public-private partnership for cybersecurity.
(Address the requirement for due
diligence in decision-making.)
5.
A separate closing section in which you
summarize your research and recommendation(s).
Submit for Grading
Submit your work in MS Word
format (.docx or .doc file) using the Project 6 Assignment in your assignment
folder. (Attach the file.)
Additional
Information
1.
Consult the
grading rubric for specific content and formatting requirements for this
assignment.
2.
Your 5- to 7-page
research report should be professional in appearance with consistent use of
fonts, font sizes, margins, etc. You should use headings and page breaks to
organize your paper.
3.
Your paper should
use standard terms and definitions for cybersecurity.
4.
The CSIA program
recommends that you follow standard APA formatting since this will give you a
document that meets the “professional appearance” requirements. APA formatting
guidelines and examples are found under Course Resources. An APA template file (MS
Word format) has also been provided for your use
CSIA_Paper_Template(TOC+TOF,2021).docx.
5.
You must include
a cover page with the assignment title, your name, and the due date. Your
reference list must be on a separate page at the end of your file. These pages
do not count towards the assignment’s page count.
6.
You should write
grammatically correct English in every assignment that you submit for grading.
Do not turn in any work without (a) using spell check, (b) using grammar check,
(c) verifying that your punctuation is correct and (d) reviewing your work for
correct word usage and correctly structured sentences and paragraphs.
7.
You must credit
your sources using in-text citations and reference list entries. Both your
citations and your reference list entries must follow a consistent citation
style (APA, MLA, etc.).

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