By Eric Geller<\/p>\n
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October 17, 2018<\/p>\n
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The Democratic National Committee has spent 14 months staffing up with tech talent from Silicon Valley, training staff to spot suspicious emails and giving the FBI someone to talk to if it spots signs of hackers targeting the party.<\/p>\n
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The first concrete sign of success may come in a few weeks, if the Democrats make it through the November midterm elections unscathed. But Raffi Krikorian, the DNC\u2019s chief technology officer, is already pointing to one significant accomplishment \u2014 what he calls a massive overhaul of digital security at the committee and its sister organizations.<\/p>\n
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That would be a big leap from September 2015, when the FBI\u2019s first attempt to alert the party to a suspected Russian cyberattack reached a DNC IT contractor who thought it was a prank. Such a major flub would not happen now, said Krikorian, whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 includes senior roles at Uber and Twitter.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt would be surprising if a week went by and I didn\u2019t hear from one of the three-letter agencies in my inbox,\u201d Krikorian told POLITICO during an interview at the committee\u2019s headquarters. Representatives of the bureau and other federal agencies have \u201cbeen in our building to ask how they can help or what information we might be able to coordinate on in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Krikorian and his team have been trying to instill that same mindset throughout the party, including among Democratic campaigns and state parties. The party\u2019s entire apparatus is \u201caware that security\u2019s something they should be concerned about,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re actually moving up this curve at a fairly good clip.\u201d<\/p>\n
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