"This week, the DHS hosted the ‘Tabletop the Vote 2018: DHS’ National Election Cyber Exercise,’ a three-day, first-of-its-kind exercise to assist DHS and our federal partners, state and local election officials, and private vendors," the release said on Wednesday.
The DHS explained the exercise had as its goal to identify best practices and areas for improvement in cyber incident planning, preparedness, identification, response and recovery.
The exercise also simulated denial of service attacks and web defacements impacting board of election websites and web applications, malware infections impacting electronic voting machines and election management system software; and the exploitation of state and county election networks, the DHS said.
Officials from 44 US states, the Election Assistance Commission, the Departments of Defense and Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command participated, the DHS added.