Two former campaign managers for Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton are starting a new initiative to prevent further cyberattacks on political campaigns, The Washington Post reports.
The new bipartisan “Defending Digital Democracy” group will work to establish ways to share threat information between campaigns and local election offices.
Robby Mook, who headed Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and Matt Rhoades, who managed Romney’s run as the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, will lead the initiative through the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
{mosads}The initiative plans to create cybersecurity “playbooks” for local election officials to prevent hacks.
The group’s leaders say they’ll enlist experts in national security and technology, including Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos and former National Security Agency director of information assurance Debora Plunkett.
Russian-backed hackers stole information from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign members during the 2016 presidential campaign in an effort to undermine Clinton and help Donald Trump win the race, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. The hacks were then published via WikiLeaks.
The Russian government is also believed to have influenced a number of other elections, including trying to disrupt Emmanuel Macron’s presidential run in France.
Mook and Rhoades said they have reached out to state officials from both parties and will work to gain trust from political operatives.