New Additions to Our Small Business and Elections Toolkits

GCA toolkits are “living resources” that GCA, in close collaboration with our partners, continuously strives to improve. We examine each toolkit for opportunities to provide new tools that respond to changing needs of the communities GCA serves based on the evolving threat landscape, making our toolkits accessible to as many people and organizations as possible. The tools GCA adds to its toolkits always undergo an assessment process to ensure they effectively address the specific concern for which they are included and operationalize a globally recognized cybersecurity best practice, for example an identified CIS Control or guidance from the CIS Handbook for Election Infrastructure Security.

We have just added three new tools – one to the GCA Cybersecurity Toolkit for Small Business and the others to the Cybersecurity Toolkit for Elections:

Small Business: As an additional resource to enhance email security and brand reputation, Valimail Monitor has been added to the Cybersecurity Toolkit for Small Business. Valimail Monitor is a fully automated DMARC monitoring solution that lets the implementing entity see all email senders using the domain. It will provide organizations with all the necessary information to work with business stakeholders to determine which services are legitimate and to understand the organization’s domain reputation risk. Valimail Monitor can be found under the Protect You Email and Reputation toolbox.

Elections: The remaining two tools have been added to the Cybersecurity Toolkit for Elections:

  • Facebook Protect: Social media accounts of individuals and organizations are continuously probed by malicious actors during an election cycle and may need additional protection. Facebook Protect offers candidates, elected officials, federal and state departments and agencies, and party committees, as well as their staff, a way to further secure their Facebook and Instagram accounts by utilizing the Protect capability. Facebook Protect can be found under the Configure Securely toolbox.
  • Microsoft ElectionGuard: Microsoft ElectionGuard is open source software that is used to make voting more secure. The tool is designed to help implement encryption channels to ensure that votes recorded by electronic systems of any type remain encrypted, secure, and secret. Microsoft ElectionGuard can be found under the Configure Securely toolbox.

Thank you to Valimail, Facebook, and Microsoft for informing us of these tools and working with us to make sure the tools are accurately represented in our toolkit.

If you have a tool that fits into either the Cybersecurity Toolkit for Small Business or the Cybersecurity Toolkit for Elections, please review our process and application guidelines. If you have any questions about the GCA toolkits, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].