Synack launches a pro bono Secure the Election initiative

Other cybersecurity companies have been in touch with states about offering free, or reduced price, services to help secure elections. Techcrunch says that in late 2017, Cloudflare announced that it would extend it DDoS protection for free to states for their voter databases, voter registration sites, and election result sites through what it calls the Athenian Project. In April, enterprise security firm Centrify offered states its services at a discount in a similar Secure the Vote program.

Here is Kaplan’s letter:

To our Secretaries of State,

Based on our conversations with many of you and Department of Homeland Security, we know that you are under pressure to secure your election systems before November. We have been following your tremendous cyber efforts already underway, and we, along with our crowd of American security researchers, want to help. Today, Synack, the leader in crowdsourced security testing, is launching the bipartisan Secure the Election initiative to offer pro bono crowdsourced security testing services to any state that wants to harden their voter registration systems against attack between now and the midterms.

I began my career as a government-sponsored hacker at the NSA. I saw firsthand how incredibly vulnerable our world is today. I also saw what a group of highly talented, motivated people, enabled with technology, could achieve. I started Synack to build the most trusted, secure crowdsourced hacker platform. We help organizations ranging from the Department of Defense to the largest banks to Domino’s Pizza to find and fix vulnerabilities before the adversary can exploit them. We do this by harnessing a crowd of skilled, vetted security researchers that are motivated to serve their country and enabling them with proprietary technology.

The Secure the Election initiative is a bipartisan effort to provide security by America for America. We know that security resources are limited. The majority of states have under 15 FTEs on their enterprise security teams, and <7 percent of states are able to conduct third party penetration testing more than annually. States aren’t the only ones that face this challenge – worldwide, we are expected to witness a 3.5 million person cyber talent shortage by 2021 (according to Cybersecurity Ventures). Governments and enterprises alike simply don’t have the scale necessary to rigorously test their full attack surface.

Staying one step ahead of the adversary is critical to success. Our pro bono services look for vulnerabilities in remotely-accessible voter registration databases and online voter registration websites from a hacker’s perspective. Using our secure platform, we can quickly and seamlessly discover vulnerabilities left undetected by other solutions and help your teams remediate them before the election and before exploitation by the adversary. Here is an overview of our pro bono offering with more information on how our platform can seamlessly integrate into your current operations and provide you with complete control over all testing activity.

The best security is rooted in a united effort. America’s best security talent is ready to help. Join us in taking action.

Jay Kaplan
CEO & Co-Founder, Synack