30 July 2016

In matters of security, a little paranoia can be a useful thing

Local candidates should not assume that their campaigns are immune to the kind of hacks that currently bedevil the Democrats. Many Democratic legislative campaigns, for example, use Act Blue, which the New York Times reports was targeted by hackers, for online fundraising, and NGP VAN for managing their voter database and walking lists.

Thus, campaigns at all political levels are at some risk of losing their data, or having it corrupted.

The cloud, your computer, and your vendors’ computers, can be hacked. So too, I suppose, can be data stored on a CD locked in a safety deposit box at a bank, but it’s a lot harder to do. Online data can be hacked from Moscow, but data stored in a bank’s safety deposit box cannot.

My advice. In matters of security, a little paranoia can be a useful thing. Even if you think the probability of your campaign’s being hacked is perishingly small, export your data, both as plain text and application formatted files, and save the files on non-rewriteable CDs or DVDs. If your computer does not have an optical drive, CD/DVD burners are available at reasonable prices at Best Buy and similar vendors.