The vast majority (80%) of security professionals believe that government-mandated backdoors in tech products would put countries at risk of cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, and 74% believe they render states vulnerable to nation-state attacks.
These views contrast with United States Attorney General William Barr’s recent claims that increased encryption of data on devices and applications is undermining national security and that tech firms can and must put backdoors in place that will allow officers to bypass encryption mechanisms on devices and applications in the context of law enforcement investigations. One of the US Justice Department’s main arguments for backdoors is that they would make it easier to prevent terror attacks, but 72% of infosec pros don’t believe they would reduce the terrorist threat at all and 70% think they would make countries less competitive.
Read more: IT Security Pros: Encryption Backdoors Are Election Hacking Risk
