The Ministry of the Interior has launched this Wednesday the Coordination Network for Security of the elections of November 29 with the aim of "anticipating risks and sharing alerts" and thus being able to respond to any incident, from attacks on institutional web pages to disinformation campaigns, ensuring that citizens can exercise their right to vote "with full freedom, security, and confidence".
This Coordination Network for Security in electoral processes under the responsibility of the General State Administration was constituted in 2019, following initiatives promoted by the European Union to strengthen the protection and integrity of appointments at the ballot boxes.
As the Ministry of the Interior has pointed out in a statement, the joint work between the bodies integrated in the Network makes possible an agile response to incidents that affect institutional pages, disinformation operations, or threats directed against electoral systems.
"The strength of this network lies in connecting capabilities, sharing alerts, and agreeing on responses before an incident can affect the normal development of the electoral process, since no body can separately address risks that are increasingly interdependent," the Interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, emphasized after chairing the meeting.
Protocol and lines of action
The operating protocol of the Network is structured into four major interconnected lines: preserving the transparency and objectivity of the electoral process; safeguarding personal data against unauthorized access; ensuring the physical protection and cybersecurity of infrastructure and of the information systems and provisional results dissemination; and detecting and countering disinformation narratives "that can erode citizens' trust or hinder the exercise of a free and informed vote".
At the session held this Wednesday, which served to activate the Security Network ahead of 29N, the top officials of all the directorate centers dependent on the State Secretariat for Security and the Undersecretariat of the Ministry of the Interior were present, with competencies in this area.
Likewise, representatives of the Department of National Security and the State Secretariat for Communication of the Presidency of the Government have participated; of the Ministry of Defense —through the National Intelligence Center, the National Cryptologic Center and the Joint Command of Cyberspace—, as well as of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function, through the State Agency for Digital Administration and the National Institute of Cybersecurity.
Other bodies and institutions complete the Network such as the Central Electoral Board, the National Statistics Institute, the National Commission of the Markets and Competition, the Spanish Data Protection Agency and the state-owned company Correos y Telégrafos.