Skip to main content

Cybersecurity 301: Communications

Cybersecurity 301 focuses on communicating about your office's cybersecurity efforts so you can increase public trust in elections.

  • Course Number

    CS301
  • Self-Paced

About This Course

Updated version of this course coming later this year.

This is the third course in a 3-part series on cybersecurity best practices for election officials. In Cybersecurity 301, you'll learn about:

  • Making a cyber incident response plan
  • Informing the public about your office’s security leadership
  • Building media allies

Course Staff

Course Staff Image #1

Josh Simon Goldman

Josh Simon Goldman is Program Manager with the Center for Tech and Civic Life. He got his start working at a national civic nonprofit, helping young leaders of different backgrounds come together to serve their communities. These days Josh supports local election administrators who want to run the most inclusive and secure elections they can, applying years of civic and leadership training experience.

As an instructor, Josh focuses on offering you practical ideas that you can see yourself implementing to positively impact your office and your voters.

Course Staff Image #2

Joseph Lorenzo Hall

Joseph Lorenzo Hall is the former Chief Technologist and Director of the Internet Architecture project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, DC-based non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring the internet remains open, innovative and free. Hall’s work focuses on the intersection of technology, law, and policy, working to ensure that technical considerations are appropriately embedded into legal and policy instruments.

Course Staff Image #3

Keegan Hughes

Keegan Hughes is Senior Associate with the Center for Tech and Civic Life. She previously worked on the Elections Team at the Democracy Fund with a focus on modernizing voter registration, and she spent an election cycle campaigning with Let America Vote. Before her career in elections, Keegan was a digital humanist working at the intersection between programming and literature, including projects for Oxford and Cambridge. When not building the ELECTricity network, she can be found intending to write fiction, speaking semi-intelligently about varietal honey, and slowly reversing those self-taught coding bad habits.

Dylan Lynch

Dylan Lynch is the Elections Cybersecurity Education & Compliance Specialist for the Iowa Secretary of State's office. He was previously a Training Associate at the Center for Tech and Civic Life. He helped develop and deliver training courses that advance the tech and communication skills of election officials. Prior to joining CTCL, Dylan worked for the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) as an elections policy specialist. Dylan earned his Master of Public Administration, focusing on public policy, from Drake University.

Course Staff Image #5

Whitney May

Whitney May is Director of Government Services with the Center for Tech and Civic Life. She first caught the election bug in 2007 at the Durham County Board of Elections where she trained hundreds of poll workers. Later, working with a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., she refined her training skills to deliver engaging courses to government officials across the country.

As an instructor, Whitney wants to advance your tech skills while helping you grow your professional network of election officials.

Course Staff Image #6

Kurt Sampsel

Kurt Sampsel is Senior Program Manager for Disinformation and Community Engagement at PEN America. In this role, he supports community efforts to source and share information that’s trustworthy, nonpartisan, and actionable.

Before joining PEN, he was a senior program manager at Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), where he led work to affirm and recognize outstanding public service by local election officials across the country. In his eight years with CTCL, he also managed projects related to election websites, cybersecurity training (including this course), and helping election departments effectively inform voters and defend against disinformation. Kurt holds a Ph.D. in the field of Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University.

Course Staff Image #7

Maurice Turner

Maurice Turner is the former Senior Technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, DC-based non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring the internet remains open, innovative and free. Supporting work across all of CDT’s programmatic areas, Turner focused on the Election Security and Privacy Project identifying and updating election cybersecurity practices and infrastructure, and working through potential remedies.

Turner brings a unique mix of formal education and practical work experience in technology and local, regional, and national policymaking. Turner has been a technology enthusiast for over 30 years and is committed to leveraging new technologies to increase government effectiveness and community engagement.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I complete the course?

There are a few steps to complete a course. After you complete the content, the course will prompt you to:

  1. Complete a post-course survey
  2. Confirm that you have reviewed all course materials
  3. Request your course certificate

Please complete all of these steps, so that we can count your progress! We will describe each step in detail at the end of the course.

Do I receive a certificate for this course?

Yes! At the end of each course, there are instructions for completing the course and generating a certificate of completion.

What web browser should I use?

The Open edX platform works best with current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari.

Enroll