In our discussions with federal employees working under smartphone bans at the Pentagon and other high-value buildings, there’s a common theme that emerges: frustration.

The mobile security of political candidates and their staff gets lost in the shuffle when discussing threats to our elections. However, a series of trends point to mobile espionage becoming the next major vehicle for electoral interference. These trends include:

• The smartphone’s rising importance in conducting the day-to-day business of a political campaign
• The increasing use of intrusive smartphone surveillance tools to target political officials
• A growing appetite by malicious outsiders to interfere in elections by any means necessary

In this mobile security blog post, I’ll discuss the reasons why smartphones may be the next electoral hacking target and the potential consequences of such a shift.

Privoro recently attended the GSF Modern Warfare conference at Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne (I highly recommend researching the history of this division if you’re unfamiliar). Although our trip to Fort Bragg was a first, what wasn’t new at all is the problem smartphones are causing government employees across the military, intel agencies and Capitol Hill.

Pentagon’s smartphone policy costs taxpayers an estimated $2 million per day

On May 22, Pentagon leadership banned smartphones from all secure spaces – effectively every office and meeting room in the largest single office building in the world. The ban even includes government-issued phones given to high-priority personnel and negatively impacts over 26,000 Department of Defense military, civilian and contractor employees.

You can now add Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) to the growing list of government officials and entities urging national security advisors to provide a higher level of security for government smartphones.