Choosing an online voting system provider is a consequential decision. In most cases, that responsibility will fall to one person or a small group balancing election planning with many other responsibilities. They may know security is important, but it is not always obvious how to evaluate the security practices behind an online voting provider’s claims.
You can make better decisions by looking for credible proxies and asking a small number of revealing questions. These signals can tell you a great deal about how seriously an online voting provider approaches security and how much evidence sits behind its claims.
Security is only one part of choosing an online voting system provider. We have a separate guide to choosing an online voting provider that looks at the broader decision, including election requirements, administration, support, and reporting. Here, we are going deeper on security.
Look for Independent Security Assurance
If you do only one thing to evaluate an online voting provider’s security, start by looking for credible independent security assurance.
You aren’t in a position to evaluate every part of an online voting provider’s security program yourself, and that is okay. Independent third-party scrutiny gives you another source of evidence. A security-conscious online voting provider should already be engaging qualified third parties to examine important parts of its practices and technology. As a buyer, you can use that work instead of relying only on the company’s own claims.
Independent security reviews can take different forms. Specialized auditors may examine whether a company has appropriate security controls and processes in place, such as how access is managed, risks are assessed, incidents are handled, or business continuity is planned. Other security specialists focus more directly on the technology, such as examining source code for potential weaknesses or actively testing a system to see whether vulnerabilities can be found and exploited.
These reviews answer different questions, so it is useful to understand what was actually examined. The organization behind the review matters too. Look for an established auditor or security firm with a meaningful track record, ideally one that regularly performs similar work for other established organizations.
Simply Voting recently completed its 2026 SOC 2 examination with A-LIGN, an established cybersecurity compliance firm that reports having completed more than 36,000 audits for more than 6,400 clients globally. Simply Voting’s examination covered controls relevant to Security, Availability, and Confidentiality for its Online Voting and Internet Elections Services System.
Look at How the Online Voting Provider Approaches Security
Much of what you initially learn about an online voting provider will come from its website, proposals, and conversations with its team. Independent assurance is valuable because it can corroborate parts of that story rather than leaving every security claim self-reported.
It is also useful to understand who within the online voting provider is responsible for security and what resources support that work. Does the company maintain an in-house technical team that understands, maintains, and secures the platform, or are core technical responsibilities primarily outsourced? Outside specialists can provide valuable expertise, particularly for independent testing and other specialized security work, but the online voting provider itself should have clear ownership of its security and the technical capability to respond when something needs attention.
A mature security program involves much more than the technology itself. Staff security training, access management, risk assessment, vendor oversight, monitoring, vulnerability management, incident planning, and business continuity can all play a role.
A SOC 2 report can be particularly valuable here because it provides independent insight into many of these underlying practices. Simply Voting’s 2026 report, for example, covers controls across risk assessment, staff security training, access management, vendor oversight, monitoring, vulnerability management, business continuity, and other areas.
Price and company size are poor substitutes for evidence of how security is actually managed. A more useful baseline is understanding who owns security, what people and processes support that work, and what independent evidence supports the company’s description of its security program.
Security Starts Before Problems Are Found
Look for depth and multiple layers of prevention, review, and testing. No single test or security practice can identify every possible weakness. Using different approaches gives an online voting provider more opportunities to prevent problems and find those that do occur.
It starts with how the software itself is developed and maintained. Changes to an online voting system should be reviewed and tested before they reach customers, and the software and supporting systems need to be maintained as technology and security threats evolve.
Simply Voting follows a documented software development life cycle (SDLC) in which software changes are peer reviewed and tested before they reach production, with those change-management controls included in its 2026 SOC 2 examination.
Security testing can then examine the system from different perspectives.
Source-code scanning looks within the software itself for programming patterns or mistakes that could create security weaknesses. You can think of it as examining the application from the inside.
Vulnerability scanning checks the systems and software being used for known security weaknesses. Because new vulnerabilities are continually discovered in widely used technologies, this type of scanning can be performed frequently.
Independent penetration testing approaches security from another direction. Security specialists actively test the system and attempt to find and exploit weaknesses much as an attacker might. This can uncover issues that may not be apparent through development processes or automated scanning alone.
Simply Voting also conducts annual independent penetration testing, daily vulnerability scanning, and regular source-code scanning.
A vigilant security program also welcomes legitimate opportunities to find issues that those layers of testing may have missed. Outside security researchers can provide another valuable source of scrutiny, and a vulnerability disclosure program gives them a clear way to report a potential weakness so it can be investigated and addressed. Simply Voting maintains a formal vulnerability disclosure program because ongoing vigilance is important.
Ask how the online voting provider works to prevent security weaknesses, what different methods it uses to find them, and what happens when one is identified.
Understand How Voter and Election Data Is Handled
Look for a clear explanation of how customer information is handled from beginning to end. An online voting provider should be able to explain that lifecycle in terms you can understand.
An online election will require voter personally identifiable information (PII), participation data, election results, and other customer information. Where is it stored? Who can access it? How is access controlled? How is information protected while it is transmitted and stored? How long is it retained? What happens when it is no longer needed?
Election-specific protections matter as well. Voter authentication needs to support the requirements of the election, while ballot secrecy and confidentiality need to be maintained where required. Administrative access should also be controlled so that only authorized people can manage sensitive election information or settings.
It is also reasonable to ask which other companies are involved in storing, processing, backing up, or transmitting your information. An online voting provider may rely on hosting companies, backup services, communications providers, or other vendors. Part of managing security is knowing those dependencies, limiting access appropriately, and assessing the risks that come with them.
At minimum, you should be able to get clear answers about what customer information the online voting provider holds, who can access it, how it is protected, where else it may go, how long it is retained, and what happens when it is no longer required.
Security Includes Reliability and Availability
Look at how the online voting provider tests capacity, builds in resilience, and prepares for failures. Voters need to be able to cast their ballots, and customer administrators need to be able to access and manage their elections when the system is needed.
Online voting platforms support hundreds of elections at the same time. Load testing needs to consider demand across the platform as a whole, not just any one election.
Load testing places very heavy simulated demand on the platform to see how the online voting system performs under pressure and to help determine how much capacity should be available. Simply Voting regularly performs load testing to make sure the platform has far more capacity than it would normally require across all active customers, leaving ample room for spikes in usage.
Reliability also depends on the infrastructure underneath the application and what happens when something fails. Simply Voting uses established infrastructure providers, including Hut 8 for production hosting and AWS for offsite backups. This is supported by Simply Voting’s own monitoring, redundancy, backup practices, and tested business continuity and disaster recovery planning.
A useful check is how the online voting provider tests overall system capacity, what resilience exists in its underlying infrastructure, and how regularly its continuity and recovery plans are tested.
5 Security Questions to Ask an Online Voting System Provider
A detailed technical security review is not realistic for every organization, but a small number of practical questions can still reveal a great deal about the security practices behind an online voting system:
- What independent security audits or assessments do you undergo, who performs them, and what do they cover?
- Who is responsible for security, and what technical team and resources support that work?
- What ongoing practices do you use to prevent, identify, and address security weaknesses?
- How is customer, voter, and election data protected, who can access it, where else may it go, and how long is it retained?
- How do you test the online voting system for heavy demand, prepare for failures, and verify that the service can remain available or recover as planned?
Any online voting provider worth your business should be able to answer these questions and back up its claims with evidence.
Making a More Informed Security Decision
There is no single audit, test, feature, or policy that tells you everything you need to know about the security of an online voting system provider. A sound evaluation comes from asking good questions, looking for credible evidence, and understanding what sits behind the word “secure.”
Simply Voting’s broader security approach includes its 2026 SOC 2 examination, staff security training, a documented software development life cycle, annual independent penetration testing, ongoing vulnerability testing, a vulnerability disclosure program, load testing, and tested business continuity and disaster recovery planning.
Evaluating an Online Voting System Provider? Simply Voting has been helping organizations run secure online elections since 2003, supported by an ongoing program of independent review, security testing, load testing, and continuity planning. Contact us today to discuss your upcoming election and the security requirements that matter to your organization.