The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Thursday released a 13-page plan offering states and local election offices federal help protecting election systems from cyberattacks, weeks before voters choose control of Congress in the 2026 midterms. The plan, called “Securing the Next 250,” marks CISA’s first publicly announced election-security effort since President Donald Trump returned to office. It offers election officials and other infrastructure stakeholders free on-site penetration testing, vulnerability scans and exercises designed to help them practice responding to cyber incidents. The services are intended for state and local election offices, operators of voter-registration systems, facilities that store ballots and election equipment, and polling places. Penetration tests simulate attacks on websites or other critical systems to identify weaknesses; vulnerability scans look for software flaws in networks and devices. CISA has provided such assistance in the past, but the Department of Homeland Security largely suspended the work early in 2025 while reviewing the agency’s election-security activities. Federal staffing focused on election protection has also been significantly reduced. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the plan would be fully implemented and was important to protecting the integrity and fairness of elections. The plan says CISA aims to help voters trust voting systems and have confidence in safety measures at polling locations, describing election security as a national-security concern. The agency did not immediately explain why the plan was announced now or whether it followed the department’s review. CISA’s acting director, Nick Andersen, previewed the effort to reporters the previous week, saying election protection is part of the agency’s broader work securing critical U.S. networks. Mullin had announced in July that CISA would issue an updated plan for election infrastructure. It remains uncertain how widely state and local officials will use the new services. Some election administrators have said last year’s federal rollbacks left them increasingly responsible for protecting election systems on their own. They have also raised concerns about other federal actions, including FBI searches of state election offices and Justice Department demands for voter rolls. The midterms will determine which party controls Congress for the remainder of Trump’s term and may offer an indication of security challenges ahead of the 2028 presidential election. The administration has also continued to question election processes, including mail voting, and Trump has made claims of foreign interference in past elections that documents released by the White House did not appear to substantiate.