4. The Presidential Election

While the 2016 presidential election touched many areas inside and outside technology, cybersecurity took a seat front and center, both in the debates and public discussion. Fears over hacking of the voting systems themselves also arose. The discussion brought cybersecurity once again to the forefront of the collective consciousness, with both candidates rolling out cybersecurity-specific platforms that addressed their policies on nation state attackers, cyberwarfare, privacy, and more. Those issues came to a head after hackers stole thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee and published the contents on WikiLeaks. Election machine hacking concerns, while ultimately unfounded, were also an important discussion point, with multiple security vendors proving its possibility and lots of speculation on if a state-sponsored attack would take down the election process.