Nimit Sawhney scrolled through the tweet stream on his phone, unsure of what to make of it on August 6, 2018 or how to respond. Voatz, the Boston-based startup he co-founded and led, provided a mobile-voting platform. In March of 2018, had successfully piloted the new technology to enable U.S. servicemembers stationed abroad to vote securely in West Virginia’s primary election. Two West Virginia counties had participated in the first test. Thirteen people voted from their mobile phones, a much more convenient alternative than the other options available to service members abroad. The very first West Virginia voter to use the app called it “slick.” Two dozen West Virginia counties were preparing to make mobile-voting via Voatz an option for their citizens living abroad in the general elections slated for November. But the August tweets threw this plan into question. Kevin Beaumont tweeting as @GossiTheDog retweeted a CNN article about Voatz and the upcoming November election with his own commentary: “This is going to backfire.” He accused Voatz of operating with out-of-date security for remote logins. It would get worse from there. And Sawhney’s task was to figure out how to make it better.
Keywords: mobile app; cybersecurity; Business Startups; Voting; Mobile Technology; Safety;
Citation:
Weiss, Mitchell, and Maddy Halyard. "Voatz." Harvard Business School Case 819-123, April 2019. (Revised June 2019.) View Details
