Up until now, New York's voting systems have mostly managed to avoid any serious cyberattack. But following Russia's attempted hacking of last year's presidential election, local officials are preparing for the worst. NY1 Political Reporter Bobby Cuza filed the following report.

The city's voting machines are relatively safe from cyberattacks. Each is a stand-alone device, with no internet connectivity, and votes are tallied using memory cards from each individual machine, with paper ballots as a backup.

But there's more than one way to disrupt an election, and the next attack may well be one election officials don't see coming.

"The tech people tell me that they're like generals in some respects, always fighting yesterday's war, and sometimes there can be a surprise," NYC Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan said.

Last year, Russian agents targeted voting systems in 21 states. New York was not one of them.

In fact, state election officials told State Assembly members Tuesday that New York's systems are among the country's most secure.

But they are not immune. In September, an attack disrupted an election in upstate Schuyler County, while also knocking out 911 and other government systems.

"We don't know what the attack was geared towards," State Board of Elections Co-Executive Director Todd Valentine told State Assembly members. "That's something that the FBI's still analyzing."

Officials also told the oversight panel that hackers are constantly probing for vulnerabilities, a process known as scanning.

"Scanning occurs constantly," William Cross of the State Board of Elections said at the State Assembly meeting. "If there's a door to the internet, it's being knocked on daily."

Officials say continued attacks are inevitable. One likely target is voter registration rolls. Hackers could also simply spread misinformation, or, if they couldn't actually tamper with results, hackers could spoof or even hijack the Board of Elections's website to show fake results.

The resulting chaos could do enormous damage, officials said, even with backup systems in place.

"We're worried about undermining any confidence," Valentine said. "We don't want to go the backup. We want to stop it before anybody gets there."

This year's city elections, including the mayoral election, generally came off without a hitch. Now, election officials turn their focus to next year, where there will be an election for governor and every other state legislative office.