The briefing came on the same day that feds were scheduled to hold a classified threat rundown with state and local election officials.

The blueprint: Federal officials are already in a "24/7" mindset 69 days out from the election, the CISA official said. They're now adjusting their focus toward threat awareness and information sharing, the official said, and away from plans and services to harden election infrastructure.

That longer-term assistance has included measures like distributing devices known as Albert intrusion detection sensors to state and local governments, which have given feds a much better understanding of what kinds of threats elections face compared to 2016, the official said.

When the 45-day mark arrives, they will enter an "enhanced readiness posture" that features more regular information sharing and engagement with state and local administrators, the official said.

Then, the week before the election, steps like opening a virtual situational awareness room will allow more real-time information sharing, the official said.

Where we stand: Feds still aren't seeing any uptick in specific targeting of election infrastructure, the CISA official said, although they're aware it's "in the playbook" of foreign nations and that feds need to be on the lookout. Their concerns also include generalized cyber threats like ransomware attacks that can hit a county government and spill over into election systems.

On cyber hygiene, state and local officials have demonstrated big improvements in areas like multi-factor authentication and password management, but need further improvement on patching, auditing and more, the official said.

What else is uncertain: Left unmentioned and unquestioned in the call were preparations to defend political campaigns, and the president's own role in denigrating the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

The Senate Intelligence Committee recently recommended that campaigns urge their staff to notify the FBI of foreign influence attempts, but they are not legally obligated to do so — and in 2016, people in Donald Trump's campaign failed to report contacts from people who said Russia could offer damaging material on Hillary Clinton. By the same token, the agencies have no authority to command election administrators to take additional safeguards.

And some cyber experts have said that Trump's efforts to undermine trust in the outcome of the 2020 election, particularly with his frequent attacks on mail-in voting, have exceeded any efforts from foreign influence campaigns.

Officials on the call said they had seen no evidence of coordinated mail election fraud, and that meaningfully affecting the November outcome by tampering with mail-in voting would be difficult to achieve. That mirrored the perspective of election security experts.