Experts have warned for years that state and local election equipment and security practices were dangerously out of date, but state and local election agencies short of cash have often lagged in updating their systems. The 2016 election, however, laid bare the seriousness of the threat.

Federal officials have said they are confident that November’s election results were not tampered with. But federal intelligence and security officials were so shaken by Russian attempts to compromise the vote that the Department of Homeland Security designated election systems a critical national infrastructure, like banking and the electrical grid, that merit special protection.

The scope of the threat was underscored on Tuesday when a new report concluded not only that widely used voting systems can be breached by hackers — sometimes with almost trivial ease — but that they contain components manufactured in nations like China with a clear interest in undermining American democracy.

“It’s really important not to overstate the risk. There are lots of things that can be done to make sure machines are as secure as possible,” Lawrence Norden, the deputy director of the Democracy Project at the Brennan Center for Justice of the New York University School of Law. “But when you’re dealing with a nation-state, you have to assume that at some point they’re going to be successful in their efforts to breach things. The question then becomes resiliency and the ability to show people that you can fix things even if there is a breach.”

State officials, who zealously guard their control of elections, have greeted federal efforts to address voting security with wariness. But that, too, has changed. State election directors who were blindsided and angered by the Homeland Security department’s critical infrastructure designation will meet with department officials in Atlanta this month to discuss how they can share information about threats. The department also is working to give state election officials security clearances so they can view classified assessments of dangers to the election system.

The new guidelines for manufacturers of voting equipment — reduced to five pages from more than 200 — include for the first time principles as basic as a requirement that voting devices produce written records that can be verified, and that software or hardware errors cannot lead to undetectable changes in tallies. They are expected to spur the development of a new generation of cheaper and more secure equipment, said Matthew Masterson, the chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission.

He said the shared guidelines would allow for the deployment of election software on products like tablets and iPads, which could be ready as soon as the 2020 election, rather than force 50 states to put together their own systems. “It’s going to drive innovation, hopefully save money for election officials, and allow us to test and certify equipment more efficiently,’’ Mr. Masterson said.