May 29, 2009 Cybersecurity a priority for Obama Play video

(NECN: Peter Howe, Cambridge, Mass.) America's first Blackberry-toting president has just finished a 60-day review of the nation's "cybersecurity" -- and he didn't like what he found.

"This cyber threat is one of most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation," President Obama said in a White House speech Friday. "It's also clear that we're not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country."

His solution: On top of his "car czar," medical, economic, and environmental czars and other White House chiefs -- as well as a national chief information officer and chief technology officer -- is a new cyber security czar. Saying the nation has "failed to invest" sufficiently in the security of our digital infrastructure, Mr. Obama complained that no single official overseees cyber-security across government, and no agency has the authority, scope and scale to match the threat. He promised that "from now on, our digital infrastructure" will be treated as a strategic national asset and national security policy.

Without being super-specific, the president also pledged he'll keep the country cyber-safe without snooping on innocent communications or dictating to big corporations how to run their data networks. "Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not include, I repeat, will not include monitoring private-sector networks or internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as

Joshua Shaul (pronounced shaw-OOL) of database protection company Application Security Inc. In Bedford, Mass., said the government has badly needed a better coordinated push to secure its own networks. "I think what's really missing is responsibility and accountability ... Under the Bush administration, after 9/11 they created a national cybersecurity initiative under the Department of Homeland Security. But it was so deep into the government, it was so many levels down, there just wasn't the kind of clout that was needed" to successfully address the problem. Shaul said what President Obama announced Friday probably doesn't go far enough in forcing private-sector companies, including those that provide the telecommunications and Internet connections government and private sector alike depend on, to improve their security.

Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Steve Kelman, who served in the first five years of the Clinton administration overseeing government procurement in the Office of Management and Budget and leading then-Vice President Al Gore's "reinventing government" campaign, says this wide-ranging job appears to be well-structured by Obama -- but won't be an easy one.

"What I think you want is sharing among the cyber security civil servants in the agencies of best practices and so forth. You want to inspire them to work hard and to really make this a good job,'' Kelman said. To the extent a White House-level appointee can offer that inspiration, he expects the cyber-czar can succeed. "I guess I'd rank technical knowledge and people skills as the two highest things with washington experience really helpful. A good candidate has to be technically sophisticated -- and actually not for a reason you may immediately think of, and that is to get the respect of the career civil servants."

Shaul said he agrees that whoever winds up with the position, "It's definitely going to take a mix of political skills, really good connections, and some decent technical chops."

However, some criticism of the move came Friday from Maine Senator Susan Collins. Collins said that "placing a strategy "czar" in the white house will hinder Congress's ability to effectively oversee federal cybersecurity activities and will do little to resolve the bureaucratic conflicts, turf battles, and confusing lines of authority that have undermined past cybersecurity efforts." Collins is the top Republican on the homeland security and governmental affairs committee.

In terms of who the new czar might be, there is already an acting cybersecurity director in the White House, Melissa Hathaway, who led the 60-day study that led to the recommendations Obama announced Friday. She's a former Booz Allen Hamilton consultant and intelligence-agency advisor who could get the job, but reports from Washington indicated the White House is also considering someone like an ex-governor or member of Congress with experience in the political piranha tanks of Washington, or a real techie from Silicon Valley, Route 128, or other high-tech hotbeds of the country. At the end of the day, the president's decision to name someone to this post is more evidence that in this day and age, even scarier than someone with a gun or a bomb can be someone with a computer and an Internet connection.

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Obama creating cyber czar to safeguard computers [NECN]