Obama calls on Silicon Valley, Congress to do more on Cybersecurity

President Barack Obama will address business leaders in California’s Silicon Valley on Friday, urging tech companies to cooperate with the government in order to thwart cyberattacks that have bedeviled private and public institutions in recent months.

While a growing cadre of information security experts have for years grappled with cybersecurity as online communications boomed, their concerns have seemingly not led to an effective combined efforts between government and the technology sector to counter hacks.

But with record public and private sector data breaches last year — the Identity Theft Resource Center found that 85 million records were exposed — the discussion has moved from Silicon Valley to Washington.

Obama will join in a White House summit at Stanford University on cybersecurity and consumer protection, joining hundreds of administration officials, CEOs, law enforcement officials and consumer and privacy advocates.

The focus is on encouraging every player to do better at sharing information that can help the private sector prevent and respond to costly and potentially crippling threats to the security of their online networks.

The Obama administration wants Congress to supersede an existing patchwork of state laws by setting a national standard for when companies must notify consumers that their personal information has been compromised. Obama intends to sign an executive order Friday to encourage members of the private sector to share information about threats to cybersecurity with each other and with the federal government, but he also wants Congress to pass legislation.

"What we as an industry, spanning across public and private sector security teams, need to improve on is breaking down the silos of 'how' and 'to whom' threat data and threat intelligence is being shared," said Barmak Meftah, president of the San Mateo, California, cybersecurity startup AlienVault.

Action on cybersecurity faces political hurdles, with a Republican-led congress wary of government regulation. "I think a lot of companies are still uneasy about jumping into the debate now," said Michael Gottlieb, a former associate White House counsel for Obama.

On the flip side, privacy and consumer rights advocates want to make sure that companies are held accountable for data breaches that could have been averted, Gottlieb noted.

Jeff Zients, a top economic adviser to Obama, said a goal of the summit is to drive home the message that strong cybersecurity can provide companies with a competitive edge. "Cybersecurity is not a problem for just one or two sectors of the economy," he told reporters. "All industry sectors and types of businesses face cybersecurity risks."

Companies ranging from mass retailers like Target and Home Depot to Sony Pictures Entertainment to health insurer Anthem, have suffered costly and embarrassing data breaches in recent months. The Twitter feed of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the volatile Middle East, was hacked recently, while the White House reported detecting "activity of concern" last October on the unclassified computer network used by White House staffers.

Wire services