Former White House cyber guru Melissa Hathaway, who most recently called on Congress to take action on key cybersecurity initiatives, spoke before the American National Standards Institute about continuing cyber developments.
Hathaway, who is the president of Hathaway Global Strategies and is also a senior adviser at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, once again reiterated the devastating financial impact cyber attacks can have.
When Hathaway led President Barack Obama’s 60-Day Cybersecurity Policy Review in 2009, the ensuing report found American business lost more than $1 trillion in intellectual property between 2008 and 2009.
In her speech for ANSI, Hathaway quoted Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke who once noted that, while e-commerce has become a multitrillion industry, it is hindered by the lack of standardized procedures and best practices.
Hathaway also stressed the importance of effective public-private partnerships to develop secure digital infrastructure, echoing comments she made in an interview with cyber news and analysis website The New New Internet.
“I think that we have too many private-public partnerships that are not effective because the government is not focused in their efforts,†Hathaway said in the TNNI interview.
In her ANSI speech, Hathaway said she envisioned effective partnerships between the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission for working on cybersecurity together.
