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Cyber Coordinator Says Intel Agencies Will Keep Businesses in Loop about Cyber Threats

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White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt, Photo: Business Wire

The White House’s cybersecurity coordinator said the administration will provide universities and private companies with information about cyber threats from the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

“I think we all recognize that the government has unique access to information,” said White House cyber guru Howard Schmidt at a Washington conference, Nextgov reports. “We need to continue to look for ways to share that information but also give our universities and our businesses information to be able to protect themselves.”

In today’s cyber threat climate, often private companies, such as Google, which was allegedly hacked by China in late 2009, are the bearing the brunt of cyber attacks.

Schmidt also provided more information about the latest cyber initiative he has championed along with Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke: the push for reliable online identities and a secure online infrastructure to facilitate e-commerce.

After publicly laying out the progress on the plan at a Stanford University forum last week, Schmidt said the government will soon release a more detailed, concise plan.

Schmidt and Locke have brushed off critics’ complaints that the secure ID initiatives would amount to a national ID system.

“Let’s be clear: We are not talking about a national ID card,” Locke said at the forum last week. “What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.”

Schmidt echoed that defense yesterday, saying people should stop reading between the lines of the proposal to find some nefarious plot and instead wait until the “real lines come out,” and read those, according to Nextgov.

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