Rob Joyce, White House cybersecurity coordinator, has said U.S. companies could fall victim to intellectual property theft when revealing their source code to foreign governments in order to do business in other countries, FCW reported Tuesday.
Joyce said at the Washington Post’s Cybersecurity Summit that the security aspects of source code disclosures are “problematic” but he is more concerned about IP theft by U.S. companies’ foreign competitors.
The cybersecurity chief made the comments in response to a Reuters report that says Hewlett Packard Enterprise let a Russian defense agency see the code of the ArcSight cyber defense software that works to secure the Pentagon’s computer networks.
HPE said that for years the source code reviews have been conducted by a Russian testing company at the former’s research and development center outside of Russia, where HPE personnel oversee the process and do not allow code to be taken out of the facility, Reuters reported Wednesday.
HPE added that the code inspection is required to obtain authorization to sell software in Russia from the country’s defense agency in charge of countering cyber espionage, Reuters noted.
