Obama draws up cybersecurity tsar shortlist

 

Gallery

By Reuters

Posted on 12 Jun 2009 at 09:02

Barack Obama has drawn up his shortlist of leading candidates to become the US's cybersecurity czar.

President Barack Obama promised last month that he would personally decide who would lead the fight against cybercrime and organise a response to any major cyber attack.

A leading candidate for the post is Scott Charney, head of Microsoft's cybersecurity division. Charney also led PricewaterhouseCoopers' cybercrime unit and headed the Justice Department's computer crime section.

His main competitor is thought to be Paul Kurtz, who led Obama's cybersecurity transition team and who worked on the National Security Council under both Bush and Clinton.

The exact responsibilities of the new job remain largely undefined, although the position has been described as a coordinator who reports to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.

Holes in US cybersecurity defenses have allowed thefts of identity, money, intellectual property and corporate secrets. In one incident, a bank lost $10 million in cash in a day. There have also been thefts of sensitive military information and a penetration of the US electrical grid.

Experts have urged the President to widen the net beyond industry: "Some guy from industry is going to write a national security strategy? No, they aren't. You don't just pick this up," says James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "You need somebody who knows the national security game, who knows government and who knows about the technology."