“President Barack Obama is set to sign an executive order on Friday aimed at encouraging companies to share more information about cybersecurity threats with the government and each other,” Joseph Menn and Roberta Rampton report for Reuters. “The order sets the stage for new private-sector led ‘information sharing and analysis organizations’ (ISAOs) – hubs where companies share cyber threat data with each other and with the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Obama will sign the order at a day-long conference on cybersecurity at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley,” Menn and Rampton report. “The move comes as big Silicon Valley companies prove hesitant to fully support more mandated cybersecurity information sharing without reforms to government surveillance practices exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.”
“Obama has proposed legislation to require more information-sharing and limit any legal liability for companies that share too much. Only Congress can provide the liability protection through legislation,” Menn and Rampton report. “Businesses are unlikely to share a lot of timely and ‘actionable’ cyber intelligence without liability relief, said Mike Brown, a vice president with the RSA security division of EMC Corp. ‘Until that gets resolved, probably through legislation, I’m not sure how effective continued information-sharing will be,’ said Brown, a retired Naval officer and former cyber official with the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Senator Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security committee, introduced a bill this week that incorporates much of Obama’s plan. But Republicans control Congress, and they have yet to sign on to the idea,” Menn and Rampton report. “Getting a bill through Congress will require at least the support of big Silicon Valley companies such as Google Inc and Facebook Inc. Those companies, however, have refused to give full support to cybersecurity bills without some reform of surveillance practices exposed by Snowden that have hurt U.S. technology companies’ efforts to win business in other countries. Google, Facebook and Yahoo are not sending their chief executives to the Stanford conference because of the rift, according to an executive at a major technology company. Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook will give an address.”
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