Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing.
There is no cyberwar, Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.
I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept, Schmidt said. There are no winners in that environment.
Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage.
His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar and was losing it.
Schmidt's official title is cyber-security coordinator at the White House, a job he took over just before Christmas. Schmidt has no budgetary authority, but he said that doesn't make him powerless, because his office is in the White House. Hes been there before as an adviser to President George W. Bush, and hes been the president and board member of countless security associations.
One of his first moves in his new job was to publish an unclassified summary of the country's 12-point cybersecurity plan, known as the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a move toward transparency that he announced Monday as the keynote speaker at the worlds premier security conference.
That plan was first formulated under a veil of secrecy in January 2008 by President Bush. He was prompted in no small part by McConnell, who was director of national intelligence and reportedly convinced the president that a cyberattack could cause more economic damage to the United States than the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
There is no cyberwar, Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.
I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept, Schmidt said. There are no winners in that environment.
Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage.
His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar and was losing it.
Schmidt's official title is cyber-security coordinator at the White House, a job he took over just before Christmas. Schmidt has no budgetary authority, but he said that doesn't make him powerless, because his office is in the White House. Hes been there before as an adviser to President George W. Bush, and hes been the president and board member of countless security associations.
One of his first moves in his new job was to publish an unclassified summary of the country's 12-point cybersecurity plan, known as the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a move toward transparency that he announced Monday as the keynote speaker at the worlds premier security conference.
That plan was first formulated under a veil of secrecy in January 2008 by President Bush. He was prompted in no small part by McConnell, who was director of national intelligence and reportedly convinced the president that a cyberattack could cause more economic damage to the United States than the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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