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Government Analytics, Policy

US Cyber Czar frontrunners revealed

By Crystal Low | 28 May 2009

Melissa Hathaway, Rod Beckstrom and Paul Kurtz are the front runners in the race to be the US government’s first ‘Cyber Czar’. So tips Don Adams, the Palo Alto-based Chief Technology Officer, Worldwide, Public Sector for tech giant Tibco.

The Obama administration’s information security chief (a job title has yet to be confirmed) will be tasked to protect the nation’s government-run and private computer networks. He or she will report directly to the President, and possibly to the economic and national security departments.

Melissa Hathaway is the interim White House Cyber Security Adviser and a former intelligence official. Rod Beckstrom served as the former director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) at the US Department of Homeland Security. Paul Kurtz is the former Senior Director for National Security of the Office of Cyberspace Security in the White House’s National Security Council (NSC).

On what is expected of America’s Cyber Czar, Adams told FutureGov: “What are needed initially are clear processes, policies and a lot of coordination between all agencies and their political and technical leadership. This is going to be a long and protracted battle. Not just against the perpetrators of cyber threat, but internally in the back rooms over budgets, responsibilities and authority within and between departments and agencies.”

“This is clearly why the ‘Cyber Czar’ has to report to the President. Their task is going to be 95 per cent politics and 5 per cent technical leadership,” he added.

The US is the world’s most attacked country by hackers, phishers and malicious software, according to Symantec’s Government Internet Security Threat Report. The key motivating factor for attacks is to make money from the sale of stolen personal information data.

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