Obama Cyber Intelligence Center Becomes Official

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday formally signed off on the creation of a national intelligence center to share information about cyber threats.

The White House released a memo calling on the Director of National Intelligence and other agency heads to get the center up and running by the end of fiscal year 2016.

"In creating the" Cyber Threat Intelligence Center, "the Administration is applying some of the hard-won lessons from our counterterrorism efforts to augment that ‘whole-of-government’ approach by providing policymakers with a cross-agency view foreign cyber threats, their severity, and potential attribution," a White House fact sheet said.

President Obama previewed the center in a speech earlier this month at a cybersecurity summit at Stanford University. The new center will aim to equip policymakers and government security groups with information about cyber threats, but will not participate in any response efforts dealing with cyber attacks.

According to the fact sheet, no final decision has been made about the center’s location, "but the current plan is to locate the CTIIC in the Washington metro area in an existing Intelligence Community facility.

"The DNI is in the process of developing the CTIIC’s organizational structure; we expect that it will be small, consisting of approximately 50 government personnel drawn from relevant departments and agencies," the fact sheet said.

The fact sheet said the CTIIC will function within already existing policies and laws "and in a manner that protects privacy and civil liberties."

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