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A new push by President Obama to tighten cybersecurity at banks and other businesses could help light a fire under some firms that have historically been slower to react in the wake of a data breach and help financial institutions dealing with a tangle of confusing state laws.
January 12 -
An executive order signed by President Obama on Friday that mandated the adoption of chip-and-PIN technology in government cards and enabled its use in facilities like post offices smacks of politics over substance, analysts said.
October 17 -
In a new detailed report, the Federal Reserve laid out four options for upgrading the creaky U.S. payment system. The study raised questions about how far the Fed can, and should, go to bring about change.
January 26
WASHINGTON The Obama administration is creating a new cybersecurity agency to stop increasing threats of cyberattacks.
Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, previewed the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center at the Wilson Center here on Tuesday and said it will focus on providing analysis and facilitating information sharing.
Monaco compared the latest move to combat cyber-threats to counterterrorism measures.
"There are structural, organizational and cultural shifts in the counterterrorism realm that also apply to cyber," Monaco said. "We need to develop the same muscle memory to cyber as we have to terrorist events."
Monaco said the new cyber agency will not collect information, but will rely on outside sources that already exist and stressed the importance of information sharing between the public and private sector.
"To truly safeguard consumers online and enhance the security of what has become a vast cyber ecosystem we are going to have to work in lockstep with the private sector," Monaco said. "We want this flow of information to go both ways," she said.
Monaco also said the administration is looking into a more secure payment system.
"What are the new and next generation of payment systems ... that move us pass the password until we get to an inherently more secure payment system," Monaco said, mentioning that new technologies such as multifactor authentication and biometrics could fill those gaps.
Monaco also called on Congress to pass cybersecurity legislation.
"Executive action alone will not be enough," she said.
President Obama will attend a cybersecurity summit on Friday in Stanford, California, where he will provide more details on the latest push to bolster cybersecurity controls, which are at the top of the administration's 2015 agenda.
