President Obama will hold a cybersecurity and consumer protection summit tomorrow at Stanford University. Apple (AAPL) CEO, Tim Cook, will headline an all-star lineup of private sector executives set to give the president their take on technology, cybersecurity practices and improving payment technologies.
The summit comes after the White House announced the formation of a new intelligence agency Tuesday. The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center or CTIIC is a new agency designed to integrate and share vast amounts of intelligence among several Federal Cyber Centers.
The increasing prevalence and danger of cyber attacks like the ones that hit Sony Pictures (SNE), Anthem Insurance (ANTM), Home Depot (HD) and the U.S. Postal Office has made cybersecurity a pressing issue for corporations as well as the government. The Stanford Summit will seek to advance the conversation and build on efforts between the government and private sector to combat cyber threats and improve security.
Yahoo Finance senior technology reporter, Aaron Pressman says the government has been trying to figure out how to combat cyber attacks since Bill Clinton was in the White House. “Fifteen years ago it was the ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor’ we were worried about. I think the fears are still slightly exaggerated. The same initiatives that Obama has talked about are the same things talked about fifteen years ago.”
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In fact, Friday’s summit will be nearly fifteen years to the day that President Clinton invited several tech executives to the White House- February 15, 2000. “There’s a real element of a back to the future technology policy with Obama lately. I’m referring to Bill Clinton. He had it (summit) at the White House. He didn’t have the CEO of Apple. He had Microsoft (MSFT), eBay (EBAY) , and some other companies that were big in the year 2000. So this is an ongoing discussion and I think there is maybe more flash here than substance,” says Pressman.
Also, attending the event will be CEOs and high ranking representatives from: Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB), PayPal, Bank of America (BAC), American Express (AXP), Visa (V) and Walgreens (WBA) just to name a few. Pressman expects Obama to push these corporations for “more collaboration between government researchers and private researchers. More information sharing about attacks and means of attacks and vulnerabilities.”
In the fifteen years since Clinton’s cyber summit, technology and the sheer speed of information has advanced to create bigger threats and more people capable of carrying out attacks. “I think it’s more of an issue because more of our information is online and our whole society is more interconnected through the Internet. Its probably easier, sadly, to bring down the power grid or steal millions of people’s social security numbers than it was fifteen years ago. We are more at risk,” says Pressman.