Obamas security speech

The cyber security industry was mostly excited over President Obamas Friday speech.

The president recently revealed a five-part digital infrastructure protection scheme for the U.S. and announced before an audience of private and public sector leaders that a federal "cyber coordinator" will soon be appointed.

Most observers commended Obama's resolution to setup a White House cyber coordinator, which has been a subject of much debate and speculation in recent months.

Mandeep Khera, CMO for web application security firm Cenzic, released a statement commenting that the creation of that position "has been long overdue." She also expresses hopefulness over the devotion that the president has dedicated to cyber security.

Jeff Moss, founder of the Defcon and Black Hat hacker conferences

Confessed to SCMagazineUS.com on Friday that the speech was exciting all-in-all.

He further adds, "This is the most amount of activity we are seeing in this area."

He surmised that the cyber coordinator will probably be tasked with developing a plan of action that will involve both the private and public sector while still safeguarding civil liberties.

According to Randy Abrams, the director of technical education at the security firm ESET, the perfect candidate for the cyber coordinator position must have a solid technical and organizational background.

Meanwhile, Shannon Kellog, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Cyber Security for the Obama presidency and director of the information security policy at EMC, contends that a cyber coordinator should have effective communication skills and must work insistently with his counterparts at the federal government to augment information protection within agency systems and on significant infrastructure.

Numerous security experts also lauded the latest administrations release of its 60-day federal cyber security review that overlapped with Obamas cyber security speech.

Many praised the report, while others denigrated it for missing several key points.

Cisco CSO John Stewart believes that the administrations report is a result of the more concentrated and focused talks about the security of the countrys online infrastructure.

He released his encouraging statement after attending the White House press conference on Friday.

Nevertheless, Chris Schwartzbauer, among several others, remarked that there was still room for improvement in certain areas of the proposal.

The vice-president of sales and marketing at patch management provider Shavlik Technologies said that Obama was merely addressing the cyber threats facing the U.S. without focusing enough on the nature of these attacks.

“The more information we get about where threats are coming from will help us better defend against them,” Schwartzbauer elucidated.