Following this week’s breach of several federal agencies, a new CNBC survey of technology executives found that most believe state-sponsored cyber warfare is the most dangerous threat to their company or organization. And while half (50%) of technology executives believe that state attacks pose the biggest threat, 32% of those surveyed also said that defining a national cybersecurity protocol should be the top priority for the incoming Biden administration and new Congress.
“Action by the incoming administration — national leadership across policy, strategy, diplomacy, and operations — in consultation with the private sector, must complement private sector actions, to protect the nation’s infrastructures, hard-earned economic advantages and personal privacy,” says Phil Quade, chief information security officer for Fortinet. Quade is a member of CNBC’s Technology Executive Council.
Quade has been outspoken about the need for a national cybersecurity coordinator within the incoming Biden administration. In a recent Op-ed, he wrote: “Our nation had a cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council during the Bush and Obama administrations — a post central to developing policy to defend against increasingly sophisticated digital attacks and the use of offensive cyber weapons. In 2018 that position was eliminated. At the time, national security adviser John R. Bolton said the post was no longer considered necessary because lower-level officials had already made cybersecurity issues a ‘core function’ of the president’s national security team. Now it’s time for President-elect Biden to fill that position again.”
