President Obama has made cybersecurity a national security and economic priority of his administration. A panel of cybersecurity policy experts says the administration's top IT security achievement is the February 2013 issuance of Executive Order 13636, which aims to improve critical infrastructure cybersecurity and resilience (see Obama Issues Cybersecurity Executive Order).

The executive order consists of two major parts: Establishing a process to share cyberthreat information with the private sector and directing the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create a cybersecurity framework to safeguard critical infrastructure's IT assets.

In this special edition of the ISMG Security Report (click on player beneath image to listen), you'll hear the panel of experts debate the effectiveness of the executive order, especially the NIST cybersecurity framework. The panelists voiced varying positions on whether the government should test the framework to determine the value it provides, especially to small businesses.

Cybersecurity Though-Leaders

The panelists include:

Steven Chabinsky, general counsel and chief risk officer at CrowdStrike, which provides incident response and threat analysis services. He formerly served as FBI deputy assistant director for cyber. Obama recently named Chabinsky to the President's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity (see Cybersecurity Commission Includes Former Heads of NSA, NIST). Larry Clinton, president and CEO of the trade association the Internet Security Alliance. Karen Evans, national director of the U.S. Cyber Challenge, who served in the George W. Bush White House in the post now known as federal CIO. Ari Schwartz, managing director for cybersecurity policy at the law firm Venable, who formerly held several senior cybersecurity jobs in the federal government between 2010 and 2015, including senior cybersecurity policy adviser at NIST and its parent, the Department of Commerce, as well as special assistant to the president and White House senior director for cybersecurity.

Panel Presents at Summit

This special edition was recorded after the panelists debated how the next president will deal with Obama's cybersecurity legacy, a session that kicked off Day 2 of the recent ISMG Fraud and Breach Prevention Summit in Washington.

Please check out our regular editions of the ISMG Security Report, which are posted on ISMG news websites on Tuesdays and Fridays. Here's a link to our previous report that examined global breach notification.

The ISMG Security Report theme music is by Ithaca Audio.