The news feeds are abuzz for the past two days with announcements that President Obama may just announce an Executive Order in relation to heightening the cyber security in the U.S.

Following the important 2013 Kaspersky Cyber-Security Summit this week, Howard Schmidt, the former chief cybersecurity advisor to the President opined that "we’re on the brink of disaster every time a new worm comes out or a new DDoS (distributed denial of service) comes out".

This has come in the wake of EU's own cyber security agenda that was released on February 7th. The new directives are likely to affect U.S businesses unlike the older regulations that did not "require companies to publicly disclose breaches unless identifying information such as credit card or Social Security numbers".

The paranoia is basically due to the high risk factor when it comes to safeguarding "power grids, transportation and other federal digital infrastructure". The channels of suspicion are both internal and external.

What's of prime concern to us is that the Presidential Policy Directive 20 (PPD20)- a cyber security declaration, is centered on the active co-operation of corporate firms and businesses. The deal is that while private partners will help nurture security standards, the government too will be required to share classified information about cyber threats with the private sector.

To sum up the jist of this protocol in a few words what it does is- allows the military/ armed forces- NSA and Pentagon, to assume command of Internet operations in case of cyber attacks. The PPD20 was put in place to empower the "military-industrial complex to prevent digital attacks" against black hat activities. The very fact that cybersecurity has become a national issue shows how alarming the threat is.

The latest move, if the President issues the EO, is that the private sector is increasingly being drawn into national policy making. The question is why now?

Mary Dunn, the Deputy General Counsel of CUNA opines that the EO caters to the financial bodies especially the credit institutions, which enable the economy floating.

That's a pretty rosy picture to rekindle the national spirits but there's another side to the story. There are voices of dissent from within the States, such as the Anonymous hactivist group who are lobbying against malicious government activities.

Their Operation Last Resort, saw a series of hack attacks on the FBI-CIA websites and Department of Justice site. Small business workings too came to a hault when GoDaddy's site was breached by them as an experimental gig to challenge security standards!

Added to these the threat from Chinese hackers has always been high. To talk about the more recent cases,the Super Bowl weekend saw, the Federal Reserve's web security compromised while New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street were victims too.

So the obvious conclusion is that these hackers either penetrate high profile government networks or else the media sector to spread their word around.The bottomline is that be it corporates, government offices or small business enterprises, nobody is safe.

Whether the Order gets passed or not, businesses will continued to be affected. However, the public-private nexus that is likely to materialize with the move is just the saving grace for the leaders at the top.

Catch this video of the President sharing his concerns and moves, below:


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