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Obama Could Name Cybersecurity Czar This Week

Adviser would likely have direct access to the president

By Jaikumar Vijayan

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In addition to such recommendations, a bill was proposed in April by Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) that would give the president and other federal authorities unprecedented new powers in national cybersecurity matters.

The calls are being prompted by what many say is the absence of a national strategy for protecting U.S. interests in cyberspace against a growing range of international and domestic threats. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in charge of coordinating efforts to protect government and private infrastructure against Internet attacks, but the agency has come under heavy criticism for lacking direction and being too weak to effect governmentwide change.

The calls for White House leadership are also being driven by what some say is the growing efforts by the National Security Agency to wrest leadership on cybersecurity matters away from the DHS and other civilian agencies. The concerns bubbled into the open in March when Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cyber Security Center, resigned because of what he said was the NSA's domination of the nation's cybersecurity efforts.

The concerns led the spy agency's director, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, to announce last month that the NSA has no desire to run cybersecurity for the federal government and only wanted to team with the DHS in developing and enforcing cyberdefenses for government and military networks.