President Obama Selects Howard A. Schmidt to Serve as Chief of Cybersecurity

According to the New York Times, President Obama has selected Howard A. Schmidt to serve as the Chief of Cybersecurity for his administration. Mr. Schmidt previously served as an advisor to President Bush, and has longstanding ties to the technology industries as well as military and law enforcement. The goal of the Cybersecurity Chief is to identify and work against threats to the cyber infrastructure of the United States as it relates to both military and civilian issues. Mr. Schmidt will report to the National Security Council (NSC) and will regularly meet directly with President Obama on security issues.

Here is a brief background on Mr. Schmidt courtesy of the Times.

Mr. Schmidt is the chief executive officer of the Information Security Forum, a nonprofit computer security trade association based in London. He has served as chief information security officer at eBay and chief security officer at Microsoft. In the Bush administration, he was the vice chairman of the president’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and a special adviser for cyberspace security.

He also served in the Air Force and the Army in computer security roles and led a computer forensics team for the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the National Drug Intelligence Center.