Obama Hopes ‘Climate of Fear’ Will Boost Cyber Security Push

President Obama is banking that a spate of high-profile hacks at major American companies will help his new cybersecurity standards succeed where others failed.

The president called Monday for separate bills that would require companies to notify customers within 30 days if their personal information had been compromised and prohibit the selling of student data to third parties for non-education purposes.

But for Obama to leverage the panic over data breaches at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Target and Home Depot, he’ll have to navigate between governmental and business bureaucracies and find a solution amenable to both sides.

As the president laid out his recommendations, the extent of the cyber problem was made even clearer, when hackers tied to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria took over the U.S. Central Command Twitter feed.

The broader challenge for the White House now is determining how to address concerns among private companies about the extent of information they would have to turn over to the federal government in warding off cyber attacks. And government agencies already under fire for cyber snooping would also have to consent to sharing a greater level of data with private businesses, a development that makes some in the intelligence community uneasy. (Read more about Obama’s cyber security push HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.