Obama Names Former Bush Adviser as Cyberczar – Finally

After a prolonged search — vowing to make the choice personally — President Obama has named Howard A. Schmidt, a former cybersecurity adviser to President George W. Bush as the nation’s cyberczar.

Schmidt, who has more than 30 years in government service, also served as Chief Information Security Officer at eBay, Chief Security Officer at Microsoft, and most recently was President and CEO of the Information Security Forum which describes itself as is “an international, independent, non-profit organization dedicated to benchmarking and identifying good practice in information security.”

In the Bush administration, Schmidt was the lead cybersecurity adviser to counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, and in 2003 he was instrumental in producing the National Security to Secure Cyberspace, a comprehensive assessment of terrorist and organized crime threats to US cyberinfrastructure. It was released in February, 2003.