Obama To Attend White House Cybersecurity Summit, Announce Executive Order On Data Sharing

U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at a cybersecurity summit at Stanford University in California on Friday. During the White House summit, Obama is expected to urge companies to share more information with the government in an effort to combat future cyberattacks, according to media reports.

Announcing the summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection in January, Obama had said that the aim of the conference is to “bring everybody together -- industry, tech companies, law enforcement, consumer and privacy advocates, law professors who are specialists in the field, as well as students.”

On Friday, as part of a broader effort by the White House to beef up the country’s cybersecurity infrastructure following the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment by North Korean hackers in November last year, Obama is also expected to sign an executive order directing the government and companies to increase information sharing.

While the White House is yet to provide details of the planned executive order, the provisions are believed to be similar to a legislation proposed by Obama in January, which limited legal liability of companies sharing data with the government, according to a report by The Washington Post.

However, the move has reportedly been met with opposition from Silicon Valley companies, which believe that such legislation could infringe on their privacy rights. While senior executives from Google, Facebook and Microsoft are scheduled to attend the conference on Friday along with Apple CEO Tim Cook, several others, including Facebook Chairperson and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt reportedly declined the invitation, according to media reports.