Follow Obama's Lead on Cybersecurity

By Robert Knake

Rob Knake is the Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work focuses on Internet Governance, public-private partnerships, and cyber conflict.  Knake served from 2011 to 2015 as Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the National Security Council.

In the fall of 2008, a bipartisan group of cybersecurity experts delivered some sage advice to Barack Obama, set to become president in January: “Don’t start over.” That group, organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, made a strong and persuasive case that the Obama Administration needed to build from the progress that the Bush Administration had made. Specifically, the new team needed to follow through with the Comprehensive National Cyber Initiative (CNCI), which began the previous winter.

It was good advice. The tendency to discount the value of anything done in the previous administration runs high in Washington, particularly after a contentious election. Yet on cybersecurity, a rough bipartisan consensus has developed in the two decades since President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive-63. That document outlined the public-private partnership that has been the bedrock of U.S. cyber policy for 20 years.

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