Bill Would Have Businesses Foot Cost Of Cyberwar

Business executives and national security leaders are of one mind over the need to improve the security of the computers that control the U.S. power grid, the financial system, water treatment facilities and other elements of critical U.S. infrastructure. But they divide over the question of who bears responsibility for that effort.

The disagreement stands as an obstacle to passage of major cybersecurity legislation backed by senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), among others. Many intelligence and security officials who worked under President George W. Bush, as well as those serving under President Obama, are backing stricter government regulation of cybersecurity, a key part of the Lieberman-Collins legislation. Business leaders, however, generally oppose those provisions. "The major concern is the vast regulatory structure that would be set up at the Department of Homeland Security," says Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, an association of major U.S. companies with interests in the cybersecurity debate.