Cybersecurity could be casualty of sequester ax

The looming threat of sequestration could short-circuit one of the few cybersecurity agreements between lawmakers and the White House: the need for a bigger budget to protect government and private computer systems.

At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in cyberaid, the loss of which could jeopardize efforts to detect digital spies, fight off foreign hackers, research new technologies and hire smart cybersecurity experts — the sort of commitments made in the Obama administration’s budget, and echoed by congressional leaders all year. There’s no single entity in the federal government that handles cybersecurity: Responsibilities for protecting federal networks, staving off foreign cyberattacks and researching new technologies are spread across multiple departments and programs. Many of those initiatives would be hit hard by deep cuts beginning in 2013 unless Congress pushes back the target date for its legally mandated cuts, exempts some categories of spending or does away entirely with its fallback, deficit-reduction plans.