Administration says it will give industry and academia heads up on cyberattacks

The Obama administration will provide universities and businesses with government intelligence and law enforcement information about malicious Internet activities so that they can protect their critical assets, the president's cyber czar said.

"I think we all recognize that the government has unique access to information," Howard Schmidt, cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to the president, told congressional staff, policymakers and interest groups at a Washington conference. "We need to continue to look for ways to share that information, but also give our universities and our businesses information to be able to protect themselves." Recent history is rife with examples where such disclosures could prove helpful. The intelligence community is privy to information about foreign governments, such as China, that Americans fear could be trying to extricate intellectual property from technology firms or research institutions. The FBI, in the past, has learned of holes in automated banking security, which it then told 4,000 financial sector organizations about so they could shore up systems before hackers exploited the vulnerabilities.