North American Electric Reliability

A decade ago, when Rick Dakinmet parents at his son’s grade school who said they worked for the "government"—and declined to expand—it meant they were agents. Dakin, a security consultant, is a member of the Denver chapter of the FBI’s InfraGard program, a public-private partnership that convenes businesses, the FBI, other law enforcement agencies and community organizations to exchange tips about national security threats. However sharing doesn’t come easily in these circles.

The government

"Building that trust not only within the government, nevertheless with the private sector, is as a matter of fact key to success in this business," Weatherford says. "Informal relationships are at times more important than those formal relationships."

Dakin adds, "Mark’s not sitting on his hands and waiting for legislation. He’s dealing with what he’s got." One resource is the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. NCCIC is where all walks of life in the cyber-ecosystem put their heads at the same time to counter threats. They include Wall Street firms as then as electric grid operators, whom Weatherford knows from his prior gig as chief security officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a self-regulatory organization.

The NCCIC is going to be the nexus of information

"The NCCIC is going to be the nexus of information," Weatherford says. He predicts businesses in all critical industries "will have NCCIC on speed dial." Refusing to join, during allowed, could be costly. The average price tag for a corporate data breach is $5.5 million, according to a March report from the Ponemon Institute, an independent privacy innovation firm. However, strengthening computer security standards, as Homeland Security has urged Congress to do, could generate billions of dollars and thousands of jobs in a new market. Secure mobile access to all manner of services—from movies to big data analysis—could make the United States the world leader in cloud computing, market analysts say.

House leaders and many Senate Republicans, but, do not want DHS regulating computer security, and some say the department is incapable of leading cyber incident response. Weatherford believes much of the concern about DHS being less equipped than the defense and intelligence communities to supervise critical private networks is urban legend. "I consider us to be a united front in the federal government," he says. "And I think DHS is taking the leadership role in cybersecurity. We work with NSA on a daily basis."

Weatherford is flanked by a fresh team of DHS cyber warriors—many of whom he hand-picked—including National Cybersecurity Division Director John Streufert, who launched the government’s automated threat-monitoring movement during he was at the State Department, and Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications Michael W. Locatis III, former Energy Department CIO.