Obama States US Must Step Up Cybersecurity Efforts

President Barack Obama is calling for the U.S. government to improve its cybersecurity in order to keep pace with advancing technologies.

“I am concerned about it. I don’t think we have it perfect. We have to do better. We have to learn from mistakes,” Obama said this week during a news conference in Madrid, Reuters reported on Sunday (July 10).

“We know that we have had hackers in the White House,” he added.

The president said that there is still work to be done to solve how to transmit sensitive information safely without making it vulnerable to the threat of hackers.

“It has to do with the volumes of information that are now being transmitted; who has access to them; concerns about cyberattacks and cybersecurity; concerns about making sure that we’re transmitting information in real time so that we can make good decisions but that it’s not being mishandled in the process or making us more vulnerable,” the president explained.

Earlier this year, the president noted that cyberspace has become today’s “Wild West.”

At the White House Cybersecurity Summit at Stanford University in February, President Obama spoke about the government’s responsibility to protect its people. He called upon tech and financial companies to take joint responsibility in providing consumer protection from cyberattacks.

“Just as we’re all connected like never before, we have to work together like never before, both to seize opportunities but also meet the challenges of this information age,” Obama said at the summit, according to an NPR report. “It’s one of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used to undermine us and inflict great harm.”