The president’s proposal included plans to promote information sharing between the private and public sectors. Chris Kielt, UNC’s vice chancellor for information technology, said he thinks pooling resources about potential hacks will benefit the American people.
“Bringing together government and some of the commercial sectors and non-profit sectors would help defend against cyber security threats,” Kielt said.
He said it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with cybersecurity.
“It is a fast-moving space,” he said. “There’s no question that this is a bit of an arms race these days in the security state.”
Obama’s proposal also included plans for improving how security breaches are reported and helping police better investigate cyber crime.
One specific piece of legislation proposed would target K-12 students’ data security and ensure that data collected in educational settings would be used solely for educational purposes, as well as preventing companies from using that data to target advertising toward students.
Holly Benton, UNC’s interim chief privacy officer, said the University does a good job of protecting information — but individuals have their own responsibilities to protect sensitive information.
“One of the things that’s great about the presidential focus here is it gives a national landscape in terms of, what do each of us have in terms of to protect and safeguard individually identifiable information,” she said.
