Obama to Issue Executive Order on Cybersecurity

President Barack Obama is set to announce new comprehensive guidelines for the sharing of cybersecurity information in an effort to prevent devastating cyber attacks that result in the theft of enormous amounts of personal and financial data.

Reuters reports that the new guidelines will be announced either during or after a cybersecurity conference at Stanford University where Obama will give a speech. The cybersecurity order comes on the heels of an announcement that the US government will establish a new center for cybersecurity.

The executive order also comes at a time when companies have grown increasingly defensive about providing government access to their products in the wake of National Security Agency revelations by Edward Snowden. It has been said that the Snowden revelations have cost US tech firms billions of dollars in lost business as people around the globe take steps to protect their data from the US government.

Reuters reports that the government would like Silicon Valley firms such as Google and Apple to share information with them, but those companies have balked at the suggestion without wide ranging reforms to the NSA's data collection practices.

This impasse in how to deal with the issue of cybersecurity has led many major tech firms to keep their highest-ranking personnel away from the Stanford conference. The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, will be the most prominent attendee of the conference from the tech community.

The executive order is the result of the increasing frequency and devastation wrought by cyberattacks such as the one that Sony Pictures Entertainment suffered in Dec. because of the film "The Interview."

Hackers stole and leaked everything from emails and phone numbers to movie scripts and finished, but not yet released films.