Obama to promote sharing of cyber security threat info

Obama will sign an executive order aimed at encouraging and promoting sharing of cyber security threat information within the private sector and between the private sector and government.

Amid increased cyber threats from overseas, US President Barack Obama is set to put in place measures aimed at encouraging and promoting sharing of cyber security threat information.

Obama will sign an executive order aimed at encouraging and promoting sharing of cyber security threat information within the private sector and between the private sector and government.

To be signed during the White House Cyber Security Summit at the Stanford University in California, the executive order would lay out a framework for expanded information sharing designed to help companies work together and work with the federal government to quickly identify and protect against cyber threats.

Though chief executive officers from Google, Yahoo and Facebook have declined to attend the summit, the Apple CEO Tim Cook will address the meeting during which he will announce his intent to fold the government's cyber security recommendations into its own cyber strategy.

Visa is committing to tokenisation -- substituting credit card numbers with randomly generated tokens for each transaction -- by the end of the 1st quarter of 2015.

MasterCard will invest more than $20 million in new cybersecurity tools, including the deployment of Safety Net, a new security solution that will reduce the risk of large-scale cyber-attacks.

Apple, Visa, MasterCard, Comerica Bank and US Bank are committed to working together to make ApplePay, a tokenised, encrypted service, available for users of federal payment cards, including DirectExpress and GSA SmartPay cards.

Square is working with the Small Business Administration to roll out an education programme aimed at convincing small business to adopt more secure payment technologies.

The Financial Services Roundtable and the Retail Industry Leaders Association, on behalf of a partnership of 19 associations, will jointly announce today the release of two papers to enhance collaboration in the development of technology standards and principles for the development of next generation technologies that minimise the value of payments information if it is stolen or lost.

Intel is set to release a new authentication technology that will not rely on a password, but will instead employ other technologies, such as biometrics.

American Express is announcing rollout of new multi-factor authentication technologies for their consumers.

MasterCard, in partnership with First Tech Credit Union, will announce that they will implement a new pilot later this year that will allow consumers to authenticate and verify their transactions using a combination of unique biometrics such as facial and voice recognition.

A number of leaders in the financial services industry will be making credit scores more readily available to all Americans, improving consumers' awareness of credit health, and providing them a tool to identify major shifts in their credit score -- a key first sign of identity theft.

Image: Barack Obama; Photograph: Reuters