Daily Video: How Cyber-Security Leaders Evaluate White House Strategy

President Barack Obama’s visit to California Feb. 13 at the White House Summit on Cyber-Security and Consumer Protection was a high-visibility indicator that the federal government has made cyber-security a national security and public safety issue.

The president signed and enacted an executive order for this back-channel information-sharing cooperation to actually get moving in real time.

The order asks organizations to invest in improving cyber-security defenses, become proactive in helping each other out when crises arise and not be shy about asking the federal government for assistance.

Hewlett-Packard’s Zero Day Initiative has announced the rules and prize structure for its 2015 Pwn2Own browser hacking challenge that is scheduled for March 18 and 19 during the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

For the 2015 event, HP will pay security researchers a $75,000 award if they are able to exploit Google’s Chrome browser on Windows. A Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 11 exploit will yield a $65,000 prize, while a Mozilla Firefox exploit in 2015 will be worth $30,000.

A gang of cyber-criminals has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from banks in Russia, Ukraine, China, Germany and the United States during a two-year cyber-attack campaign.

Security firm Kaspersky Lab published a report stating the cyber-thieves sent malware-laden documents to bank employees, which, when opened, would attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office or the Windows control panel.

Following a compromise, the attackers sought information on a compromised bank’s money-processing services, ATMs and financial accounting practices.

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers has a message for those concerned that software-defined networking poses a threat to his company’s future: Don’t worry about it. During the last financial quarter, Cisco saw sales of its network switches grow 11 percent over the same period a year earlier.

The numbers led a confident Chambers to say during a Feb. 11 conference call with analysts and journalists that not only is SDN not a threat to Cisco, but that his company is thriving in the highly competitive market.