Venable's Managing Director of Cybersecurity Services Ari Schwartz was quoted in The Hill on December 2, 2016, and ClimateWire on December 5, 2016, on the recently released report from the president's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. Created by executive order earlier this year, the report focuses on six areas of cybersecurity, including protecting information infrastructure and digital networks, innovation, preparing consumers, growing the cybersecurity workforce, securing government, and safeguarding the digital economy.
Speaking with The Hill, Schwartz predicted the next presidential administration might implement some of the recommendations. "They will do things that are in here. Will they have the same tone? Will they say these are Obama's ideas? Absolutely not. But there are ideas that will get done in some form." He added, "It’s a gift from this president to the next president… Here are some ideas, use them if you'd like, if you don't want to use them, that's on me."
Discussing the report with ClimateWire, Schwartz said, "I think of this as the document that the president would have wanted to get when he came into office." Noting the report's heavy emphasis on infrastructure, he said, "The fact that so many of the critical infrastructure networks are run and controlled by the private sector makes it a more difficult challenge than other national security issues." However, he said, "when push comes to shove," some of the recommended incentives might be difficult to get off the ground, but fear would continue to be a primary motivator. "I do think that is the No. 1 incentive for all this," he said. "There's all this fear behind [cybersecurity], that something could be worse down the road and you don't know what that is. And I think that is really the driver."