Fiorina calls cyber security ‘urgent’ in face of rising threats, says govt. should work with private industry

(Cyberwar.news) GOP presidential contender and former CEO of tech giant Hewlett Packard Carly Fiorina said there was an “urgent” need for the federal government to engage the private tech sector in order to better protect Americans from detected cyber- and terrorist attacks.

“This administration isn’t leveraging the private sector at all. Politicians right now are arguing over the Patriot Act,” she told Breitbart News.

“The Patriot Act was written 14-years-ago and technology has gone through probably four generations since then,” she said, adding President “Obama’s cybersecurity strategy was written three years ago and technology has gone through a generation since then.”

Continuing, she said:

I mean we didn’t have Instagram. We didn’t have Snapchat. We barely had been introduced to the iPad, and so bureaucracies don’t innovate, the private sector does and we need to be leveraging the most sophisticated technology in the world, which is right here in this country to help us defeat the bad guys, I will.

A super PAC supporting GOP contender Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida recently criticized fellow candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for the latter’s support of the USA Freedom Act, which was signed by Obama and allegedly ended the NSA’s bulk collection of data.

Fiorina, who provided advice to the federal government as CEO of HP, and whom Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. – Fiorina’s opponent in the 2010 election – has referred to as “a leader in the new economy, said that because technology advances so rapidly, bureaucratic and legislative fixes like the USA Patriot Act are generations behind, as is the Obama administration’s cyber strategy.

Fiorina said “a lifetime of politics is not necessarily the right kind of experience anymore. It matters that you understand technology.”

“Neither of the other two outsiders, with all due respect, have any of the experience that I have,” she added.

As CEO of HP, she said the NSA consulted her after the 9/11 attacks.

“They needed help getting a large amount of equipment very quickly. The reason they needed help getting that large amount of equipment quickly was because they were trying to stand up their ability to track people that were of a suspicious nature,” she said.

“I diverted a lot of equipment from paying customers to the government in a very short period of time. I was happy to do it, obviously. It’s an example of the opportunity to leverage the private sector in a far more effective way than the government usually does,” she added.

When asked what she would do specifically to improve cyber security, she said:

— “Number one, I would retaliate against China and Russia. They have hacked into some of our most sensitive systems and we haven’t done much about it. I would retaliate.”

— “Number two, I would stand up a centralized cyber command, and that command would be responsible for all aspects of our government response.”

— And number three, she said she would engage the private sector somewhat differently: “First that means there has to be laws that have to be passed. There are some things that have to be permissible legally, which would allow the private sector and the public sector to share information.”

“Basically, what that would do is, it would remove the hurdles and the risks from the private sector in communicating with the public sector,” she told Breitbart News. “Now, it’s urgent.”

Regarding retaliation, as Cyberwar.news has reported previously, the GOP presidential contender said she would make it “very painful” for China to launch cyber attacks directed at U.S. government and private sector infrastructure.

“We’ve known for over a decade the Chinese were coming after our most important systems,” she said during an Aug. 23 interview with The Hill.

“We ought to make it very painful for the Chinese to be aggressive in cyber warfare,” she said.

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