I think the country would be better off if we did create some new law regarding the authority of the President to act in these emergencies.

Thanks, Senator Collins.

the question there that we raise is whether they ought to be protected from liability overall because they were acting pursuant to an order of the President of the United States.

It is very much intended to be a light-touch approach, but one that we believe, over time, will move the private sector and critical infrastructure in the right way.

So thank you. You actually answered my second question before I asked it, which was what are we doing to make sure that the Department of Homeland Security in some sense leverages on the expertise that DOD and NSA have rather than…

There is no more important issue that we need to address in the immediate future than that of cybersecurity.

We need to find the right way to bring the capabilities of government together with the capabilities of the private sector.

So a kind of public incentive or shame?

We want to hear that voice. But in the case of a really catastrophic emergency, I think we want to be clear that the President has authority to act.

The White House and Committee bills have a generally similar proposal, although as you know, we give DHS the authority to evaluate the plans as opposed to third-party.

I share Senator Collins' sense of irony about this, truly.

If there is anyone who does not believe that we urgently need to pass strong cybersecurity legislation, I would tell them to look at some of the high-profile computer attacks that have happened in the past several months.

This is not a partisan debate. It is a national security debate.

This is going to take all of us working together.

Thank you very much for your leadership of this issue.

It has been one of the best experiences of my life. It has been a real opportunity to serve my country.

I think we can say that our country is, in a number of ways, safer, I think maybe much safer, than it was on September 10, 2001.

I have been really impressed with the folks that we have in NIST.

So we start with priorities.

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