The Cyber Threat Alliance tonight officially introduced Michael Daniel, former special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator for the White House, as its very first president, one month after formally registering as a not-for-profit organization. The organization also announced that it has added Cisco and Check Point Software Technologies as new founding members, alongside Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec.
In a powerhouse show of unity and cooperation, top executives from all six companies joined Daniel in a press conference at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. Taking their place alongside Daniel was Vincent Weafer, SVP of McAfee at Intel Security; Ken Xie, founder, chairman and CEO at Fortinet, Mark McLaughlin, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto; Amnon Bar-Lev, president of Check Point; Greg Clark, CEO of Symantec; and Marty Roesch, chief architect, security business group at Cisco.
The mission of the CTA is to leverage the experience of security practitioners to share threat intelligence and raise awareness of global threats. "The whole premise of the CTA is bringing together multiple organizations that collectively see more than any one of them alone," said Daniel, adding that the CTA will eventually reach out to various governments as well to improve threat sharing between private and public entities. "The long-term goal has got to be to cover as much of the ecosystem as we possibly can. And so that is inevitably going to, down the road, involve how we actually share information back and forth with governments."
