President-Elect Trump Selects Rudy Giuliani to Lead Cybersecurity Advisory Group

Prior to Thursday’s transition daily briefing, President-elect Donald Trump announced former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will lead a new cybersecurity advisory panel to provide private sector security concerns and solutions to the new administration.

Giuliani, the chairman of the global cybersecurity practice at Greenberg Traurig, was made available to the media at the daily briefing, but none of the reporters who called upon asked him any questions. Instead, he provided the following comments:

This is a great privilege to serve the president-elect. In my work in private security, I have seen both the problems and solutions of cyber defense that develop in the private sector. Our cyber defense is not where it should be.

It’s time for the government and private sector to come together and work on solutions to issues we face together. With all of the many incredible advances we’ve made on the internet, we’ve let our defense fall behind—our offense far surpasses our defense—in some ways, it’s like our military.

I will be bringing together the leaders of cybersecurity to give the president direct recommendations to improve our cyber defense. It’s like cancer. It’s been said that if you could put all of the people in the same room, you could probably cure it.

We may not be able to solve the cybersecurity problems we face, but we can do a heck of a lot better job than we have been doing. Ultimately, we’re going to have a very vibrant, robust cyber defense for both the government and the private sector.

The goal of the group Giuliani will lead will be to provide timely information from all sources and to gather senior corporate executives from companies which have faced or are facing challenges similar to those facing the government and public entities today—such as hacking, intrusions, disruptions, manipulations, theft of data and identities and securing information technology infrastructure—to meet with the president. The transition team offered the following explanation:

The president-elect’s intent is to obtain experiential and anecdotal information from each executive on challenges faced by his/her company, how the company met the challenges, approaches which were productive or successful and those which were not. The attendees may or may not change from session to session, but the specific agenda subjects will likely change because of the rapidly evolving field of cybersecurity and frequent developments, both positive and negative.

No consensus advice or recommendations resulting from group deliberations or interaction is expected or will be solicited.

Cyber intrusion is the fastest-growing crime in the United States and much of the world. Its impact is felt from the individual citizen whose identity is stolen to the large private and government entities that have seen their confidential information seriously compromised. It is also a major threat to our national security.

As the use of modern communications and technology has moved forward at unparalleled speed, the necessary defenses have lagged behind. The president-elect recognizes that this needs immediate attention and input from private sector leaders to help the government plan to make us more secure.

Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now 16 years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.

Rather than take the opportunity to ask Giuliani questions, however, the liberal mainstream media instead turned their attention elsewhere. They asked questions about the BuzzFeed dossier, the president-elect’s plan to sever ties with the Trump Organization on Jan. 20 and concerns about the Senate’s vote Wednesday night with regard to repeal of Obamacare and testimony from Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense-designate Gen. James Mattis (ret.). {eoa}