White House cyber-security chief praises Oz security

Howard Schmidt says international co-operation is vital.

Howard Schmidt, the White House's cyber-security adviser, has labelled Australia's cyber-security strategy as "wonderful" during his talk at the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week.

Delivering a keynote address at the conference Schmidt, who was appointed the cyber-security coordinator for the Obama administration last December, praised Australia's cyber security developments - among only three other countries.

"Australia has put together a wonderful cyber security strategy; the UK is, [also], and Germany is putting together all kinds of great things," said Schmidt.

Discussing the US Government's international cyber-security strategy, Schmidt said partnerships on an international government level are fundamental for a safe internet.

"At the government-to-government level it's making sure that other governments that we have relations with, that we're doing security with, that we're doing military operations with, have the mechanisms that focus on cyber-security in their governments as we do in our government.

"And you see some really good examples of that," he said.

"We can't continue to go the way we've been going and expect things to be good. Governments need to be engaged," he said.

Rocky relationships with [other] governments should not impact the international fight against cyber crime, he added. "We have legitimate disagreements time-to-time between governments, but that should not impact foreign policy or the need to look into the cyber-security issue...particularly cyber-security issues.

"Nobody wins if there's disagreements on the internet. We're the benefiter of it, we use it all the time, so as a consequence we've got to work internationally, make sure we've some norms, rules of engagement from a law enforcement perspective and also from a diplomatic perspective.

"I think once we start focusing on some of the issues we'll move a lot further on solving the issues," he said.