Key players in cybersecurity - Washington Post

Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director, National Security Agency.

Alexander is awaiting additional appointment as leader of new Pentagon Cyber Command. He has been urging Congress to make laws more consistent with the nation's real -- and only vaguely understood -- digital counteroffensive capabilities.

Rand Beers, Homeland Security undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate.

Famous for resigning -- after 30 years of career federal service -- from the Bush White House on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, then going to work for John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

James A. Lewis, director and senior fellow, Technology and Public Policy Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Lewis was a principal author of the June 2009 report, "Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency." The influential report wasn't fully adopted by Obama administration, but the impact was lasting.

Allan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a local education and cyber certification nonprofit. Paller keeps track of all of the major online threats, including programming mistakes that make for insecure software.

Ronald Ross, senior computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Highly accessible, he is part of a small team driving revision of many of the standards documents that define federal cyber approaches.

Howard Schmidt, White House cybersecurity coordinator.

He is persistently but not loudly pushing more robust federal defenses to cyberthreats and the development of an enlarged corps of cyber professionals.

John Streufert, deputy chief information officer and chief information security officer, State Department.

Streufert has, as much as any departmental official, cracked the code of turning cybersecurity readiness from a checklist-reporting function into a solid method of more securely operating worldwide networks. His testimony before various committees has been influential in moving Congress toward revising the Federal Information Security Management Act, which regulates how agencies report their cyber weaknesses.