President Obama at the State of the Union. (White House photo)

The president of the United States is known as the leader of the free world. But does that leadership carry over to the realm of cyberspace?

When President Obama last week unveiled his latest cybersecurity legislative initiative and began to promote it in a series of speeches, culminating in this week's State of the Union address, I began to ponder whether he was a true leader in the cyber dominion (see Obama to Congress: Enact Cybersecurity Laws).

 This degree of presidential focus is unprecedented and is one of the hallmarks of leadership. 

Technology, after all, is in Obama's DNA, and from his very first day in office, securing technology was a very personal matter. Remember the news stories before his inauguration that he didn't want to give up his BlackBerry, so the smart phone had to be modified to become extremely secure?

Cybersecurity has been a priority of the Obama presidency from the get-go. Within a month of his inauguration six years ago this week, he commissioned a governmentwide cybersecurity review that three months later produced the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, which he announced with much fanfare in a White House speech (see The President's 10-Point Cybersecurity Action Plan). Within a year, Obama named the first White House cybersecurity coordinator (see Schmidt: A Take-No-Nonsense Cybersecurity 'Czar').

Still, Obama would go months, even longer, without uttering the word "cybersecurity" in public, although his aides contended it was a topic he remained engaged in behind the scenes.

Legislation Languishes

In 2011, Obama offered a comprehensive legislative proposal - one similar to the package he revealed this past week - but over the next 3½ years, cybersecurity bills backed by Obama languished in the Capitol (see White House Unveils Cybersecurity Legislative Agenda) .

Not getting his legislation through Congress, Obama decided to use his executive authority, and nearly two years ago signed an executive order directing the federal government to share cyberthreat information with critical infrastructure owners (see Obama Issues Cybersecurity Executive Order). He also ordered the National Institute of Standards and Technology to work with industry to create a cybersecurity framework, a compendium of IT security best practices, which critical infrastructure operators and others could adopt voluntarily. That framework was issued in February 2014 to mostly positive reviews from the business community (see NIST Releases Cybersecurity Framework).