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Tom Stanton, a fellow at the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University, knows cybersecurity and government, having authored last year's study, Defending Cyberspace: Protecting Individuals, Government Agencies and Private Companies Against Persistent and Evolving Threats.

In an interview with Information Security Media Group's Eric Chabrow, Stanton discusses the challenges the government faces in adequately attracting and maintaining dedicated experts with the smarts as managers and practitioners to secure federal IT.

To build such a workforce, he says, leadership must originate in the White House, with a respected and influential cybersecurity czar who goes beyond coordination. "The problem is that czars traditionally, at least in the Russian context, have been really bad managers," he says. "What we need in the American context is sound management of this problem."

Among the ways the government can attract qualified personnel is to adopt a program used by the government during World War II that subsidized the salary of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb.

A lawyer and a former federal government executive, Stanton serves on the board of the National Academy of Public Administration and chaired its standing panel on executive organization and management. He co-edited Making Government Manageable: Executive Organization and Management in the 21st Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).