This is a good idea. Not for the first time the American President is keeping his earlier word. This time he is appointing a Cyber Tsar.

This, it strikes me, is an excellent idea. In the UK we have a data protection commission and a commissioner in charge of that. It's important and it represents recognition that all information needs protecting. It doesn't specify whether that information is digital or otherwise, just that if it's organised data it needs guarding.

What President Obama has done is to pull the digital strand out and accept that the digital world has its own particular requirements. It has security weaknesses by all means but more than that, it needs some sort of specialist to oversee it.

Obama is putting the tax payers' money where his mouth is and doing something about the evolving risks. I wish him well and hope other world leaders (particularly the ones in charge of my part of the world) will take note. We could start off with 'don't leave sensitive data on a train or something...'