President Obama Names tw telecom Chief to Security Committee

President Obama has appointed tw telecom CEO Larissa Herda to his National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). The appointment takes effect today.

I look forward to working closely with the other members of the committee in providing advice and insight to the President on critical matters of national security, cybersecurity and emergency preparedness,” said Herda, who also serves as tw telecoms chairman and president.

Herda has led Littleton, Colo.-based tw telecom formerly known as Time Warner Telecom Inc. as its chief executive and president for the last 13 years. She is a director of the Denver Branch of the Federal Reserve of Kansas City, a member of the board of directors at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado and is on the schools advisory board for the Center for Education in Social Responsibility.

She joins a security committee that is comprised of up to 30 chief executives from telecommunications companies, network service providers and information technology, finance and aerospace companies.

NSTACs goal is to provide recommendations in an effort to assure vital telecommunications links through any event or crisis and to help the U.S. Government maintain a reliable, secure, and resilient national communications posture,” tw telecom stated in a news release.

The committee has five major areas of focus:

In April, the NSTAC issued a report to President Obama on communications resiliency during natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other major events. The report contains recommendations the government could take to improve the availability or survivability of communications for emergency response personnel and others during a crisis.

The NSTAC examined four emergency scenarios: multiple terrorist events in the National Capital Region; a catastrophic earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area; a cyber attack; and massive Internet disruptions. Task force members who participated included executives from AT&T, Juniper Networks, Sprint Nextel, Qwest, Verizon and VeriSign, among other companies.