Moynihan to attend Obama's cybersecurity summit

When the Obama administration holds its "cybersecurity summit" at Stanford University today, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan will be among the top U.S. executives participating as panelists.

Moynihan

Moynihan and other leaders from major financial services companies, including the CEOs of PayPal, U.S. Bank and Visa, will speak on various panels at the daylong event in California.

The panelist list also includes representatives from other types of large corporations, such as the presidents of Walgreens and QVC. In addition, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, is scheduled to deliver remarks during the summit.

The summit is being billed by the White House as an opportunity to bring together private and public sectors leaders so they can collaborate on ways to better protect U.S. consumers and companies against the growing threat from cyber-criminals. Top officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security will also speak on panels.

Announced by the White House last month, the event comes at a time when data breaches continue to make national headlines, becoming a greater concern for U.S. companies. Just last week, Anthem, the second-largest U.S. health insurer, disclosed that hackers breached its computer systems that stored information on up to 80 million people.

Moynihan will sit on a panel titled "Improving Cybersecurity Practices at Consumer Oriented Businesses and Organizations." The panel will "explore what CEOs and their boards are doing to move cybersecurity concerns from the IT back-office, ensuring that this critical strategic issue is part of corporate planning, communications, governance, and operations for consumer-oriented business across all sectors of our economy," according to the White House.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.,  Citigroup and Wells Fargo, which in addition to Bank of America are the top four U.S. banks, will not have participants on any panels.

Banks large and small say costs are rising to protect sensitive consumer and bank data. Last month, in a Bloomberg Television interview, Moynihan said the bank’s cybersecurity operation can spend as much as it needs to protect the lender and its customers.