Contractor says tech industry must rise to information security challenge

Vance Coffman, chairman and CEO at Lockheed Martin, on Thursday said that as the information technology industry moves to address homeland security, it will be challenged continually to examine ways that it uses information for security, and must "rise to meet that challenge."

That can be done by providing "just the right information, at the right time, to the right people, in the right way-without threatening people's individual liberties," he said in prepared remarks.

Speaking to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, Coffman called for a fused, governmentwide information system on border activity. He also called for increased defense spending in order to address new needs.

He said Lockheed Martin has been the government's largest IT provider since the mid-1990s, employing as many software engineers as Microsoft or Oracle and handling more bits of data per day than all the U.S. cable companies combined.