IT security is hard, very hard, and a lot of the commercial products used by most companies are terribly insecure. The fact is our IT infrastructure has grown much faster than the global pool of talent who know how to effectively secure it.

So faced with a deficit of expertise, and a constantly changing IT security landscape, it makes perfect sense for governments to support and co-ordinate cyber security efforts. We need to get maximum benefit from the resources we do have and that mans pooled effort, clear best practices, strong security standards, etc.

Personally I see an additional significant benefit coming out of all of this. If governments and politicians skill up in understanding the seriousness of cyber security at a national level, hopefully they will come to understand the deep folly of insisting on backdoors and secret keys to everyone's systems for security and law enforcement agencies. Politicians keep talking some really dumb crap on this topic, but if we can get them to take the security of businesses and citizens seriously, I'm hopeful this will change.