It is being recommended by the government and the technology industry panel on cyber-security that the government should stop trusting passwords for cyber security and adopt, what the industry describes as “strong authentication.”

Tom Kellermann, vice president for security awareness at Core Security Technologies and a member of the commission that created the report, informed, “We need to move away from passwords.”

Following a number of break-ins into government computer systems, the report has been prepared during the last 18 months under the auspices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy group.

The report says, “The damage from cyber attack is real. Last year, the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Commerce, NASA and the National Defense University, all suffered major intrusions by unknown foreign entities.”

A laundry list of serious break-ins, ranging from the hacking of the Secretary of Defense’s unclassified e-mail, to the loss of ‘terabytes’ of data at the State Department has been described in the report.

The creation of a White House cyber-security czar, reporting to the president and the consolidation of the powers that have largely been held by the Homeland Security Department under the Bush administration has been recommended by the group.

The top Democrat and Republican members of the House Homeland Security subcommittee that oversees cyber-security were included in the commission. Jim Langevin, a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island; and Michael McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas were the joint chairmen of the commission.

The commission also included Scott Charney, corporate vice president for trustworthy computing at Microsoft; and Harry D. Raduege Jr., a retired Air Force lieutenant general who is the chairman of the Center for Network Innovation at Deloitte & Touche.