Two years ago, Sen. Joe Lieberman, 10 months from the end of his Senate career, sat down with The Day's editorial board and said his greatest concern was not the budget or economy, but the increasing threat of cyberattacks and espionage targeting both the U.S. government and private corporations.

The then-chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee likened the threat to the danger the nation faced prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Back then, the country did not heed the warnings or react aggressively enough to intelligence information showing there was reason for concern. He warned of making the same mistake again by not taking cybersecurity seriously.

Unfortunately, his attempts to pass legislation, which would have required the government to set cybersecurity performance standards for companies responsible for critical infrastructure or involved with classified government operations, failed. The law also would have created a clearinghouse in which industries and government agencies could securely share information about cyber threats and the means of addressing them.

A key obstacle to former Sen. Lieberman's proposal, and subsequent proposals, was concern among U.S. corporations that sharing information could benefit competitors and invite government abuses, alienating shareholders and customers. The level of government surveillance that has been revealed in the past couple of years has only boosted those fears.

Yet the nation has also learned the threat is real. It witnessed the destruction, theft of data and attempted blackmail in the cyber-attacks against Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., which the White House attributes to North Korea. The Twitter and Youtube accounts of U.S. Central Command were also hacked recently, embarrassing the Pentagon, but with no apparent compromise of vital information.

President Obama, in his State of the Union address, again asked Congress to pass legislation to address "the evolving threat of cyberattacks." Next month, the president plans to conduct a summit on the subject at Stamford University. The president's challenge is to convince businesses that some level of information sharing is necessary to increase cybersecurity, while offering concrete measures to prevent government abuses.

Cyber terrorism has the potential to disrupt communications, pilfer proprietary information, interrupt power grids, manipulate gas lines and compromise water supplies, to name a few examples. It is long past time for Congress to address the concerns of business and pass meaningful cybersecurity legislation.