More and more security experts are of the view that aggressive government action is the best hope to avert the disaster that can be unleashed because of cyber threats.

The 2014 Black Hat conference at Las Vegas echoed the same sentiment which was attended by a record number of people.

During the conference, people were informed about several severe security threats. The threats ranged from how any USB device could be hacked and the creation of fake Web sites, to the discoveries that Russian hackers had succeeded in hacking as much as 1.2 billion logins. It was also revealed during the conference that 2 billion smartphones were exposed to the risk of hacking.

In his keynote address, Dan Geer, the chief information security officer for In-Q-Tel, an Arlington, Virginia-based non-profit venture capital firm, tried to focus on public policy recommendations for information security.

Geer said that the need of the hour is to create a mandatory reporting system Relevant Products/Services for significant security vulnerabilities, similar to the system the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has for pandemic outbreaks.

He demanded that software Relevant Products/Services developers should legally liable for their source code and the people who discover flaws in security should be compensated by the government.

Geer supported a recent European Union court finding that individuals have the "right to be forgotten." "There is something important about being able to reinvent ourselves," he said at a press conference following his keynote.

This year, the attendance at Black Hat grew from 7,500 last year to 8,000. The increase in number of attendees forced the organizers to relocate the conference from Caesar's Palace to the more spacious Mandalay Bay Convention Center. The conference was attended by experts from 91 countries. The conference was 17th such meeting since its launch in 1997.