PALO ALTO, Calif. – President Obama signed an executive order Friday that urges companies to share cybersecurity-threat information with one another and the federal government.

Obama signed the order, which is advisory in nature, at the first White House summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University here. The summit, which focused on public-private partnerships and consumer protection, is part of a recent White House push to focus on cybersecurity.

Obama said the prospect of cyberattacks are one of the nation's most pressing national security, economic and safety issues. The specter of a cyberattack crippling the nation's air traffic control system or a city with a blackout is real, and hacks such as the one on Sony Pictures last year are "hurting America's companies and costing American jobs." He also said they are a threat to the security and well-being of children who are online.

"It’s one of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used to undermine us and inflict great harm," Obama said before a cheering, friendly audience here at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium.

The order the president signed here encourages the development of central clearinghouses for companies and the government to share data and creation of centers where data can be shared across specific geographic regions. Obama pushed for collaboration between the public and private sectors.

"There’s only one way to defend America from these cyber threats, and that is through government and industry working together, sharing appropriate information as true partners," he said.

MasterCard chief executive Ajay Banga praised Obama’s executive action but said that eventually “we need a real legislative solution. An executive action can only take you this far.”

“Rather than fight this in individualized groups, there’s some merit in joining hands and doing it together,” Banga said.

Obama's order is part of a broader White House effort to beef up the nation's cybersecurity infrastructure, something the administration wants to push on Capitol Hill. Last month Obama proposed legislation that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing threat data with the government. Last month he proposed legislation that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing threat data with the government.

Obama said shortly after he took office he realized that cybersecurity is "one of the most serious economic national security challenges that we face as a nation" and made confronting them a priority. Obama has signed other executive orders, including one that calls for the creation of voluntary standards to bolster the security of computer networks in critical industries and a framework for cybersecurity and another last year to protectconsumers from identity theft. So far nothing has been able to stem the tide of attacks such as the one against Sony or others against retailers including Home Depot.

Both privacy groups and Silicon Valley companies have said they would oppose the legislation Obama proposed last month unless reforms are first made to the NSA's surveillance program.

In an interview with Re/Code, Obama acknowledged tensions with Silicon Valley after the NSA disclosures.

"The Snowden disclosures ... were really harmful in terms of the trust between the government and many of these companies, in part because it had an impact on their bottom lines​," Obama said.

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