Securing cyberspace needs more public-private cooperation and a greater ability to identify and punish perpetrators, officials and business leaders said as a conference got underway.

"We have an incredibly threatening environment out there right now," US Homeland Security Deputy Undersecretary Philip Reitinger said at a dinner kicking off the first World Cybersecurity Summit in Dallas yesterday.

"If we let our attention waver for a second we're going to be in a world of hurt," Reitinger said, calling for a sustained focus on cybersecurity and not just "Band-Aids."

Udo Helmbrecht, executive director of the European Network and Information Security Agency, said it was the "responsibility of governments to make a legal framework" to help tackle threats in cyberspace.

"We need to see that it's a global threat," Helmbrecht said, that requires a "global approach."

The Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit, hosted by the EastWest Institute think tank, features three days of discussions on ways to protect the world's digital infrastructure from electronic threats.

Some 400 government officials, business leaders and cybersecurity experts from China, France, Germany, India, Russia, the United States and three dozen other countries are attending the gathering, which is being held in the wake of cyberattacks on Google which the Internet giant said originated in China.