The cyberattack that took control of the U.S. Central Command's social media accounts is a combination of vandalism and cyberterrorism, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson told CNBC on Tuesday.
"This is serious. Even though the hacking didn't go into national security, didn't go into security breaches, classified information, the fact that it's happening so extensively and vastly means that we have to get a cybersecurity policy in place," he said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "We need to get our allies dramatically involved. We need to get some of the Arab states to cooperate, too, because this is getting out of hand."
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On Monday, hackers accessed CentCom's Twitter account and YouTube pages and posted messages, images, and videos that supported the Islamic State. CentCom is responsible for U.S. security interests in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.
A national policy on cybersecurity must involve the private sector, with companies such Google and Apple working with the government, Richardson said. Lawmakers must also pass legislation that provides some kind of methodology that allows the public and private sector to work in such a way that corporate information remains protected.
"That's not happening. There's too much of a breach of too many differences," he said.
The Democratic former governor of New Mexico also said he thinks the world could be on the cusp of seeing more attacks similar to the shooting at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and subsequent hostage taking last week that left 17 victims dead.
The United States must do whatever it takes to prevent that possibility, and that includes funding the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security, he said. Congress has only funded the latter through the end of February.
The Paris attack also shows that al-Qaeda is still a major threat, and countries around the world must take an active part in combating terrorism, he said.
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"Internationally the perception was that this was basically a U.S. problem," he said. "Now what happened in Paris, what's happening in Europe, this is an international problem that involves not just our allies in the Western world, but involves and hopefully will activate moderate Arab states, activist moderate Muslim states to go after these very crazy people within their own ranks."
President Barack Obama probably should have sent Secretary of State John Kerry to represent the United States at demonstrations in France on Sunday, Richardson said. The administration's failure to send a high-level representative to Sunday's rally in Paris was an "oversight," he added, saying the security issues are too massive in such a demonstration to have sent the president or Vice President Joseph Biden.
The administration faced criticism on Monday for not sending a high-profile administration member. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said it was "fair to say" the administration should have done so.