On February 28, Microsoft originally detailed how it was responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was a five-part response, including the later announcement of suspending the sale of new Microsoft products in the region. Now roughly a month later, Microsoft has provided yet another update on the situation, detailing 6 new updates they’ve last taken since March 4.
As part of the new updates, Microsoft says that it has committed over $35 million to support humanitarian assistance and relief efforts for Ukraine, $18 million of which is Microsoft technology. Microsoft also says that employee donations are being matched by the company 2:1, which is resulting in more than $13.5 million raised in donations to help organizations working in Ukraine.
On the technology side of things, Microsoft applied a capability with RiskIQ to look “outside in” to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities in Ukrainian government systems. It has given the Ukrainian government a list of exposed and vulnerable systems that were unpatched and had CVEs that could have left systems open for hacking. Elsewhere, Microsoft deployed cybersecurity technical protections to targeted organizations. This includes providing licenses and services that allow organizations to move critical software services from on-premises servers to the cloud.
Finally, on the humanitarian side, Microsoft shared that Microsoft Disaster Response teams have now worked on or completed 67 projects in less than four weeks to assist groups that are in or helping Ukraine. Skype also has extended free calling into and out of Ukraine by another two weeks. This has already provided over 6.5 million minutes of calls.
Microsoft also plans to continue the suspension of all new sales of products and services in Russia.
