In a meeting at the White House and CEOs from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and others, US President Joe Biden appealed to the tech executives to do more on cybersecurity in the wake of increased ransomware and other attacks, saying that the federal government “can’t meet this challenge alone.” The White House announced that the NIST (Nat’l Institute of Standards and Technology) would work with the tech industry and other partners on assessing and setting up new guidelines for more secure technology, including open source software.
The President cited recent ransomware attacks, the need to fill almost a half-million cybersecurity jobs in both the public and private sectors, and the need to hold hackers from Russia responsible for their actions. After the meeting, Microsoft CEO tweeted that the company would increase their cybersecurity focus:
Thank you @POTUS for convening a critical conversation on cybersecurity. Microsoft will invest $20 billion to advance our security solutions over the next 5 years, $150 million to help US government agencies upgrade protections, and expand our cybersecurity training partnerships.
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) August 25, 2021
So far, Microsoft has not issued a blog post or statement on the agreements, but Google also promised to commit $10 billion on cybersecurity:
That’s why today, we are announcing that we will invest $10 billion over the next five years to strengthen cybersecurity, including expanding zero-trust programs, helping secure the software supply chain, and enhancing open-source security. We are also pledging, through the Google Career Certificate program, to train 100,000 Americans in fields like IT Support and Data Analytics, learning in-demand skills including data privacy and security.
Amazon also promised to provide free cybersecurity training to the public, and to provide “multi-factor authentication devices” to some cloud computing customers.
(Featured Image via Reuters)
