Google and Microsoft say they are committed to investing a total of $ 30 billion in advances in cybersecurity over the next five years, as the U.S. government will partner with private sector companies to address the threats it faces. the country as a result of a sophisticated malicious cyber activity critical infrastructure, exposing the risks to data, organizations and governments around the world.
The White House cybersecurity meeting, which brought together executives from the education, energy, finance, insurance and technology sectors, included companies such as ADP, Amazon, Apple, Bank of America, Code.org , Girls Who Code, Google, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and Vantage Group, among others.
To that end, the U.S. government on Wednesday announced a collaboration between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and industry partners to develop a new framework to improve the security and integrity of the technological supply, together with plans to expand industrial control Systems cybersecurity initiative to secure pipelines.
The large technology sector is also recovering with a list of initiatives, such as:
- Microsoft will invest $ 20 billion over the next five years to provide advanced security solutions, in addition to making $ 150 million available in technical services to help federal, state and local governments improve security protections.
- Google will invest more than $ 10 billion to strengthen cybersecurity, including expanding zero-confidence programs, helping to protect the software supply chain, and improving open source security. It is worth noting that the search giant, in early June, announced a framework called Supply Chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA or “sauce”) to safeguard the integrity of software supply chains.
- apple will work with more than 9,000 of its vendors to drive the mass adoption of multifactor authentication, vulnerability correction, event logging, and security training.
- IBM it will train 150,000 people in cybersecurity skills over the next three years and partner with 20 historically black universities and colleges to establish a more diverse cyber workforce.
- Amazon will make a multifactor authentication device available to all Amazon Web Services account holders to protect against phishing and password theft at no additional cost.
While it remains to be seen how these efforts will be developed in practice, the commitments demonstrate the urgency of prioritizing and elevating cybersecurity following a relentless stretch of high-profile cyber attacks targeting SolarWinds, Microsoft, Colonial Pipeline, JBS and Kaseya in recent months. In early May, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to modernize their defenses against cybersecurity.