Microsoft CEO Meets with Biden, Agrees to Quadruple Cybersecurity Spending
- Paul Thurrott
- Aug 26, 2021
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After a meeting with the U.S. President, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has agreed to quadruple cybersecurity spending over five years.
“The reality is most of our critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, and the federal government can’t meet this [cybersecurity] challenge alone,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in his opening remarks to a group that included Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Mr. Nadella. “I’ve invited you all here today because you have the power and the capacity and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity.”
During the meeting, Biden pressed the tech executives to work with the U.S. government to improve the security of the technology supply chain and make it more resilient to attacks, which are increasingly state-sponsored.
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“Thank you [President Biden] for convening a critical conversation on cybersecurity,” Mr. Nadella tweeted after the meeting. “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.”
Why Microsoft didn’t issue a formal blog post about this investment is unclear, but Reuters reported that it represents a 4x increase in cybersecurity spending from the software giant. Google, however, did issue a post about its own investments.
“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,” Google senior vice president Kent Walker noted. “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.”