Business leaders in sectors ranging from technology to insurance committed billions of dollars to help cybersecurity efforts at a White House meeting with President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
Microsoft alone announced that it will invest $20 billion over the next 5 years in cybersecurity, four times its previous investments of $1 billion per year to protect its services. In addition to its $20 billion investment, Microsoft announced that it will offer $150 million in technical services to federal, state, and local governments to upgrade their security capabilities. The company says it will also expand its partnerships with community colleges and non-profits for cybersecurity training programs.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that the event “brought together the right set of folks to have a good discussion.”
The other commitments range from working toward new industry standards to supplying other businesses with stronger security tools and providing skills training to workers to fill the estimated 500,000 unfilled U.S. cybersecurity jobs. Biden recently signed an executive order requiring U.S. agencies to use two-factor authentication for logins, which can also help prevent some cyberattacks.
The White House said Google would invest more than $10 billion over five years to strengthen cybersecurity and pledged to train 100,000 Americans in technical fields such as IT support and data analytics through its Career Certificate program. Additionally Apple said would create a program devoted to making security improvements across their technology supply chains, which will include working with suppliers to adopt multifactor authentication and security training.
Finally companies are starting to understand how badly a solid cyber defense is needed if you don't want a slue of problems knocking at your door. Even though it's taken a bit longer than it realistically should have, this is definitely a big positive for the cybersecurity industry as a whole.