What did the White House and U.S. tech giants pledge to do on cyber, exactly?
The White House and U.S tech giants on Wednesday made a host of commitments intended to boost the country's cybersecurity.
"I've invited you all here today because you have the power, the capacity, and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity," President Joe Biden said at the beginning of the summit that was attended by chief executives from Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, IBM and leaders from a number of other sectors.
Here's a rundown of the pledges that were made:
- Tech giant Microsoft pledged to make $150 million of "technical services" available to government agencies at all levels to strengthen their digital defenses, as well as expand its partnerships with community colleges and non-profits for cybersecurity training.
- Microsoft also promised to invest $20 billion over five years to strengthen the cybersecurity in its products.
- Google vowed to spend more than $10 billion on cybersecurity over the next five years and will donate $100 million to "support third-party foundations ... that manage open source security priorities and help fix vulnerabilities."
- Google also said it would train 100,000 Americans in various digital fields, including data analytics.
- Apple vowed to work with its more than 9,000 suppliers in the U.S. to drive "mass adoption" of cyber hygiene practices, such as including multi-factor authentication.
- IBM committed to train more than 150,000 people for careers in cybersecurity and establish "cybersecurity leadership centers" at more than 20 historically black colleges and universities.
- Amazon announced it would make the cybersecurity training regime it uses its employees available to the public beginning in October, as well as provide cloud customers with free authentication tools.
- Code.org pledged to teach cybersecurity concepts to 3 million students over the next three years.
- Girls Who Code promised to create a "micro credentialing program" that would focus on groups historically excluded from the tech sector.
- The administration announced that that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would work with industry partners to produce a framework for better protect technology supply chains against hacks.
Martin Matishak
Martin Matishak is a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He spent the last five years at Politico, where he covered Congress, the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community and was a driving force behind the publication's cybersecurity newsletter.