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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.
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Martin Matishak

Martin Matishak

is the senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. Prior to joining Recorded Future News in 2021, he spent more than five years at Politico, where he covered digital and national security developments across Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. He previously was a reporter at The Hill, National Journal Group and Inside Washington Publishers.