Some of the country’s leading technology companies have committed to investing billions of dollars to strengthen cybersecurity defenses and to train skilled workers, the White House announced this week following President Joe Biden’s private meeting with top executives.
After the meeting, the White House announced that Google had committed to invest $10 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years, money aimed at helping secure the software supply chain and expand zero-trust programs. Microsoft said it would invest $20 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years and make available $150 million in technical services to help local governments improve their defenses. IBM plans to train 150,000 people in cybersecurity over three years, and Apple said it would develop a new program to help strengthen the supply chain.
Experts reacted to the meeting and the rally for more investment.
David Gerry, Chief Revenue Officer at NTT Application Security:
"This summit, and resulting commitments and initiatives, mark a positive step in raising awareness of the national cybersecurity attacks proliferating our nation’s private sectors. The summit allows for ideas, best practices, as well as transparency to be shared between technology vendors and government organizations. It’s great to see leaders within the financial and utilities sectors specifically, which have been hit hard this past year, come together to create actionable plans around proactive security strategies."
Jake Williams, Co-Founder and CTO at BreachQuest:
"While everything in the press release is positive from a cybersecurity perspective, I’m especially excited to see that Resilience is requiring minimum cybersecurity standards as a condition of coverage. Many organizations view cyber insurance as an alternative to implementing security controls rather than as a complement to those controls."
Jack Kudale, founder and CEO of Cowbell Cyber:
"The security crisis is acute within the small and mid-size business segment. Incentives to drive change and adoption of fundamental cyber hygiene practices including cybersecurity and cyber insurance will change the balance of power between businesses and cyber criminals.
Cowbell Cyber is eager to support the above with cyber insurance and risk management resources. Today, we provide free, continuous risk assessment to all businesses along with risk insights with recommendations to mitigate security weaknesses."
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