Following a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House, tech companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft pledged to help strengthen US cybersecurity.
The pledges vary by company, but they range from spending billions of dollars on cyberinfrastructure to providing supply-chain assistance and education.
The high-profile meeting with tech CEOs and President Joe Biden on Wednesday comes on the heels of major cyberattacks on US government agencies and energy infrastructure, such as the Colonial Pipeline.
“The reality is that the private sector owns and operates the majority of our critical infrastructure, and the federal government cannot meet this challenge alone,” Biden said at the meeting on Wednesday.
Apple said it would collaborate with its suppliers to “drive mass adoption of multi-factor authentication,” as well as provide new security training, incident response, and vulnerability remediation.
Amazon intends to provide a free multi-factor authentication device to all Amazon Web Services account holders, as well as to make all of the company’s employee security awareness training available to the public for free.
Google announced plans to invest more than $10 billion in cybersecurity and the software supply chain in the United States over the next five years.
Google also stated that it will train more than 100,000 Americans in data analytics and IT support through its Career Certificate program. Microsoft announced a $20 billion investment over five years, making similar promises to Google.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Apple CEO Tim Cook, IBM Chair and CEO Arvind Krishna, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attended the meeting on Wednesday, along with representatives from other industries such as energy and education.
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