Biden Administration, Tech Giants Launch Initiatives to Fight Cybercrime

President Biden on Wednesday met with top executives from Alphabet/Google, Apple, IBM, Microsoft and other tech giants. The mission was to discuss how to more effectively combat cyber threats.

In addition to the tech giants, the security summit included several of giants in financial services, insurance, energy and education.

The summit comes after several massive cyberattacks, including ransomware attacks on Colonial Pipeline, JBS USA and Kaseya. Moreover, the volume of attacks has continued to increase, with more than 53 million T-Mobile customers impacted by a recent data breach on the carrier.

“We’ve seen time and again how the technologies we rely on, from our cellphones to pipelines to the electric grid can become targets of hackers and criminals,” Biden said in opening remarks.

The Biden administration announced the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will collaborate with industry and other partners to develop a new framework to improve the security and integrity of the technology supply chain.

In addition, the Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Initiative now includes natural gas pipelines.

Tech Giants’ Initiatives

Among the tech giants:

• Apple will establish a new program to drive continuous security improvements throughout the technology supply chain.
• Google will invest $10 billion over the next five years to expand zero-trust programs. It will also help secure the software supply chain and enhance open-source security.
• IBM will train 150,000 people in cybersecurity skills over the next three years. Furthermore, it will partner with more than 20 historically Black colleges and universities to establish cybersecurity leadership centers. This aims to grow a more diverse cyber workforce.
• Microsoft will invest $20 billion over the next five years to integrate cybersecurity by design and deliver advanced security solutions.
• Amazon will make available to the public at no charge the security awareness training it offers its employees.

Resilience, a cyber insurance provider, will require policy holders to meet a threshold of cybersecurity best practice to receive coverage. In addition, Coalition’s cybersecurity risk assessment and continuous monitoring platform will be available for free to any organization.

David Gerry is NTT Application Security‘s chief revenue officer.

NTT’s David Gerry

“This summit marks a positive step in raising awareness of the national cybersecurity attacks proliferating our nation’s private sectors,” he said. “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.”

Unique U.S. Challenge

John Bambenek is threat intelligence advisor at Netenrich.

Netenrich’s John Bambenek

“One of the unique challenges in the United States is that the overwhelming majority of critical infrastructure is owned and operated by private industry,” he said. “This has routinely been a stumbling block to effective coordination. But both the private and public sector need to make changes in order to truly protect the nation.”

Moreover, the barrier of entry into cybersecurity jobs is far too high, Bambenek said.

“The entry degree for cybersecurity should be at the associates level,” he said. “The government and military should use their resources to build a talent pipeline but, for instance, the military can keep access to these trained professionals via the Reserves or Guard.”

Jack Kudale is Cowbell Cyber‘s founder and CEO.

“SMEs are hurting the most from cyber incidents,” he said. “Initiatives to close insurability gaps and to make cyber insurance accessible to all will contribute the most in making the supply chains that are critical in the global economy more resilient to cyber threats. This includes standardization of coverage, flexibility and customization of policies as well as simplification of insurance applications.”