Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority, President Brad Smith testified to Congress on Thursday, promising that security will be “more important even than the company’s work on artificial intelligence.”
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, “has taken on the responsibility personally to serve as the senior executive with overall accountability for Microsoft’s security,” Smith told Congress.
His testimony comes after Microsoft admitted that it could have taken steps to prevent two aggressive nation-state cyberattacks from China and Russia.
According to Microsoft whistleblower Andrew Harris, Microsoft spent years ignoring a vulnerability while he proposed fixes to the “security nightmare.” Instead, Microsoft feared it might lose its government contract by warning about the bug and allegedly downplayed the problem, choosing profits over security, ProPublica reported.
This apparent negligence led to one of the largest cyberattacks in US history, and officials’ sensitive data was compromised due to Microsoft’s security failures. The China-linked hackers stole 60,000 US State Department emails, Reuters reported. And several federal agencies were hit, giving attackers access to sensitive government information, including data from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health, ProPublica reported. Even Microsoft itself was breached, with a Russian group accessing senior staff emails this year, including their “correspondence with government officials,” Reuters reported.
To reinforce the shift in company culture toward “empowering and rewarding every employee to find security issues, report them,” and “help fix them,” Smith said that Nadella sent an email out to all staff urging that security should always remain top of mind.
Yeah that ought to do it.
Lol. Considering it was senior management that ignored staff, this statement is even fucking dumber than it sounds.
"Of course, fixing these kinds of issues won’t push your product deadlines back at all. But we’ll be thankful to you! "
“Next week to improve employee morale we will have a pizza party” - Nadella, probably
Pick one:
- security
- proprietary OS
I mean what they have to do is obvious, right? Only one of these two options can help increase ad revenue.
My suggestion, based on more than three decades of observing and interacting with this company: don’t believe a fucking thing they say, ever.
If Microsoft cares so much about security, then WTF are they doing greenlighting a project like CoPilot / Recall?
Like most big tech companies, they’re actually several divisions all competing with each other. Lately, the AI divisions have latched on to the hype and they’re pushing their wares to other divisions, often with enough clout to keep those in security/privacy quiet. Integrating LLM’s is also a great way for a middle manager type to curry favour with the bosses, and to build little empires for themselves.
To be fair, MS “delayed” recall yesterday to fix the security issues, everybody else is hoping this is a soft-kill https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178144/microsoft-windows-ai-recall-feature-delay
If Microsoft cares so much about security
they don’t, this is all lip service
Its part of their large scale automation strategy, wherein they gobble up as much of the business practices of an organization’s staff as possible and then offer to provide “AI Employees” who replicate the logic of human staffers at a discounted price.
Businesses that buy the enterprise versions of their software can disable those features in policy.
They are far less concerned with your security than their paying customers: businesses.
deleted by creator
“Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority…”
The fact that this had to be stated is a testament to garbage leadership. Notice it’s not even the top priority, just a top priority. These guys will still get bonuses of course.
The security will definitely also take a very profitable shape. I.e. further locking the OS away from the user, more black box software, etc.
I’ve spent the better part of my life watching microsoft fuck people over and then when they finally - finally get called out on it they do a bunch of bashful aw-shucksing before doing it again and again and again.
No.
Microsoft is dead. Kill it with fire. The US government should have known better, but they didn’t because like every other organization they have a boatload of clueless mid-level managers who only every learned Windows and fall for microsoft’s garbage every time, despite the eye-popping price.
NO MICROSOFT. EVER. They’re a criminal organizaiton, the amount of destruction they’ve created will never be known.
Too late. Linux is going from my hobby project to my primary OS by the time they stop providing Windows 10 updates, if not sooner.
Thats what I did when win 7 support was ending, been very happy and there’s no way I’m going back to Windows.
no they won’t. these pricks literally fired their entire AI Ethics team… that tells you everything you need to know about where their priorities are.
the only thing they are gonna do about this is figure out a way to make people not angry, but continue to fo as much shady shit as they can.
Definitely wasn’t aware of that…
literally fired their entire AI Ethics team
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23638823/microsoft-ethics-society-team-responsible-ai-layoffs
It’s always one of the first things to get cut when companies try to save money.
Well I know companies are willing to terminate employees for the sake of keeping up profits or preventing the loss of a company, no doubt. But the fact that they terminated an entire department - AI Ethics. Which I have to only assume is not a good idea when you’re implementing a new technology that can definitely go out of control.
ai ethics teams are a joke. They deserve to get fired.
Too late, my office just switched to Linux.
…what? What kind of office do you work in that understands linux??? Most offices I’ve worked in don’t even understand the copier.
Software.
I doubt MS even knows what security means
Microsoft focused on security at this point is like a builder focusing on building strong foundations now that the house is built on top.
It’s a little too late my dudes.
It would take ripping apart and rewriting hundreds of thousands of lines of source code, if not millions. Not just bloat from one off bright ideas, that led to the next bright ideas, but the deliberate obsfucation to protect proprietary code, in more instances than I can imagine. I’m not a programmer, so I could be wrong, obviously, but from my admittedly limited perspective, they’d be better off writing a whole new OS without all the built-in garbage nobody wants.
I think Windows 11 was supposed to be that clean break. They’ve reimplemented a lot of core functionality compared to XP & 7. If they’re still getting breached then they obviously aren’t serious about security.
That’s … TFW words aren’t enough and too much, at once.
You mean they have been letting it slip?
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, “has taken on the responsibility personally to serve as the senior executive with overall accountability for Microsoft’s security,”
Err. Wasn’t that already true? He’s chief executive officer, not chief some shit that doesn’t include security officer.
Microsoft uses damage control.
fancy animation
It was not effective.
Rather than driving the industry forward with leadership and vision Microsoft is being driven by AI and Advertising fads that are self destructing facebook and google.
Its clear its too late for Microsoft to do anything but lose trust at this point. If the outlook hacks and US government didnt cause them to rethink these terrible anti-privacy ideas then a bit of AI backlash won’t either. As soon as people look away they’ll start stuffing the OS with snoopware again.
