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.

  • NutWrench
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    405 months ago

    If Microsoft cares so much about security, then WTF are they doing greenlighting a project like CoPilot / Recall?

    • @EnderMB
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      95 months ago

      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.

    • @demonsword
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      95 months ago

      If Microsoft cares so much about security

      they don’t, this is all lip service

    • Phoenixz
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      35 months ago

      Microsoft cares so much about security

      Are you kidding? I’ve known Microsoft as a shitty software vendor that gives a rats ass about security for over 40 years now. Microsoft never has cared about security, it’s a running gag at this point

    • @UnderpantsWeevil
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      25 months ago

      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.

    • capital
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      25 months ago

      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.

    • @nutsack
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      15 months ago

      deleted by creator