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Business leaders in industries ranging from technology to insurance pledged billions of dollars to bolster cybersecurity efforts during a White House meeting with President Biden on Wednesday.
The meeting comes in the wake of several high-profile cyber attacks, including against government software vendor SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline, which have made these security concerns even more urgent.
Commitments range from developing new industry standards to providing more powerful security tools to other companies and training workers to fill the roughly 500,000 unfilled US cybersecurity positions. Biden recently signed an executive order requiring U.S. agencies to use two-factor authentication for logins, which can help prevent cyber attacks.
The White House said Apple will create a program dedicated to improving security across its technology supply chains, which will include working with vendors to adopt multi-factor authentication and security training. .
Google has announced that it will invest more than $ 10 billion over five years to strengthen cybersecurity and has pledged to train 100,000 Americans in technical areas such as IT support and data analysis through its certificate program. careers. Google’s financial commitment will be used to strengthen the software supply chain and open source security, among others.
Microsoft has committed $ 20 billion over five years to provide more advanced security tools, CEO Satya Nadella tweeted after the meeting. He added that Microsoft would invest $ 150 million to help government agencies upgrade their security systems and expand cybersecurity training partnerships. Microsoft has spent $ 1 billion a year on cybersecurity since 2015.
IBM said it would train more than 150,000 people in cybersecurity skills over three years, while partnering with historically black colleges and universities to help diversify the workforce. The company also announced a new data storage solution for critical infrastructure companies and said it is working on creating secure encryption methods for quantum computing.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC ahead of the meeting and outside the White House on Wednesday that cybersecurity was “the problem of the decade.” He said he hoped to see more coordination between the public and private sectors come out of the meeting and that IBM would do its part to help skilled workers in the space.
Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing division, plans to provide account holders with free multi-factor authentication devices to better secure their data. It also plans to offer “security awareness training” to organizations and individuals.
A spokesperson for financial services firm TIAA highlighted several ongoing initiatives it has undertaken to train more workers in cybersecurity. These include a partnership with New York University that allows TIAA associates to pursue a fully reimbursed master’s degree in cyber.
Stepping out of the White House, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called the meeting a “very productive collaborative discussion.”
“I hope we will continue to follow up and do a good job of protecting our country from a really complex issue,” he said.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the event “brought together the right group of people to have a good discussion.”
Two water executives leaving the meeting told CNBC the discussion emphasized collaboration between sectors. American Water CEO Walter Lynch said there was “an understanding that we must work together to address the cyber threats facing the country.”
-Mary Catherine Wellons and Samantha Subin of CNBC contributed to this report.
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