this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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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.

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[–] reversebananimals 227 points 6 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] WhatAmLemmy 172 points 6 months ago

Lol. Considering it was senior management that ignored staff, this statement is even fucking dumber than it sounds.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's just barely thoughts-and-prayers level. They could at least schedule a mandatory meeting that interrupts everyone's day for half an hour.

[–] Serinus 41 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Usually they set up a hotline which may or may not get you fired.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 months ago

Using the hotline won't get you fired, but somehow - for totally unrelated reasons - after using it you'll end up on a PIP with untenable goals, and that will get you fired.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Happy cake day!

[–] Cosmos7349 31 points 6 months ago

"Of course, fixing these kinds of issues won't push your product deadlines back at all. But we'll be thankful to you! "

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago

Same energy as "You have unlimited PTO here, but we also have this nifty little thing called performance metrics"

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"Next week to improve employee morale we will have a pizza party" - Nadella, probably

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

they could throw a pizza party for their government clients. Less work than fixing the problem