If you have the best of the technology industry settled in your country, why not ask them for help? This is precisely what Joe Biden has done with the largest representatives of technology, networks, energy, banking or insurance. After a high-level meeting at the White House, the President of the United States has taken a few billions and a promise of investment in education and materials on cybersecurity for the strategic institutions of the country. Everything from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or Google, among others.
The situation in the United States in terms of cybersecurity has not passed a good 2021. A succession of attacks on strategic infrastructures has revealed the precarious situation of the country's cyber defense . Something that, in general, practically all Western countries sin. Spain, for its part, has suffered successive attacks that even after months have not found a solution.
In the case of the United States, the icing on the cake for its cybersecurity came with the attack on Colonial Pipeline in May; America's largest gas pipeline remained blocked by DarkSide's ramsonware attack. Along with this, the SolarWinds data leak that affected the Department of Homeland Security or the data leak of the police in the country's capital. According to the president, “most of our critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, and the federal government cannot face this challenge alone,” says the Financial Times in statements to the media at the opening of the meeting. An event that was already announced this summer as one of the objectives of the White House.
With this history, Biden has made use of the most important CEOs in the country . More than 20 executives called, including Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella and Andy Jassy, were among those called. All willing to open the checkbook to fight cybersecurity attacks allegedly perpetrated by Russia and China.
Funding and training problem in cybersecurity
The United States has nearly 500,000 unfilled vacancies for cybersecurity areas. According to Biden, there is a big training problem. In this sense, IBM and Amazon have already promised to do their bit.
The first will train 150,000 workers in cybersecurity for 3 years; mainly in traditionally black colleges and universities in order to achieve greater equality in the sector.
Amazon will open its internal cybersecurity protection training and protection manual to its customers. And although Bezos's empire has been the only one to not open the checkbook, it did advance the free opening of multi-factor authentication to some Amazon Web Service users. A promise also shared by Apple, which is committed to intensifying security protocols between its providers .
However, Google and Microsoft were the most generous to the United States Government. The Nadella firm announced that it would quadruple the investment in cybersecurity: 20,000 million dollars in total, which would be added to 150 million for national and local governments . Google would do the same with an investment of 10,000 million, plus the promise to train 100,000 workers in the area of cybersecurity.
The rest of those summoned agreed to apply stricter security protocols. Mainly in critical services that affect energy, water and transport after the attacks that occurred in 2021. The same ones that gave rise to the Cyber Incident Notification Law that obliges companies collaborating with the Government to have stricter protocols.
