Cybersecurity Tech Accord expands with new members, partners
Microsoft announced that, six months after its introduction, the Cybersecurity Tech Accord has nearly doubled its membership and partnered with the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise.
After six months, the Cybersecurity Tech Accord has nearly doubled in size.
Microsoft announced at its Ignite 2018 conference on Monday that the organization, which was created to foster collaboration on information security among global technology companies, has expanded to 61 signatory members, including Panasonic, Hitachi, Imperva and Swisscom. The Cybersecurity Tech Accord was first unveiled by Microsoft's president, Brad Smith, during his keynote at RSA Conference 2018.
During his keynote address at Ignite 2018, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said partnerships like the Cybersecurity Tech Accord were one of the three pillars of Microsoft's "trust and security" strategy. The tech accord, he said, aims to "bring companies across the tech industry [together] to protect everybody."
In addition to the new members, the Cybersecurity Tech Accord announced a new partnership with the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE), an organization founded in 2015 to promote great collaboration on and sharing of infosec best practices among countries, international organizations and private enterprises. GFCE member countries include the United States, Canada, France, Germany, India and Japan. Enterprise members of the forum include founding Cybersecurity Tech Accord companies Microsoft and Cisco.
As part of the partnership with the GFCE, the Cybersecurity Tech Accord will introduce a series of free webinars next month on key infosec topics for emerging markets. The first webinar will be hosted by Microsoft and will serve as an introduction to cloud computing. The Cybersecurity Tech Accord said it will also produce infosec training materials to help educate interested parties.
The alliance with the GFCE looks to bring the Cybersecurity Tech Accord closer to many of the world's governments during a time of escalating nation-state cyberattacks, as well as increasing discussions of hacking back against foreign adversaries.
One of the core principles of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord is to "oppose cyberattacks on innocent citizens and enterprises from anywhere." To that end, the members of the accord pledged not to assist governments with offensive cyberattacks and will prevent any efforts by government agencies to tamper with or weaken their products "during their development, design, distribution and use" of the products.
