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.
Why in the absolute fuuuuuck would a “secure” computer with sensitive data be running motherfucking Windows?! Linux is easy enough for pretty much any Windows user in an office environment to handle these days. There’s just no excuse for sensitive business to ever be done on Windows at this point.
The company I work at “supports” Linux in the sense that you’re allowed to use Linux but then you’re essentially on your own when it comes to solving problems. I asked why there’s no proper Linux support and the short answer was “it’s too much trouble”. The long answer was “don’t ask. I don’t want to get into it”.
So my guess is that setting up a company wide policies and support for Linux is significantly more work than it is for Windows or Mac.
Question is: For how long? Security costs money, AI brings profits (in several ways).
At the moment they are making a big production of caring for the user. Which they basically never did, actually. They are only as pro user as they have to to improve their profits. Just wait until the shareholders reign them in because they want the company to extract more money out of the
customersvictims.Ms has always been a shitty company, from the time it was formed
It wasn’t even Bill’s software iirc.
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.
Lol. Considering it was senior management that ignored staff, this statement is even fucking dumber than it sounds.
“Next week to improve employee morale we will have a pizza party” - Nadella, probably
they could throw a pizza party for their government clients. Less work than fixing the problem
Same energy as “You have unlimited PTO here, but we also have this nifty little thing called performance metrics”
"Of course, fixing these kinds of issues won’t push your product deadlines back at all. But we’ll be thankful to you! "
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.
Usually they set up a hotline which may or may not get you fired.
Happy cake day!
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.
Too late, my office just switched to Linux.
…what? What kind of office do you work in that understands linux??? Most offices I’ve worked in don’t even understand the copier.
Rough month for reflection at M$. Possibly finally took it too far with users via Recall and - quite a feat here - showed Microsoft in a negative light for another big solidified base in government.
Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority
Didn’t they already do that a decade or two ago??
Look at this smug assholes face. He knows damn well they won’t be doing anything of the sort unless it increases their profit margins. And he also knows damn well the government won’t do anything to seriously hinder their margins.
Bread and circuses. This is just another show. You want change? Stop using Microsoft. Period.
That’s all week and good for the minority of jobs that didn’t cling to it like a codependent partner.
too late
They legally can’t prioritize shit but shareholder profits. We are all about to watch a US based company, purposefully fuck over the US government and possibly us by extension, and nothing will happen. Fuck this oligarchy.
They legally can’t prioritize shit but shareholder profits.
This is a lie… Stop spreading it as it helps corporations hide behind it to do evil shit
I just jumped down a rabbit hole, thank you. Where the fuck did that statement come from? I didn’t find the source of it. Only that its not true.
There was some case where shareholders sued the board or the CEO because they were borderline embezzling.
In the judgement there was some language that these thieves were not prioritizing the shareholders and from that, the whole lie evolved that USA corporations have to kill their grandma’s if that’s the only way to profit
no they won’t. these pricks literally fired their entire AI Ethics team… that tells you everything you need to know about where their priorities are.
the only thing they are gonna do about this is figure out a way to make people not angry, but continue to fo as much shady shit as they can.
Definitely wasn’t aware of that…
literally fired their entire AI Ethics team
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23638823/microsoft-ethics-society-team-responsible-ai-layoffs
It’s always one of the first things to get cut when companies try to save money.
ai ethics teams are a joke. They deserve to get fired.
Microsoft focused on security at this point is like a builder focusing on building strong foundations now that the house is built on top.
It’s a little too late my dudes.
It would take ripping apart and rewriting hundreds of thousands of lines of source code, if not millions. Not just bloat from one off bright ideas, that led to the next bright ideas, but the deliberate obsfucation to protect proprietary code, in more instances than I can imagine. I’m not a programmer, so I could be wrong, obviously, but from my admittedly limited perspective, they’d be better off writing a whole new OS without all the built-in garbage nobody wants.
I think Windows 11 was supposed to be that clean break. They’ve reimplemented a lot of core functionality compared to XP & 7. If they’re still getting breached then they obviously aren’t serious about security.
The issues are primarily with Azure, I believe.
I remember them saying all the same exact things in the early 2000s after a slew of widespread disasters. Security will never be a higher priority than whatever cool new thing they want to sell.
Lol, Microsoft will focus on profits and shareholders, and shareholders want AI cramed into everything.
This is like that psychopath GF that lies and pushes you around to test your limits with the evil plan to manipulate you. Every once in a while you can complain about her behavior and then she will bombard you with fake love and forgiveness to push later in the future again.
Rather than driving the industry forward with leadership and vision Microsoft is being driven by AI and Advertising fads that are self destructing facebook and google.
Its clear its too late for Microsoft to do anything but lose trust at this point. If the outlook hacks and US government didnt cause them to rethink these terrible anti-privacy ideas then a bit of AI backlash won’t either. As soon as people look away they’ll start stuffing the OS with snoopware again.
