interview Microsoft has an astonishing level of IT control within the U.S. federal government, and former White House senior director of cyber policy AJ Grotto has justified calling Redmond’s recent security failures a national security issue. So much so that I think it is.
This week’s Grotto spoke with: register In the interview, which you can watch below, he said that getting Microsoft to make small concessions is a big fight for the Fed.
“Going back to the SolarWinds episode from a few years ago… [Microsoft] “Instead of making logging the default, we essentially upsold logging to federal agencies,” Grotto said. It has become very difficult to do so.”
Grotto said Microsoft had to “kick and scream” to provide logging capabilities to governments by default, and that the giant company made about $20 billion in revenue from security services last year. Given that fact, he said, the concessions were minimal at best.
Grotto said this shows that: [Microsoft] They just have a lot of influence and they’re not afraid to use it. ”
Add to that concerns about the Exchange Online intrusion by Chinese snoops and another Microsoft security breach by Russian cyber operatives, both of which gave spies access to U.S. government email, Grotto said. states that it is fair to classify Microsoft and its products as national corporations. Security concerns.
But what can be done to fix the problem when, according to Grotto’s calculations, 85 percent of the U.S. government’s productivity software, and even a share of its operating systems, belong to Redmond?
“Governments need to focus on encouraging and promoting competition,” Grotto said. He believes Microsoft needs to be publicly scrutinized and everyone should be informed when problems arise.
“At the end of the day, Microsoft is probably the most directly responsive of any company to market incentives,” Grotto said. “Unless this scrutiny changes the behavior of customers who are willing to look elsewhere, the incentive for Microsoft to change will not be as strong as it should be.” ®
