Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, and Apple CEO Tim Cook are among the tech executives who’ve been invited to participate in a White House cybersecurity meeting on Wednesday with President Joe Biden, according to a report by Bloomberg News, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
Cyberattacks and ransomware incidents, such as the Colonial Pipeline hack, have escalated significantly in the past year, creating new incentives for U.S. government and corporate interests to collaborate on the issue.
Amazon, Microsoft and other companies expected to participate aren’t commenting publicly on the meeting at this point.
The focus of the meeting will reportedly include efforts to counteract attacks that leverage vulnerabilities in the software supply chain. In the high-profile SolarWinds attack, discovered last year, hackers believed to be connected to the Russian government infiltrated companies and U.S. agencies by inserting malware into software updates for the widely used IT infrastructure management product.
An executive order signed by Biden in May laid out a series of steps to improve information sharing and transparency about software systems and threats to federal infrastructure.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced a new initiative this month called the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative. Initial industry partners include Amazon Web Services, AT&T, CrowdStrike, FireEye Mandiant, Google Cloud, Lumen, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and Verizon.
Public agencies and private-sector companies are aiming to create “a unique planning capability to be proactive [versus] reactive in our collective approach to dealing with the most serious cyber threats to our nation,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly in a statement announcing the effort.
