Cybersecurity talk at White House
President Biden on Wednesday met with the heads of Amazon, Apple, Google and JPMorgan to discuss cybersecurity after a series of high-profile hacks that left businesses and the US government reeling.
Amazon’s Andy Jassy, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, among others, met with Biden in the White House East Room.
“The federal government can’t meet this challenge alone,” Biden told the group. “We’ve got a lot of work to do and thank you very much.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, IBM chief Arvind Krishna and Tom Fanning, the CEO of utility giant Southern Co., were also present.
The tycoons joined the Biden administration’s recently confirmed national cybersecurity director, Chris Inglis, and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
The mostly closed-door meeting likely focused on ransomware, critical infrastructure, supply-chain security, cybersecurity education and databreach insurance policies.
A raft of hacks this year left US companies scrambling — including a T-Mobile data breach that affected 53 million customers, a hack of e-mail accounts run by Microsoft that the US government says was a Chinese espionage operation and an attack on the Colonial Pipeline by suspected Russian criminals that caused gas shortages on the East Coast and led the company to pay an $4.3 million ransom.
Insurance companies play an important part in covering damages associated with data breaches. Experts say influencing the insurance market’s policies around cyberattacks could bring widespread improvements to cyber-defense systems throughout private industry.