Yahoo Finance Tech companies promise not to help governments wage cyber war
A coalition of technology companies including Facebook, Nokia and Microsoft have pledged not to help nation states launch cyber attacks and block governments from tampering with their products.
A group of 34 companies have signed up to the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, a watershed agreement among the largest-ever group of companies working to defend customers from cyber criminals and nation state hackers.
The 34 companies include operators of technologies that power the backbone of the internet in the West such as industrial supplier ABB, chipmaker Arm, networking supplier Cisco, Facebook, HP, HPE, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle and Trend Micro.
Microsoft President Brad Smith said: “The devastating attacks from the past year demonstrate that cybersecurity is not just about what any single company can do but also about what we can all do together.
“This tech sector accord will help us take a principled path towards more effective steps to work together and defend customers around the world.”
The pledge comes a day after the US and the UK made an extraordinary joint statement detailing how Russia has already infiltrated the high ground of the internet using network routers of offices and people’s homes. Officials warned that Russia has embedded itself in these networks to “lay a foundation for future offensive operations” which could include an attack on critical infrastructure.
The National Cyber Security Centre, the FBI and the Department for Homeland Security in the US have warned that this "threatens our respective safety, security and economic well-being".
In signing up to the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, the companies agree to commitments including blocking their respective governments from meddling in the technology development, design and distribution of their products and working together to share information about bugs, minimising the potential for malware to spread across the internet.
