The largest U.S. technology companies, including Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google )NASDAQ:GOOGL), are promising to spend billions of dollars to improve cybersecurity after a White House meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden.
The meeting was convened following several high-profile cyberattacks in the U.S., including on government software contractor SolarWinds and oil pipeline Colonial Pipeline.
The new commitments made by technology companies range from working toward new industry standards to supplying other businesses with stronger security tools and providing skills training to workers to fill roughly 500,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs.
The White House said that consumer technology giant Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) would create a program devoted to making security improvements across its technology supply chains, which will include working with suppliers to adopt multifactor authentication and security training.
Google said it would invest more than $10 billion U.S. over five years to strengthen cybersecurity and pledged to train 100,000 Americans in technical fields such as information technology support and data analytics.
Microsoft has committed $20 billion U.S. over five years to deliver more advanced security tools, including investing $150 million U.S. to help government agencies upgrade their security systems.
IBM (NYSE:IBM) said it would train more than 150,000 people in cybersecurity skills within three years, while partnering with historically black colleges and universities to help diversify its workforce. The company also announced a new data storage solution for critical infrastructure companies.
Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division of Amazon, is planning to give account holders free multifactor authentication devices to better secure their data.
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said the White House meeting “brought together the right set of folks to have a good discussion.”