Making sense of Microsoft's congressional testimony on hacking and cloud security

Microsoft president Brad Smith appeared last Tuesday along with executives from SolarWinds, FireEye, and CrowdStrike at US Senate hearings and again on Friday at US House of Representatives hearings to provide new testimony on the hacking campaign that centered on SolarWinds and public cloud infrastructure.

During the Senate hearing, the tech companies vied to shift blame, with CrowdStrike offering criticisms of Microsoft. Delivering Microsoft's perspective, Smith argued for improvements to cybersecurity information sharing and preparedness.

A renewed focus on cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity was already a key focus for governments and corporations years before the SolarWinds hack. But each damaging high-profile attack adds to calls for increased precautions—and can leave all those affected trying to assign the blame. The SolarWinds hack is particularly embarrassing because it took so long to recognize and affected so many prominent agencies and organizations. David Taylor, a managing director in consulting firm Protiviti’s security and privacy practice told MSCN: