Microsoft’s technology plays a big role in facilitating increasingly devastating cyber attacks, a senior official at an email security firm says, accusing the Redmond behemoth of profiting from the existence of vulnerabilities.
In an op-ed published by the American website Fortune, Ryan Kalember, executive vice-president of Cyber Security Strategy at Proofpoint, said Microsoft had recently announced it would spend US$20 billion (A$28 billion) on better cyber security tools over the next five years, a step up from the US$1 billion it had spent annually since 2015.
“This is yet another step in Microsoft’s quest to position itself as the global leader in cyber security,” he said. “But while this may appear a noble endeavour, all is not quite as it seems. Microsoft technology is a significant contributing factor in increasingly devastating cyber attacks.”
Kalember said Microsoft’s failure to shore up known vulnerabilities was believed to have exacerbated the recent SolarWinds hack.
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“Meanwhile, its cyber security arm has seen 40% growth year on year, with revenues reaching US$10 billion. This makes for a rather uncomfortable dichotomy. Far from a cyber…
