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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss Google’s criticism of Microsoft’s cybersecurity issues, referencing a report by the Cyber Safety Review Board and the subsequent responses from Microsoft executives.
Highlights
00:28 — Microsoft’s archrival in the cloud, Google Cloud, has come out and hammered Microsoft quite publicly about the cybersecurity crisis. Google Cloud has done that by asking, “Don’t customers deserve a more secure alternative? Don’t they deserve something better than what Microsoft’s been offering?”
01:21 — The Cyber Safety Review Board issued a report taking Microsoft to task for its inadequate security technology and practices and also its culture within Microsoft. So Google Cloud asks questions, like, “Is there a more secure alternative you could be using?” This came specifically from Google Cloud, particularly around Google Cloud Workspace. It’s a 14-page PDF document.
02:21 — It said that Microsoft wasn’t fully committed to cybersecurity, didn’t allocate enough budget toward it, and that it just wasn’t seen as a priority. Now, about three or four weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella issued a memo saying cybersecurity is number one. In addition, Charlie Bell, who heads up Microsoft’s security business, issued a long blog post.
03:03 — The very nature and depth of what Nadella and Bell went into showed just how deficient the security processes, mindset, and culture were at Microsoft. Toward the end of the Google Cloud document, it states that Microsoft’s customers did not have the essential facts needed to make their own risk assessments about Microsoft’s security capabilities in the cloud.
Ask Cloud Wars AI Agent about this analysis
04:00 — It isn’t just competitive sniping. For all of Microsoft’s extraordinary successes in the market over the past several years and its great achievements on many fronts, this is a problem of the most fundamental nature that will not go away.
05:20 — I don’t blame Google Cloud at all for doing this. I think it’s a good thing because it gives customers more information to consider when thinking about who is the right cloud vendor for them around security and, even more broadly, in the cloud overall.
