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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore the ramifications of major cybersecurity issues impacting Microsoft and its customers.
Highlights
00:24 — Microsoft just reported some superb fiscal Q3 numbers. But there’s an underlying issue here that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella failed to address on the earnings call. I don’t think that was a good decision on his part. That has to do with the extremely serious cybersecurity attack and breach that took place last year in China.
01:04 — Nadella had an opportunity on the April 25 Q3 earnings call to talk about that, but he chose not to. I think that was a bad mistake. During the earnings call, Nadella always goes through Microsoft’s 10 or 12 different product categories. When he got to security: “security is our number one priority.”
02:32 — Nadella devoted 146 words to the cybersecurity business. At the end, he talked about the gaming business. He devoted 143 words to their gaming business. So at least on this earnings call, security got as much airtime as their gaming business. I don’t think that’s a real good reflection of a number one priority.
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03:21 — This thing that happened last summer in China, the Storm-0558 attack and breach enabled the Chinese Communist Party or affiliated workers to gain access to some very high-level United States government officials, in terms of email and so forth. Microsoft still, according to the report from the Cyber Safety Review Board, doesn’t know what happened there.
04:31 — If I were a big customer of Microsoft, I’d have a very hard time taking seriously Nadella’s claim that “security is our number one priority,” when in fact, these very serious issues that the Cyber Safety Review Board looked into have not been addressed.
04:56 — In my article posting later, an open letter to Nadella, I’ve proposed things he could do going forward: ignore it all or address it head-on, with some twists on that. I think that Nadella and Microsoft owe it to Microsoft’s customers, partners, shareholders, and employees to do a better job of stating what’s going on here.
