The Russian government-backed cybersecurity attack that exploited flaws in SolarWinds (SWI) software should be a wake-up call to the U.S. government and other nations, Microsoft (MSFT) President Brad Smith said Wednesday. He made the statements in a keynote speech at the virtual CES 2021 conference. Microsoft stock rose on Wednesday.
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Smith said the tech industry should lead the call for governments to establish diplomatic “rules of the road” when it comes to cybersecurity.
“Governments have spied on each other for centuries,” he said. “But we’ve long lived in a world where there were norms and rules that created expectations about what was appropriate and what was not. And what happened with SolarWinds was not.”
Governments and the tech industry need to forcefully condemn such state-sponsored attacks, he said.
SolarWinds Attack Was Assault On Global Tech Supply Chain
“This wasn’t the case of one nation simply trying to spy on or hack its way into a computer network of another,” Smith said. “It was a mass, indiscriminate global assault on the technology supply chain that all of us are responsible for protecting.”
He added, “We need to come together as an industry and use our collective voice to say to every government around the world that this kind of supply-chain disruption is not something that any government or any company should be allowed to pursue.”
Government agencies and corporations also need to do a better job of sharing information about cyberattacks and possible exploits, Smith said.
On the stock market today, Microsoft stock rose 0.7% to 216.34.
Microsoft Stock Is On IBD’s Leaderboard List
Microsoft stock has been moving sideways for four months, awaiting a catalyst to move higher. It has been consolidating for the past 20 weeks with a buy point of 232.96, according to IBD MarketSmith charts.
Microsoft stock is on IBD’s prestigious Leaderboard watchlist. Leaderboard analysis has identified at least one aggressive entry point for Microsoft stock below its proper buy point.
The IBD Stock Checkup tool ranks Microsoft stock as fourth out of seven stocks in IBD’s Computer Software-Desktop industry group. It has a middling IBD Composite Rating of 61 out of 99.
Follow Patrick Seitz on Twitter at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
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