In brief: President Biden this week met with private sector and educational leaders to talk over opportunities to bolster the nation's cybersecurity following a string of nasty cyberattacks including the Colonial Pipeline ransomware assail and the SolarWinds hack. With any luck, renewed efforts will besides help to fill the near 500,000 open public and private cybersecurity jobs.

Equally rumored, representatives for some of the nation'due south top tech companies were in attendance, and it sounds as if it was a relatively productive meeting.

The National Institute of Standards and Engineering (NIST) volition piece of work with industry partners including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Travelers and Coalition to create a new framework that improves the security and integrity of the engineering science supply chain. Hopefully, their piece of work will serve as a guideline to public and individual entities on how to appraise and build secure technology.

Google plans to invest $10 billion over the adjacent half decade to enhance open-source security, aggrandize zero-trust programs and help secure the software supply chain. The search giant will additionally aid 100,000 Americans earn technical certificates that can atomic number 82 to loftier-quality, high-growth jobs.

Microsoft said it will invest $20 billion over the next five years to accelerate efforts to "integrate cyber security by design" and deliver advanced security solutions to customers. The Redmond-based tech giant will also immediately make available $150 million in technical services to help local, land and federal governments upgrade their security measures, in addition to expanding partnerships with not-profits and community colleges for cybersecurity training.

Amazon, meanwhile, vowed to make the security awareness preparation used past its employees available to the public for free. Furthermore, the e-commerce titan will supply Amazon Web Services account holders a multi-cistron authentication device free of charge.

IBM plans to train 150,000 people in the field of cybersecurity over the next 3 years. Furthermore, the tech company volition partner with more than than 20 historically black colleges and universities to constitute cybersecurity leadership centers in hopes of growing a more various workforce.

Apple said it will create a new program designed to seed continuous security improvements throughout the tech supply concatenation. The visitor'due south plan includes pushing for mass adoption of multi-factor authentication and bolstering areas like vulnerability remediation, incident response, event logging and security training.

Resilience, Coalition, Code.org, Girls Who Code and the Academy of Texas System likewise made pledges to the industry, merely for the sake of brevity, we'll get out those details over in the White House press release for anyone that wants to learn more than about them.

The Biden Administration too formally expanded the Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Initiative to include natural gas pipelines. According to the White Business firm, this initiative has already succeeded in improving the cybersecurity of more than 150 electrical utilities across the country that collectively serve some xc million Americans.