Biden turns to top tech execs to collab on cybersecurity

President Joe Biden is turning to top executives from some of the country’s leading technology companies to help in the fight against cybersecurity attacks. He met with those executives at the White House Wednesday. The video above shows remarks President Biden made before the meeting.

“The reality is most of our critical infrastructure, owned and operated, is owned and operated by the private sector and the federal government can’t meet this challenge alone,” Biden said. “So I’ve invited you all here today because you have the power, the capacity and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cyber security.”

The guest list for Wednesday’s meeting included Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., was also invited, as well as the leaders of IBM, Microsoft and Automatic Data Processing.

Financial industry executives were also expected, including the chief executives of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. Representatives from the energy, education and insurance sectors were also in attendance.

Cybersecurity thrusted itself to near the top of Biden’s agenda after a series of ransomware attacks in recent months. These attacks include March’s Microsoft Exchange email server software hack, July’s Kaseya ransomware attack, as well as May’s Colonial Pipeline and JBS attacks.

“We’ve launched a 100 day initiative to improve cybersecurity across the electric sector,” Biden said Wednesday. “That initiative has already resulted in a more than 150 utilities that serve 90 million Americans being deployed, and or committing to deploy cybersecurity technologies that are, that are extending that initiative to gas pipelines as well, next, that’s where we’re going.”

It’s not just U.S. tech officials joining Biden in the fight.

“We’ve also rallied G7 countries to hold nations who harbor ransomware criminals accountable,” Biden said. “And I might add, I had a summit with Vladimir Putin and made it clear to him that we expected him to hold them accountable, as well, because they know where they are and who they are.”

Groups in China and Russia have both been declared responsible for some of the recent cyberattacks. For more on the America’s relationship with both countries, click here.