Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of Microsoft, speaks at Gateway Technical College in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, on May 8, 2024.
Alex Wroblewski | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A parliamentary committee wants Microsoftits top lawyer, Brad Smith, will attend a hearing this month about exploits of the company’s software that led to hackers obtaining emails from US government officials.
Politicians regularly ask tech companies to send their leaders to Washington. The CEOs of Alphabet, Meta and TikTok have answered questions from members of Congress in recent years. Microsoft, the world’s most valuable public company, sells subscriptions to email software that is pervasive in business and government, making it an obvious target for hackers.
A proposed hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee at 10 a.m. ET on May 22 in Washington, will examine Microsoft’s response to the Chinese hacking of the email accounts of US government officials that the company disclosed last summer. The attack involved accounts belonging to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China.
But Smith may not necessarily appear at the time the committee asked at a letter sent him on Thursday.
“We are always committed to providing Congress with information important to the nation’s security, and we look forward to discussing the details of the best time and way to do so,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email Thursday.
Last month, the Cybersecurity Review Board said in a 34-page report in the attack that “Microsoft’s customers will benefit from its CEO and board directly focusing on the company’s security culture.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella asked employees to put security first in a note Last week. the company announced operational changes which face deficiencies identified by the independent federal board in the report.
Charlie Bell, executive vice president for security, said Microsoft would “improve the accuracy, efficiency, transparency and speed of public messaging and customer engagement” after the board expressed concern that the company was not fixing an error in a company blog post for months. .
In January, Microsoft reported another cyber attack. This time, Russian intelligence gained access to some of the company’s top executives’ email accounts.
Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., and Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in their letter inviting Smith to the hearing that they were encouraged by the company’s plans to review its security practices. But they said the company’s failure to stop the attacks put Americans at risk.
“Given the seriousness of the issues discussed above and the need for thorough consideration and oversight, it is critical that you appear before the committee,” Green and Thompson wrote.
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