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Satya Nadella, the Chief Executive Officer, shared the below communication to the employees of Microsoft. In light of the significant attention and discussion this announcement has garnered, it has been made publicly available as an official record.<\/em><\/p>\n Today, I want to talk about something critical to our company\u2019s future: prioritizing security above all else.<\/p>\n Microsoft runs on trust, and our success depends on earning and maintaining it. We have a unique opportunity and responsibility to build the most secure and trusted platform that the world innovates upon.<\/p>\n The recent findings by the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) regarding the Storm-0558 cyberattack, from summer 2023, underscore the severity of the threats facing our company and our customers, as well as our responsibility to defend against these increasingly sophisticated threat actors.<\/p>\n Last November, we launched our Secure Future Initiative (SFI) with this responsibility in mind, bringing together every part of the company to advance cybersecurity protection across both new products and legacy infrastructure. I\u2019m proud of this initiative, and grateful for the work that has gone into implementing it. But we must and will do more.<\/p>\n Going forward, we will commit the entirety of our organization to SFI, as we double down on this initiative with an approach grounded in three core principles:<\/p>\n These principles will govern every facet of our SFI pillars as we: Protect Identities and Secrets, Protect Tenants and Isolate Production Systems, Protect Networks<\/strong>, Protect Engineering Systems, Monitor and Detect Threats, <\/strong>and Accelerate Response and Remediation. <\/strong>We\u2019ve shared specific, company-wide actions each of these pillars will entail \u2014 including those recommended in the CSRB\u2019s report \u2014 which you can learn about here<\/a>. Across Microsoft, we will mobilize to implement and operationalize these standards, guidelines, and requirements and this will be an added dimension of our hiring and rewards decisions. In addition, we will instill accountability by basing part of the compensation of the senior leadership team on our progress towards meeting our security plans and milestones.<\/p>\n We must approach this challenge with both technical and operational rigor, and with a focus on continuous improvement. Every task we take on \u2013 from a line of code, to a customer or partner process \u2013 is an opportunity to help bolster our own security and that of our entire ecosystem. This includes learning from our adversaries and the increasing sophistication of their capabilities, as we did with Midnight Blizzard. And learning from the trillions of unique signals we\u2019re constantly monitoring to strengthen our overall posture. It also includes stronger, more structured collaboration across the public and private sector.<\/p>\n Security is a team sport, and accelerating SFI isn\u2019t just job number one for our security teams \u2013 it\u2019s everyone\u2019s top priority and our customers\u2019 greatest need.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re faced with the tradeoff between security and another priority, your answer is clear: Do security<\/strong>. In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems. This is key to advancing both our platform quality and capability such that we can protect the digital estates of our customers and build a safer world for all.<\/p>\n Satya<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n