Microsoft Shows Its Power Against Russia

By Ellen Chang, The Street

Tech giant Microsoft  (MSFT) - Get Microsoft Corporation Report provided tech and monetary assistance to Ukraine as it fought against cyber attacks from Russia. 

The company made both financial and technological commitments to Ukraine as it was invaded by Russia in February. Microsoft promised a total of $239 million in assistance, including $107 million to "literally move the government and much of the country of Ukraine from on-premises servers to the cloud," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in an interview with GeekWire last week at his office in Redmond, Washington.

The Russian government has engaged in malicious cyber activities to suppress various political and social activity, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The Russian state-sponsored cyber actors have the ability to "compromise IT networks; develop mechanisms to maintain long-term, persistent access to IT networks; exfiltrate sensitive data from IT and operational technology (OT) networks; and disrupt critical industrial control systems (ICS)/OT functions by deploying destructive malware," CISA said in May.


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