Microsoft is engaged in partnerships with different governments around the world to help them build a secure network for protecting and sharing data. High profile data breaches have become a common sight. As such an organisation capable of providing information about cyber-security threats to help security agencies understand the threats impacting their networks and prepare them for the attacks of tomorrow can prove beneficial. This makes the background for latest Microsoft and NATO agreement.
Microsoft-NATO information-sharing partnership agreement
The agreement announced today makes it possible for NATO, the EU and Microsoft for augmenting the continent’s resources to tackle the menace of cyber-crime. Microsoft has been working with NATO for over a decade and have agreed to renew a longstanding partnership that will see the software giant provide the intergovernmental treaty group’s Communications and Information Agency with details of Microsoft products and services, as well as new information about cybersecurity threats to the member countries.
This new agreement falls under Microsoft’s Government Security Program (GSP) which is part of the company’s Trustworthy Computing Group. The GSP allows national governments unique access to Microsoft’s products including the source code to verify that there are no backdoors into the operating system; countries in the GSP are also provided regularly with vulnerability information.
Apart from the above, it is learned that Microsoft has other agreements with more than 40 agencies from international organizations and countries including Australia, Austria, Canada, Poland and Russia. While the agreement is made with NATO itself and not the member countries, NATO will share necessary security information with its constituent states in order to protect them from threats.
