Thirty-four large technology companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, HP, ARM, Cisco and Oracle, have signed a new cybersecurity technology agreement. The commitment includes helping to protect against cyber attacks and not helping governments, including the United States, to "launch cyber attacks against innocent citizens and companies," as first reported in The New York Times .
According to NYT the driving impetus of the coalition has been the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, whose goal is, ultimately, to develop a "Geneva Digital Convention" to set the rules for a war acceptable digital As detailed in the agreement, there are four areas that the signed companies promise to improve: help protect clients from future attacks, refuse to help governments launch attacks, work to improve the ability of developers and customers to protect themselves, and working collectively to collaborate and share vulnerabilities and threats.
It's a good start, but as notes New York Times is still a very limited agreement that does not include several major companies like Apple, Google and Amazon. It is also almost entirely comprised of US companies. UU That means companies from Russia, North Korea, Iran or China, which in theory would be suspicious of the increased risk of helping their governments develop malicious digital hardware and software, are not making that same promise.