Microsoft President Brad Smith will face the House Homeland Security Committee in Congress on Thursday afternoon to answer issues of cybersecurity after Chinese and Russian hackers were able to breach its systems.
The company disclosed that hackers with links to China stole around 60,000 emails from the U.S. State Department, and Russian hackers were able to spy on the emails of the senior staff of Microsoft — both of which breached the security systems of the software giant.
The Cyber Safety Review Board comprised of government and private security experts, and formed by U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Andrew Mayorkas, issued a report in April that chastised Microsoft for not having been transparent about the Chinese hack.
The board stated that the hacks could have been preventable and they jeopardized national security. Microsoft is one of the primary vendors of national security establishments and the U.S. government.
Aside from the board calling out the tech company, Microsoft has already been the subject of criticisms from its peers in the industry for its lack security measures, Reuters reported.
In a prepared testimony obtained by CNN, Smith will tell the panel that Microsoft accepts responsibility for each and every one of the assigned cybersecurity failings on the board’s report. It described the shortcomings of Microsoft as having committed a “cascade” of “avoidable errors,” which resulted in the two security breaches.
“We acknowledge that we can and must do better, and we apologize and express our deepest regrets to those who have been impacted,” Smith’s testimony reads.
In an earlier statement, the panel stated that it will be examining security lapses, plans of the company in improving security, and the challenges that it faces in ensuring defenses against cyberattacks.
Smith stated that the company has already been overhauling cybersecurity practices for months, taking into consideration the recommendations made by the board.
