The Cybersecurity Tech Accord

In April 2018, 34 tech companies – including Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, Arm, ABB, Telefonica, Cisco, and Dell among others – have agreed on the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, publicly committing to protect and empower all customers everywhere from malicious attacks by cybercriminal enterprises and nation-states, and to improve the security, stability and resilience of cyberspace.

The four principles to which the companies committed, could be summarised as:

• Stronger defence: protecting all of their users and customers everywhere, including through developing products and services that prioritize security, privacy, integrity and reliability;
• No offense: opposing cyberattacks on innocent citizens and enterprises from anywhere, through protecting against tampering with and exploiting possible vulnerabilities in products and services, and not helping governments launch cyberattacks against innocent citizens and enterprises from anywhere;
• Capacity building: helping empower users, customers and developers to strengthen cybersecurity protection, through providing information and tools to address threats, and supporting actors to build cybersecurity capacities;
• Collective action: partnering with each other and with like-minded groups to enhance cybersecurity, to improve technical cooperation, coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and threat and information sharing, minimize the levels of malicious code being introduced into cyberspace, and civilian efforts to respond to and recover from cyberattacks.

Signatories of the Accord will define collaborative activities they will undertake to further the Accord and will report publicly on the progress in achieving the goals.

The list of signatories is available at the Cybersecurity Tech Accord website.