Having more healthy competition in the form of Linux would have been net positive for the society:
> Failure of accountability
Many in the security community see the CSRB report and the recent CISA emergency directive as direct indictments not only of Microsoft’s security culture, but a government that has allowed Microsoft to maintain lucrative government contracts with no fear of competition across many of its services.
“The federal government gets off the hook a little easy in this report,” said Mark Montgomery, senior director at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Despite significant encouragement from outside experts, the Biden administration, and its predecessors, have failed to treat cloud computing as a national critical infrastructure, that is itself critical to maintaining the security of our national critical infrastructures.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who called for a federal investigation following the State Department email hack, said the federal government shared responsibility for the negligent behavior disclosed in the report.
Wyden said Microsoft has been rewarded with billions of dollars in federal contracts, while not being held to account for even the most basic security standards.
I pound this a lot here, but open source investment is a security and military matter to the state. Relying on unfunded overworked and frankly exploited programmers for major aspects of security infrastructure is madness.
The US has a billion or ten to spare for this. Billion. With a B. This is an investment that is not just defense, it is an investment in the general economy.
The NSA budget is (maybe) 3.6 billion dollars. A general secure computing base for the American economy is worth at least 3x that.
> Failure of accountability
Many in the security community see the CSRB report and the recent CISA emergency directive as direct indictments not only of Microsoft’s security culture, but a government that has allowed Microsoft to maintain lucrative government contracts with no fear of competition across many of its services.
“The federal government gets off the hook a little easy in this report,” said Mark Montgomery, senior director at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Despite significant encouragement from outside experts, the Biden administration, and its predecessors, have failed to treat cloud computing as a national critical infrastructure, that is itself critical to maintaining the security of our national critical infrastructures.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who called for a federal investigation following the State Department email hack, said the federal government shared responsibility for the negligent behavior disclosed in the report.
Wyden said Microsoft has been rewarded with billions of dollars in federal contracts, while not being held to account for even the most basic security standards.