The technology giant Microsoft is, as many other big ones in the market, making a statement regarding CyberSecurity: They are maintaining their $1 billion investment on yearly basis for research and development in this field, which does not include any “inorganic investments” (buying other companies). The latter investments will be a separate budget.
CyberSecurity is one of the hottest topics available in the technology market and for sure for investors as well. One of the recurrent items in Donald Trump’s agenda in the past elections was precisely how to secure America and Americans from cyber-attacks. Here’s the website for the new President of the United States where the main visions are expressed.
The confirmation from Microsoft about the $1 billion yearly investment came from Bharat Shah, Microsoft VP of security. Shah spoke in Microsoft’s BlueHat cyber security conference in Tel Aviv, Israel; the first of the MS BlueHat conferences that were not held in Redmond. “As more and more people use the cloud, that spending has to go up,” Shah said.
Israel, the Silicon Valley for Security Startups?
The decision of having the BlueHat conference in Israel was not a random one, the country has developed for several years now a large tendency in technology companies and in the most recent ones, for CyberSecurity startups.
Microsoft already invested in CyberSecurity startups based in Israel: Team 8 which operates as a startup foundry, and has so far spawned two separate companies. Illusive Networks is one of them, founded in 2014, a company that produces technology that deceives cyber attackers by planting false information about given network’s resources.
The second spinoff, Claroty, also founded in 2014, aims to secure industrial control systems used by power plants and oil refineries. The company has so far raised $32 million from investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavors, Mitsui & Co, and others.
Cyber Attacks on the Rise, same as Azure Numbers
The number of attempted cyber-attacks was 20,000 a week two or three years ago, that figure had now risen to 600,000-700,000, according to Microsoft data. Making these type of investments being a “must” for the Redmond Company, considering the growth their cloud solutions are having.
Azure is having a rewarding growth on a short basis, with quarterly sales rising 116% through Q3, 2016. Microsoft and Amazon for sure will maintain this close battle for the cloud supremacy within the upcoming years.
Amazon continues to be the leader in the cloud market share, but and any misstep on the security field for these companies could result in losing catastrophically.
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