It’s no hyperbole to say that we’re living in turbulent times, but a group of 34 tech firms from around the world have banded together and taken a vow to, essentially, help keep their technologies from making things worse, embodied in the text of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord. The document lays out a number of terms and conditions for signatories to abide by, which basically boils down to never knowingly aiding in any type of cyber warfare or cyberattack, and fighting back against cyberattacks and cyberterrorism in any way possible in order to protect innocent people and companies who depend on modern technology to live their lives and run their businesses.
The full terms of the accord come in four overarching blanket statements, which are laid out as follows; “We will protect all our users and customers everywhere.”, “We will oppose cyberattacks on innocent citizens and enterprises from everywhere.”, “We will help empower users, customers, and developers to strengthen cybersecurity protection.”, and “We will partner with each other and with like-minded groups to enhance cybersecurity.” In essence, this means that all of the companies involved in the accord will actively work to prevent technology from being used to attack or terrorize, and will help to educate and empower end-users when it comes to cybersecurity.
The full list of signatories at this time is ABB Group, ARM, Avast, Bitdefender, BT Group, CA Technologies, Cisco, Cloudflare, Datastax, Dell, Docusign, Facebook, Fastly, Fireeye, F-Secure, GitHub, Guardtime, HP Inc and its enterprise arm, HPE, Intuit, Juniper Networks, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Nielsen, Nokia, Oracle, RSA, SAP, Stripe, Symantec, Telefonica, Tenable, Trendmicro, and VMWare. A large number of big names such as Google, Apple, Twitter and Samsung are not officially on board with the accord as of this writing. None of the mentioned firms have made any press releases regarding the accord at this time, so none of their stances on the matter are known for certain. They are, of course, only some of the first names to jump to mind out of the large number of companies in the global tech world that conceivably have a reason to sign the accord, but have yet to do so. Since it was only publicly announced recently, expect more companies to come forward with something to say in the near future, and perhaps join the list of signatories.