Microsoft Is Hosting a Summit to Improve Cybersecurity

July’s CrowdStrike outage was a disaster. One buggy update from the company caused networks across the globe to shut down, leaving businesses paralyzed, airline customers stranded, and everyone looking for explanations and solutions.

Microsoft, of course, was caught in the middle of the debacle: While macOS and Linux customers were not affected by the CrowdStrike bug, only Windows customers were. Boeing in particular was so negatively impacted by the situation, the company is exploring possible litigation against Microsoft and CrowdStrike.

While there is reason to think Boeing brought on some of its woes upon itself, Microsoft clearly wants to get out ahead of the entire mess. As reported by Reuters, the company announced a September summit all about cybersecurity improvements, calling it the “Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit.”

The summit will take place in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft’s headquarters, on Sept. 10, 2024. The company is inviting CrowdStrike, as well as other “key partners” in endpoint security tech to talk about how the industry can improve its cybersecurity practices, and continue to protect their customers. Microsoft specifically wants to talk “concrete steps” all companies will take moving forward, as they work towards, “improving security and safe deployment practices, designing systems for resiliency and working together as a thriving community of partners to best serve customers now, and in the future.”

It won’t just be relevant companies in this space heading to the conference. Microsoft is also inviting government representatives to the conversation. The company says this is to promote “the highest level of transparency” in the community’s efforts to improve.

According to Microsoft, this summit will lead to actionable steps that will hopefully prevent another CrowdStrike-like outage from occurring again. It’s easy to think a conference like the Windows Endpoint Security Ecosystem Summit will be all talk, and no action, but if Microsoft is correct, this could be a big shift for the industry in a positive direction.