Microsoft ceases new sales in Russia & assists Ukraine against cyberattacks
Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft have now all made their stances clear.
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In a recent blog post by company exec Brad Smith, Microsoft has detailed its plans to halt all new services and sales in Russia due to the ongoing occupation and invasion of another sovereign country.
The blog post claims that Microsoft is working with the US, EU and UK in order to cease aspects of their services in the country. It’s unclear as to whether or not their business includes things like Microsoft Azure and their other additional cloud-based services, or business in Russia with their Xbox gaming brand. We’re just going to have to wait and see in order to understand just how multifaceted these actions by Microsoft ends up being. As a huge company, that delivers innumerable amounts of services abroad, the statement appears to be strongly worded in favor of Ukraine, even going so far as to state that they wish to aid the currently-occupied country in any way they know-how, and more specifically, against cyberattacks.
Microsoft shields Ukraine against Russian cyberattacks
In the statement made by Brad Smith, he states that Microsoft has already disrupted over 20 attacks against Ukraine, by efforts made by Russian entities. This includes targeted cyberattacks against their governmental, IT and financial infrastructures, which all help to aid in what Russia aims to do, which is to destabilize their digital entities to disrupt civilian and governmental processes. They have also noted that these attacks violate the Geneva Convention.
The blog post further states that Microsoft is in contact with UN affairs teams, The Red Cross and more to help understand how they can help Ukrainians against cyberattacks, and how to best help displaced refugees. Brad Smiths left off in a final statement in Microsoft’s blog post by stating the following:
‘As a company, we are committed to the safety of our employees in Ukraine and we are in constant contact with them to offer support in many forms, including those who have needed to flee for their lives or safety.
Like so many others, we stand with Ukraine in calling for the restoration of peace, respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and the protection of its people.’
Wide-reaching implications
Since Microsoft operates with such a wide net of products and services, it’s going to be interesting to see the actual detail of how they are going to actually effectively deploy these measures against Russia, namely in their cloud processing services, and any ongoing service accounts that originate in Russia currently. According to Verge journalist Tom Warren, Microsoft has ‘nothing more to share’ quite yet. But, this inherently means that Microsoft has stopped sales of Xbox, Windows, Azure and more to the country. It’s unclear if this is a move made in compliance with sanctions against Russia currently, or if they’re doing more outside of adhering to governmental sanctions quite yet. There’s a lot unclear in this statement, and we can hope that Microsoft seeks to clarify it as quickly as possible as the situation continues to develop.
