Satya Nadella's Journey as Microsoft Chairman and CEO: Volume III: Journeys, #3

By Tali J Lingam

Satya Nadella faces the biggest crisis of his career as Microsoft gets criticized by United States Government for the company's pathetic cybersecurity standards. Find out how the failures in Microsoft are not one or two but a cascading series of flaws which have enabled hackers from enemy nations to access email accounts of high-profile Microsoft customers including the Secretary of Commerce.

 

All this has happened while Satya Nadella continues tomtoming meaningless products like Copilot for Security and tries to push Microsoft-owned cybersecurity Rubrik for IPO. This revelation is not recent and has been under investigation for a year or more. Microsoft seems to have made no meaningful efforts to remedy its security standards and the email accounts of even its top executives are being accessed by enemy-nation hackers even to this date as we speak.

 

Naturally, everyone has hesitated to point out to the vain, tone-deaf emperor that he has wearing no clothes till he got mocked in the public much like Nadella is being made fun of today for making a respected name in technology world into an unreliable cybersecurity mess that Microsoft is today.

 

Microsoft whose Windows Operating System was a security nightmare and gave birth to the billion-dollar antivirus industry, has taken the same carelessness to the cloud as well. Satya Nadella, an intellectually poor dictatorial business leader whose derives his power primarily by playing war-like power games and politics, is exposed as a chink of the old Microsoft culture that was derided for decades and gave birth to the Linux and Free Software movement in the early part of this century.

 

This massive cybersecurity breach along with unraveling AI hype train may be one of the defining moments of Satya Nadella's Journey as Microsoft Chairman and CEO. This breach at Microsoft shows how the company's employees who famously pride themselves on work life balance and exhibit carelessness in customer experience across their products and are famous for spending time inside office during office hours in enacting skits and dancing to popular musical numbers rather than working with a focus to make customers' lives better are brought into the light.

 

Satya Nadella's false claims of transforming Microsoft, a lie peddled in his book Hit Refresh, stands completely exposed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lawmark Press
• Release date: Apr 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224024759

Tali J Lingam

Tali J Lingam works for betterment in Legal Compliance and Ethics.

Book preview

Satya Nadella faces the biggest crisis of his career as Microsoft gets criticized by United States Government for the company’s pathetic cybersecurity standards. According to the report by United States Government’s Cyber Safety Review Board, the failures in Microsoft are not one or two but a cascading series of flaws which have enabled hackers from enemy nations to access email accounts of high-profile Microsoft customers including the United States Secretary of Commerce from whose email account, 60,000 emails are rumored to have been stolen.

The US Government board is a very high-profile board which has come into existence through an Executive Order signed by the US President Joe Biden (see Appendix A). Its conclusion (see Appendix B) after a detailed investigation is the harshest denouncement of Microsoft's cybersecurity practices to-date following a series of high-profile breaches that's put U.S. government secrets at risk. You have to appreciate the board for doing its duty with integrity and not being swayed by the charisma and other influences that Microsoft famously does in secret to win favors from regulators and government officials worldwide.

All this has happened while Satya Nadella continues tomtoming meaningless products like Copilot for Security and tries to push Microsoft-owned cybersecurity Rubrik for IPO. This revelation is not recent and has been under investigation for a year or more. Microsoft seems to have made no meaningful efforts to remedy its security standards and the email accounts of even its top executives are being accessed by enemy-nation hackers even to this date as we speak.

Has Satya Nadella gone into hiding? is something everybody is asking, as the usually bombastic, hype creator has not given any interview or clarification regarding this massive attack that has huge ramifications on United States Security.

Satya Nadella has been drumming up his Copilot product line to anyone and everyone, but not everyone is impressed. The US House of Representatives has implemented a strict prohibition on the use of Microsoft's AI-based chatbot, Copilot, by its staffers. Office of Cybersecurity identified potential risks associated with the application, particularly the threat of leaking sensitive House data to cloud services that have not been approved by the House.

In July 2023, hackers rumored to be affiliated to Chinese government were spotted in Microsoft's Azure and Microsoft 365 cloud networks and appeared to be accessing email inboxes across roughly 25 organizations, including the those belonging to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and several State officials.

The incident stirred a lot of anxiety across Washington given Microsoft's dominance as the U.S. government's top cloud provider.

The incident is not new, but a regular pattern as Microsoft has also been the target of several other high-profile incidents, including the 2021 Exchange hack and a recent, persistent set of attacks involving Russia's Midnight Blizzard hacking team.

July's breach was the result of avoidable errors and Microsoft's failure to detect the compromise of its cryptographic crown jewels, the report says.

Board members spent the last seven months interviewing Microsoft and speaking with other cloud service providers to determine where the company may have gone wrong.

Several recent operational and strategic decisions at Microsoft resulted in the company deprioritizing both enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management, the report adds. Obviously, we must add. All that Satya Nadella seems to have time for is to keep drumming the hype about the half-backed Artificial Intelligence product line named Copilot and calling this as the panacea for all the ills of the world. Nadella has proved to be all air and no stuff and clearly did not care about keeping up the trust of customers. As he used his public image to ensure no competitive voice remains after he moved from CEO to Chairman and CEO role and steadily removed all peers and potential challengers for his dominance in the company, Microsoft has become a dictatorial echo chamber where only one voice alone is heard – that of Satya Nadella, and anyone who has an independent viewpoint is shown the door.

Naturally, everyone has hesitated to point out to the vain, tone-deaf emperor that he has wearing no clothes till he got mocked in the public much like Nadella is being made fun of today for making a respected name in technology world into an unreliable cybersecurity mess that Microsoft is today.

This massive cybersecurity breach along with unraveling AI hype train may be one of the defining moments of Satya Nadella’s Journey as Microsoft Chairman and CEO. This breach at Microsoft shows how the company’s employees who famously pride themselves on work life balance and exhibit carelessness in customer experience across their products and are famous for spending time inside office during office hours in enacting skits and dancing to popular musical numbers rather than working with a focus to make customers’ lives better are brought into the light. Satya Nadella’s false claims of transforming Microsoft, a lie peddled in his book Hit Refresh, stands completely exposed.

Microsoft whose Windows Operating System was a security nightmare and gave birth to the billion-dollar antivirus industry, has taken the same carelessness to the cloud as well. Satya Nadella, an intellectually poor dictatorial business leader whose derives his power primarily by playing war-like power games and politics, is exposed as a chink of the old Microsoft culture that was derided for decades and gave birth to the Linux and Free Software movement in the early part of this century.

What is on customers’ minds?

This is a crisis and a disaster for Microsoft. Most customers have lost their confidence in Satya Nadella leadership after this incident.

An opinion poll among business customers who were asked if they believed Satya Nadella can fix Microsoft’s Cyber security disaster, gave a resounding NO as the answer.

Business heads are taking the findings of the Federal watch dog very seriously which has gone beyond a superficial investigation like Microsoft wanted (and does for all its internal harassment complaints like we previously reported in our books by Tali J Lingam), and went in depth into the company’s processes and mindset.

Microsoft’s Exchange server which manages access to emails, documents and other sensitive information was reportedly breached in China and the hackers gained the capability to access at a very deep level any Microsoft Exchange server in the world – meaning that emails hosted on