“The Charter of Trust embodies the values we at Microsoft take seriously: being proactive, open, transparent, and collaborative in developing cybersecurity best practices and enhancing trust,” said Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President of Customer Security & Trust at Microsoft. “Industry partnership is crucial to addressing the challenges we face today, and we look forward to working with the Charter’s members to drive forward strategies and initiatives that strengthen cybersecurity.”

“Cybersecurity is the key to building people’s confidence in digitalization,” said Cedrik Neike, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Digital Industries. “By bringing Microsoft on board, the Charter of Trust is, again, gaining considerably more weight for making our connected world more resilient and for shaping our digital future.”

Over the last four years, the Charter of Trust has already launched a wealth of measures to enhance cybersecurity – including the “Security by Default” principle, which takes cybersecurity into account right from the design phase and provides products with preconfigured security measures. In addition, the CoT partners have defined baseline requirements for their suppliers in order to further enhance cybersecurity throughout supply chains. The primary focus in the next phase will be on implementing a cross-industry approach to evaluate supply-chain security. In this context, the growing Charter of Trust community will provide companies – mainly small and medium-sized businesses – with information, training and further resources.

The CoT initiative collaborates regularly with various global authorities and scientific institutions to also drive advances in cybersecurity internationally and harmonize efforts across national borders and organizational boundaries. For this purpose, the CoT initiative has created the Associated Partner Forum, which has been joined by institutions such as the German Federal Office for Information Security, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC), the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity and the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering GmbH (HPI) in Germany.

At the Munich Security Conference in February 2018, Siemens and eight partners from the industrial sector signed the world’s first joint charter for greater cybersecurity. In addition to Siemens and the Munich Security Conference, the signatories include AES, Airbus, Allianz, Atos, Bosch, Dell Technologies, Deutsche Post DHL Group, IBM, Infineon Technologies AG, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, NTT, NXP Semiconductors, SGS, TotalEnergies, TÜV SÜD – and now Microsoft.