Major technology companies call for global push to strengthen cyber defence
More than 150 technology, cybersecurity and financial companies have signed an open letter calling for coordinated action to strengthen cyber defences as AI is expected to increase the scale and sophistication of cyberattacks.
More than 150 organisations from the technology, cybersecurity, financial and other sectors have signed an open letter calling for a global effort to strengthen cyber defence.
The signatories include companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cisco, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, IBM, Mastercard, Visa and many others. The letter argues that organisations have a limited opportunity to use recent advances in artificial intelligence to strengthen security before AI-enabled cyberattacks become more widespread.
The groups point to longstanding weaknesses in digital systems, including unpatched software, misconfigured systems, excessive permissions, weak authentication and outdated infrastructure. They argue that these problems have left many organisations, particularly critical infrastructure operators, exposed to attacks.
The letter calls for greater use of AI tools by cybersecurity teams to help identify and fix vulnerabilities more quickly and at lower cost. It also encourages organisations to share security tools, tested solutions, threat intelligence and practical guidance so that measures developed by one organisation can benefit others.
Governments are urged to strengthen cooperation with industry, improve the sharing of actionable threat information, fund cyber defence for organisations with limited resources and expand access to defensive technologies. The signatories specifically highlight hospitals, water utilities and local governments as areas where additional support may be needed.
The letter also calls on companies developing advanced AI models to make defensive capabilities more widely available, provide funding and training, improve monitoring of AI agents and support authorised security testing and coordinated vulnerability disclosure.
The signatories argue that cybersecurity should be treated as a collective responsibility, with progress measured by how many organisations are protected, how quickly attacks can be contained and whether security fixes are effective. The initiative ultimately seeks to use advances in AI to address existing weaknesses in digital infrastructure before attackers can exploit the same technologies at greater scale.
