Monthly Archives: May 2020

Just weeks after announcing a deal to acquire 5G specialist Affirmed Networks, Microsoft is making another acquisition to strengthen its cloud-based telecoms offering. Its acquiring Metaswitch Networks, a U.K.-based provider of cloud-based communications products used by carriers and network providers (customers include the likes of BT in the U.K., Sprint and virtual network consortium RINA.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed in todays announcement. Metaswitchs investors included the PE firms Northgate and WRV, Francisco Partners and Sequoia, but its unclear how much it had raised nor its last valuation. (The company has been around since 1981.)

The deal speaks to a growing focus from tech companies leveraging cloud architectures and the adoption of new networking technologies specifically 5G to capitalise on a bigger role in becoming service providers both to carriers and to those who would like to build carrier-like services (potentially bypassing telcos in the process), through the offering of virtualised products delivered from its cloud.

It comes just one day after Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce and streaming services giant, announced that it would be acquiring Innoeye, another specialist in cloud-based communications services. Others like Amazon have also been building up their offerings in AWS serving the same market.

Microsoft describes the Metaswitch portfolio of cloud-native services which include 5G data, voice and unified communications (contact center)products as complementary to Affirmed.

Microsoft intends to leverage the talent and technology of these two organizations, extending the Azure platform to both deploy and grow these capabilities at scale in a way that is secure, efficient and creates a sustainable ecosystem, the company said.

The migration to 5G represents a window of opportunity to companies that provide services to carriers. The latter have long been saddled with expensive, ageing equipment and now have the potential to replace some or all of that with software-based services, delivered via the cloud, that can be more easily updated and modified with market demand. That is the hope, at least. The reality may be that many carriers sweat out their assets and upgrade in small increments, as operational expenditure still represents a big investment and cost.

Microsoft is all too aware of that reality and also of the prospect of appearing like a threat, not a saviour.

We will continue to support hybrid and multi-cloud models to create a more diverse telecom ecosystem and spur faster innovation, an expanded set of unique offerings and greater opportunities for differentiation, it notes. We will continue to partner with existing suppliers, emerging innovators and network equipment partners to share roadmaps and explore expanded opportunities to work together, including in the areas of radio access networks (RAN), next-generation core, virtualized services, orchestration and operations support system/business support system (OSS/BSS) modernization. A future that is interoperable has never been more important to ensure the success of customers and partners.

Indeed, Microsofts been providing services to, and selling its own IT through, carriers for years before this. These latest acquisitions, however, represent a growing focus on what role it can play in that enterprise vertical in the years to come.

Link:

Microsoft is acquiring Metaswitch Networks to expand its Azure 5G strategy - TechCrunch

Microsoft has detailed how it's changed Windows 10 to wipe out a class of memory bugs called uninitialized memory vulnerabilities using a new security feature that has plagued users of games that employ anti-cheat software.

Microsoft has been experimenting with Rust for certain Windows components written in C and C++ to weed out memory-related bugs, which make up about 70% of all patches Microsoft has shipped over the past decade.

One type of memory bug is uninitialized memory vulnerabilities, which according to Microsoft, have been trending upwards in recent years and made up about 5% to 10% of all the Windows flaws it fixed between 2017 and 2018.

The Heartbleed vulnerability in the OpenSSL software library for HTTPS web servers was one example of this type of bug, which caused private encryption keys to be stored in uninitialized memory and therefore made it possible for an attacker to retrieve them.

To address uninitialized memory vulnerabilities in Windows, Microsoft has kicked off a project called InitAll, which is now enabled for all kernel-mode code, Hyper-V code, and networking related user-mode services. InitAll first shipped with Windows 10 version 1903 from Spring 2019.

The type of memory bug poses a challenge for products with large code bases, in part because of the design of C and C++.

Joe Bialek, a security engineer in the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), noted in a recent talkit is "extremely difficult" to rule out an uninitialized memory bug doesn't have a security impact.

This type of memory bug can be found using commonly-used processes, however Bialek argues that static analysis can't find everything, fuzzing can't identity all bugs of this type, and manual code review doesn't scale and is prone to error.

Microsoft's InitAll automatically initializes stack variables to zero to address issues caused by C and C++.

As Bialek explains in a new blogpost, the design of C and C++ doesn't prevent developers from incorrectly using uninitialized variables, which can introduce uninitialized memory disclosure vulnerabilities and uninitialized memory use.

"The C and C++ programming language were designed with performance and developer control top of mind. As part of this, the language has no enforcement around variable initialization. Using uninitialized variables is undefined behavior. Developers must initialize variables before they are used and it's up to them to get this right," he explains.

Microsoft targeted InitAll at kernel-mode first because of the large number of uninitialized kernel memory vulnerabilities affecting it, while Hyper-V code was prioritized due to recent stack information disclosure bugs.

It hasn't rolled the feature out to all Windows code yet due the risk of causing performance issues in Windows 10 but it is starting apply it more broadly now.

"The reason we did not immediately roll InitAll out for all code was to ensure we could succeed in doing something rather than fail at trying to do everything," he noted.

"Now that we've successfully rolled the technology out to the highest priority targets, we can shift our focus to the rest of our code."

Interestingly, the long running issues that the latest versions of Windows 10 have had with anti-cheat software stems from InitAll.

"Shortly after enabling InitAll in Windows, we received complaints that certain anti-cheat software was causing kernel crashes," says Bialek.

"Investigations revealed that these anti-cheat solutions included kernel-mode drivers. These drivers were scanning the NT kernel image in memory and looking for byte patterns to locate undocumented functions. The way these pattern matchers work is by searching for specific byte patterns indicating the beginning of the function.

"When InitAll was enabled, some extra initializations (that could not be proven away) were added to the beginning of these functions which effectively changed their signature. We reached out of these anti-cheat companies and they updated their drivers to stop causing kernel crashes."

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Microsoft: Here's how we're killing a class of memory security bugs in Windows 10 - ZDNet

BRETIGNY-SUR-ORGE, FRANCE - APRIL 21: The logo of Amazon is seen on the facade of the company ... [+] logistics center on April 21, 2020 in Bretigny-sur-Orge, France. The French government has ordered the American e-commerce giant Amazon to take measures at four of its sites in France to better protect employees against Covid-19. This Tuesday, the Versailles Court of Appeal examined the appeal filed by Amazon against a decision requiring it to restrict its activity in France during this period of confinement. Amazon Logistique France has finally decided to close all of its warehouses pending the decision of the Versailles Court of Appeal, which will be made on Friday April 24. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has spread to many countries across the world, claiming over 171,000 lives and infecting over 2.5 million people. (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)

The Coronavirus pandemic is making people rely increasingly on the Internet to work, learn, shop, and entertain themselves as they spend more time at home. This, in turn, is boosting demand for public cloud infrastructure which allows businesses that range from retailers to video streaming service providers to essentially rent computing infrastructure via the internet, without owning any physical servers of their own. A handful of large companies dominate this space including Microsoft , Alphabet , Amazon, and Oracle, and most popular applications and services ranging from Zoom, Slack, Snapchat, and Netflix rely on their infrastructure at least to a certain extent to power their services. Our indicative theme of stocks offering Cloud Infrastructure Services is up by about 7% year to date, compared to the broader S&P 500 which is down by about 10%. Below, we take a look at how the key names in the cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) space have fared.

Amazon (28% YTD return, $1.2 trillion market cap) Amazon, a pioneer in the cloud IaaS space, has seen its stock rise to all-time highs through the pandemic due to higher demand for both cloud computing services and optimism surrounding its e-commerce operations. Although the AWS division accounted for just 12% of Amazons revenues in 2019 (AWS sales were $35 billion), they contributed ~63% of Amazons total operating income. This could make Amazon a solid way to gain exposure to the cloud infrastructure space.

Microsoft (16% YTD return, $1.38 trillion market cap) - The software titans fast-growing Azure cloud infrastructure business has been gaining market share, at Amazons expense. Although the company does not break down Azure dollar revenues, it indicated that revenues expanded ~59%year-over-year over the last quarter. The intelligent cloud segment, which includes Azure as well as other server products, posted sales of about $39 billion, accounting for about 31% of Microsofts revenues in FY19.

Google (3% YTD return, $940 billion market cap) While Googles core advertising business is likely to shrink through the pandemic as marketers scale back on advertising budgets, the companys cloud services operations could emerge as a bright spot for the company. The Cloud division grew revenues by about 52% over Q1 to $2.78 billion.

Oracle (-0.5% YTD return, $165 billion market cap) : Although Oracle is a smaller player in the cloud space, the company has been significantly scaling up its data center operations, building 20 new data centers by the end of 2020. The company has significant experience in catering to enterprise clients and this could enable it to scale up its cloud operations going forward. Zoom recently signed a deal with Oracle for its core video conferencing service, as demand has been soaring through the pandemic.

Is Microsoft stock significantly overvalued compared to Google? We think so! View our dashboard analysis: Google vs. Microsoft: Microsofts 4x Price Rise Wont Last for underlying numbers and rationale.

See allTrefis Price EstimatesandDownloadTrefis Datahere

Whats behind Trefis? See How Its Powering New Collaboration and What-Ifs ForCFOs and Finance Teams |Product, R&D, and Marketing Teams

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Amazon, Microsoft Or Google: Which Is The Best Play On Surging Cloud Infrastructure Demand? - Forbes

REDMOND, Wash., May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) ("Microsoft") announced today the pricing terms with respect to its offers to (i) exchange (the "Pool 1 Offer") the ten series of notes described in the table below (collectively, the "Pool 1 Notes") for a new series of Microsoft's 2.525% notes due June 1, 2050 (the "New 2050 Notes") and a cash payment, as applicable. For each $1,000 principal amount of Pool 1 Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on May 28, 2020 (the "Expiration Time") and accepted by Microsoft, the following table sets forth the yield, the total exchange consideration, the principal amount of the New 2050 Notes and the amount of the cash payment, as applicable:

Pool 1 Table(1)

Title of

Security

CUSIP

Number

Acceptance Priority Level

Reference

UST Security(2)

Fixed

Spread

(basis

points)

Yield(3)

Early

Exchange

Premium(4)

Total

Exchange

Consideration

(4)(5)

Principal

Amount

of New

Notes(6)

Cash Payment(4)

4.875% Notes due 2043

594918AX2

1

30-year

+110

2.375%

$30

$1,441.62

$1,000.00

$441.62

5.300% Notes due 2041

594918AM6

2

30-year

+105

2.325%

$30

$1,486.31

$1,000.00

$486.31

4.450% Notes due 2045

594918BL7

3

30-year

+110

2.375%

$30

$1,388.59

$1,000.00

$388.59

4.250% Notes due 2047

594918CA0

4

30-year

+110

2.375%

$30

$1,363.95

$1,000.00

$363.95

5.200% Notes due 2039

594918AD6

5

30-year

+95

2.225%

$30

$1,458.92

$1,000.00

$458.92

4.500% Notes due 2040

594918AJ3

6

30-year

+100

2.275%

$30

$1,360.57

$1,000.00

$360.57

3.750% Notes due 2043

594918AU8

7

30-year

+110

2.375%

$30

$1,237.91

$1,000.00

$237.91

3.750% Notes due 2045

594918BD5

8

30-year

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Microsoft announces pricing terms for its exchange offers and increases the New 2060 Notes Issue Cap - NBC Right Now

NewsGuard Technologies is expanding its partnership with Microsoft through browser expansions, adoption in new programs and continued sponsorships.

Through the deal, NewsGuard, a platform thatreviews and rate the credibility of websites and social media via trained journalists, will supply its ratings and nutrition labels to users of the Microsoft Edge browser, cross-platform, forfree.

Users of other browsers pay a $2.95 monthly subscription fee.

NewsGuard will also deliver real-time data to Microsofts Bing search engine.

All departmentswithin Microsoft will also have access to the ratings and labels, allowing them to apply those tools to projects like the Defending Democracy Program, which finds Microsoft Research teams working tocounter misinformation, disinformation and health-care hoaxes.

Tom Burt, corporate vice president of customer security and trust, Microsoft, stated: Defending against disinformationcampaigns is a key focus of our Defending Democracy Program. NewsGuards work has become especially relevant because of its trailblazing efforts to root out online hoaxes related to health andhealthcare issues, including those concerning COVID-19.

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In addition to the new elements of the partnership, Microsoft will continue to sponsor NewsGuards new literacy program,which serves more than 700 libraries and 7 million patrons across the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

The sponsorship will support NewsGuard as it expands its literacy programinto new countries, such as Australia and Canada, later this year.

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Microsoft To Give Edge Browser Users Access To NewsGuard Tools 05/15/2020 - MediaPost Communications

In March, we announced Microsoft Family Safetya new app to help you protect what matters most with digital and physical safety. Today, we are excited to start rolling out the launch of limited preview of the app on iOS and Android.

With families working and learning from home, many of us are spending more time on our computers and phones and are looking for ways to ensure our loved ones are safe. Microsoft Family Safety helps you to facilitate a dialogue with your kids about the time they are spending on their devices and type of content they are viewing. The app provides transparency on where everyone is spending time online and allows you to create flexible schedules to carve out more time for things like online learning. Additionally, it helps you stay connected even when youre apart with location sharing. Our team is committed to bringing you additional physical safety features in the coming months, like safe driving, so as we go back to a new normal you can help protect your family across your whole life.

Find the balance that is right for your family. Give your kids independence to learn and explore, while setting boundaries that help them make good choices. Kids can see the same activity reports their parents see, so everyone can be part of the conversation. Additionally, with Microsoft Family Safety, family members can manage their data and information and who it is shared with. We work around the clock to help protect your information and will not sell your data.

Lets take a closer look as some of the features you can try in the preview of Family Safety:

Getinformationaboutyour familys activitysoyou canhave a conversation aboutwhat your kids are doing online and on their devices.View screen time, top websites visited, and terms kids are searching for online.2,3Receive an email summary each week to help facilitate a dialogue on healthy digital choices and begin developing good habits from a young age.

Set screen time limits across Windows and Xbox devices. Or ifyour kids will be on devices longer forthings likeonline learning, you can set limits on specific apps or games instead.2 Now when you say only one hour of a certain game, that really means one hour of that gamewhether thats being played on a Windows PC, Xbox, or Android phone. And if they run out of screen time, they can ask for more. You have the choice to add more time or not based on what is right for your family.

Create a safe space for yourkidsto explore online. Set healthy boundaries with web and search filters to block mature content and set browsing to kid-friendly websites on Microsoft Edge.3 Get notified when your kids want to download a more mature app or game from the Microsoft Stores with age limits, keeping you in the know and helping to avoid surprises.5 Family Safety provides you with the tools to begin talking about the type of content that is right for your kids.

Stay connected even when youre apart. See loved ones on a map with location sharing.4 Plus, save places they visit the most, like home, work, or school, to know where family members are at glance. With stay-at-home orders and restrictions on mobility currently in place, it is important to know where your loved ones are when they are not at homefor example if your teenager got side-tracked while running to the grocery store and ended up at a friends house. And as we get back to a new normal, keeping in touch with your loved ones will be even more important.

We invite you to join the preview today so that we can gather your feedback and continue enhancing the experience before launching in the coming months. Once launched, the app will be available to download for free in the app stores.

For users, who have already expressed interest, we will be reaching out with instructions to download the preview.

We have limited availability for additional users on Android and iOS and invite you to sign up. As a participant in the preview, you gain early access to the app and get to help shape the product by sharing feedback about your experience.

Microsoft Family Safety is best when used together. We are looking for families with children of all ages to join the preview. We ask that users participating in the preview actively provide feedback to help us learn from your experience. You can send feedback in the app by shaking your device or tapping on the menu > Help and feedback.

Get the preview.

From our family to yours, we couldnt be more excited to help you protect what matters most.

1 Currently in preview, available to a limited number of users on iOS and Android.2 Windows, Xbox, and Android apps and games only.3 Enables SafeSearch with Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 and Xbox One devices only.4 Location permissions must be active.5 Applies to apps downloaded from the Xbox and Microsoft stores.

See more here:

The new Microsoft Family Safety app now available in preview for iOS and Android - Microsoft

The world of malware protection has come a long way since the wild west of the early 2000s, when Trojans lurked behind every download. The malware threats that loom now are more advanced and more evasive. Now, researchers from the Microsoft Threat Protection Intelligence Team are teaming up with Intel Labs to spearhead new, deep learning-based approaches for detecting and classifying malware.

Specifically, the researchers examined the use of deep transfer learning from computer vision for static malware classification. Intel had already done work on that application of deep learning, so the researchers used that prior research and a real-world dataset from Microsoft to poke at an interesting idea: approaching malware classification as a computer vision problem.

The researchers were interested in the idea that the binary code of pieces of malware, if represented as grayscale plots, might exhibit patterns that could be automatically recognized as benign or malicious. To test this, they used static malware-as-image network analysis, or STAMINA. They broke the dataset comprising 2.2 million portable executable file hashes into three sections, with 60% used for training, 20% for validation, and 20% for testing.

The workflow for STAMINA. Image courtesy of Microsoft.

While static analysis is typically associated with traditional detection methods, it remains to be an important building block for AI-driven detection of malware, wrote Jugal Parikh and Marc Marino for Microsofts Threat Protection Intelligence Team. It is especially useful for pre-execution detection engines: static analysis disassembles code without having to run applications or monitor runtime behavior.

The team found that STAMINA achieved high accuracy in malware detection with only a handful of false positives: at a 0.1% false positive rate, it attained 87.05% recall; at a 2.58% false positive rate, it attained 99.07% recall.

The results certainly encourage the use of deep transfer learning for the purpose of malware classification, Parikh and Marino wrote. It helps accelerate training by bypassing the search for optimal hyperparameters and architecture searches, saving time and compute resources in the process.

The researchers do acknowledge that there are cons to go along with the pros, however. While STAMINA is better at in-depth examinations of files, larger applications of the tool would likely begin to buckle under the computational weight inherent in converting billions of pixels into image files, lending an advantage to more traditional metadata-based methods.

Now, the researchers are working to advance another facet of deep learning for malware protection: optimizing deep learning models to be deployed on client machines for on-premises malware detection with low performance overhead.

To read more about STAMINA, click here.

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Microsoft and Intel Test Malware Protection Through Computer Vision - Datanami

The Universal Windows Platform, UWP for short, was supposed to be the future of Windows. Back when Microsoft still had aspirations for Windows to be a major mobile OS, UWP apps were supposed to be able to function on desktops, tablets, and phones alike. Yet over the years, developers largely stuck to the tried and trusted Win32 platform.

Now it seems Microsoft is getting rid of UWP altogether. As spotted by Paul Thurrott, a session for the companys upcoming online-only Build conference will explain how theWindows app platform is evolving and unifying Win32 and UWP under the WinUI framework. Another session describes how:

WinUI is Microsofts UI framework of the future for every app on Windows, designed to work in both Universal (UWP) and Desktop (Win32) apps. Come learn how WinUI provides a path forward for every Windows Developer, whether youre using WinForms, WPF, MFC, native or .NET, and more!

The longstanding fragmentation within Windows has left some developers frustrated compared to the more streamlined vision behind Apple and Google software. Unfortunately the information we have now doesnt tell us much about the specifics of Microsofts plans, but hopefully Build will provide a clearer picture when it begins May 19.

on Thurrott

Read our daily coverage on how the tech industry is responding to the coronavirus and subscribe to our weekly newsletter Coronavirus in Context.

For tips and tricks on working remotely, check out our Growth Quarters articles here or follow us on Twitter.

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Microsoft will detail how it plans to unify UWP and Win32 apps at Build 2020 - The Next Web

Centrical, a provider of holistic employee engagement and real-time performance management platform for Fortune 500 companies, announced an integration with Microsoft Teams, Microsofts unified communications and collaboration hub. Organizations on Teams will now be able to use Centrical to motivate, train, and help employees set and pursue performance goals directly from the Microsoft platform.

Coronavirus and WFH Reveals Gaps in Cybersecurity Safety Net

A major operational challenge the COVID-19 pandemic has created for large businesses is being able to manage the experience and performance of the great number of employees now working from home. The integration of Centrical with Microsoft Teams helps solves that, easily and effectively, said Gal Rimon, Centricals Founder and CEO. Centrical for Teams helps to create a new normal for connecting employees with their managers, to each other, aligning on goals as well as having the drive to perform.

The Centrical for Teams integration provides companies with a proven-effective way to create a routine for employees new workstyle but with familiar elements, they will find reassuring. Leaderboards, challenges, and missions are all there as is the ability to recognize and reward stellar performance. In addition, Centricals structured and closed-loop communications capability makes conversations between managers and employees highly productive, even if theyre miles apart. Along with that, it lets organizations rapidly reskill or upskill employees to handle shifting roles and responsibilities by way of quickly deployed remote learning programs.

Performance Management on TeamsThe Centrical integration adds a layer of employee performance management capabilities that makes Microsoft Teams even more beneficial for organizations, said MikeAmmerlaan, director, Microsoft 365 Ecosystem at Microsoft Corp. Centrical on Teams keeps remote employees focused on their goals, maintain their skills, or develop new ones and allows for peer recognition, a valuable way to keep employees connected to each other.

A compelling aspect of the Centrical for Teams integration is the Centrical Bot. It allows for automated push notifications with user interactivity for things like daily updates on scores or KPI results, and reminders to complete learning activities. It also lets polling be conducted so businesses can quickly grasp the mindset of employees either company-wide, at the unit level, or individually. In addition, users can share badges theyve earned in their Teams channels to earn recognition for their efforts from peers and managers.

The Centrical Bot can also act as a focal point for gamified performance challenges and microlearning. The data from those and other activities using game mechanics can be pushed to the Centrical platform where it can be used to assign points for achieving KPIs, completing learning activities, or correctly answering quizzes creating a helpful, fun competition that encourages participation.

IoT is Blooming Connections to Hit 83 Billion by 2024

An Improved Employee ExperienceThis integration brings to Teams the powerful blend of real-time performance management and personalized microlearning with advanced gamification, uniquely offered by the Centrical platform. It enhances the employee experience on Teams in terms of engagement, learning, and performance through these features and functions that are part of the integration.

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Centrical Announces Integration with Microsoft Teams - EnterpriseTalk

Chief executives and other representatives from more than 330 businesses, including Capital One COF, +9.61% , General Mills GIS, -2.12% , Microsoft MSFT, +0.43% , Nike NKE, +0.61% , Salesforce CRM, -1.55% , Visa V, +2.15% and more are calling on bipartisan federal lawmakers to build back a better economy from COVID-19 by infusing resilient climate solutions.

The businesses, in lobbying Congress Wednesday through an effort they call LEAD on Climate 2020, represent combined annual revenues of more than $1 trillion and a shared market valuation of nearly $11.5 trillion. They employee more than 3 million people. The group, supported by sustainable investing advocates Ceres, claims they are the largest ever to advance a call to action from the business community to Congress on climate change.

Read:Microsoft aims to be carbon negative by 2030

House Democrats unveiled their opening bid Tuesday in the next debate on Capitol Hill over how to fight the coronavirus and revive the economy. The sweeping bill, projected to cost a little over $3 trillion, was set to be voted on at the end of the week. The proposal includes bolstering the direct payments program put in place in the $1.8 trillion coronavirus bill passed in late March, additional monies for state and local governments, and extending the expiration date for some unemployment benefits related to the pandemic.

The businesses behind the pledge want Congress to work toward putting Americans into clean-energy jobs, as well as foster an accelerated transition to a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 or sooner and provide more investment in sustainable infrastructure. The business leaders also urge Congress to consider a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and setting a carbon price. Setting a market-based carbon price remains a policy sticking point in a divided quest for a solution to man-made accelerating climate change, although has been increasingly, if slowly, adopted.

Some economists believe that raising the cost of burning coal, oil and gas can be a cost-effective way to curb emissions. But countries using the practice have found it politically difficult to set prices that are high enough to spur truly deep reductions in emissions. Many carbon pricing programs today are fairly modest.

Several participants LEAD on Climate call for plans that put the U.S. on a 1.5 Celsius warming target, the more aggressive end of a range of temperatures deemed a manageable level of average warming in coming decades by the Paris Climate accord and other initiatives. The Paris pact, for instance, has called for slowing to at least 2C by 2050.

Read:5 ways to slow global warming that share the burden with the oil patch: McKinsey

The LEAD on Climate businesses include more than a dozen Fortune 500 firms as well as trade associations, including the skiing-tourism sector, medium and small businesses from all 50 states. The companies and investors calling for climate action as part of economic recovery efforts span across the American economy, including retailers, manufacturers, health-care services, food and beverage companies, outdoors industries, technology companies and energy providers.

The high level of participation is notable given the disruption most of the companies and investors are experiencing due to the economic collapse, as well as the current social distancing constraints on in-person advocacy.

This increased corporate and investor policy engagement comes at a time when the consequences of the climate crisis have never been clearer or more dire. Last year, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were at their highest levels in at least the last 800,000 years, and the World Meteorological Organization recently found that the last decade was the hottest on record.

As U.S. and global emissions have steadily grown over the years, so has corporate and investor ambition to reduce emissions even amidst the current pandemic. In April, General Mills committed to source 100% renewable electricity by 2030 after joining the RE100 global corporate initiative, while both the clothing brand Eileen Fisher and the commercial real estate company JLL had their ambitious science-based targets approved by the Science Based Target initiative to limit their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the 1.5 degrees Celsius ambition of the Paris Agreement. All three belong to LEAD on Climate.

Also announced Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat, will co-head the climate policy group that presidential contender Joe Biden has set up in collaboration with his one-time rival Bernie Sanders, his campaign confirmed on Wednesday. The panels other co-chair will be former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Biden ally who helped craft the Paris climate accord when he was President Barack Obamas Secretary of State. Ocasio-Cortez and co-writers of a proposed New Green Deal share some of the objectives of the LEAD on Climate effort, including green-job promotion.

Below, select quotes from the participants:

Today we have a health crisis, an economic crisis and a climate crisis all happening at once. The best solutions will tackle all three together. We have a distinct opportunity at this unique moment in history to define what we want our future to look like, said Patrick Flynn, vice president for sustainability at Salesforce.

At Nestl, our ambition to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is at the heart of our strategy to build a resilient business, said Meg Villarreal, government affairs manager at the food giant.

We urge Congress to enact policies that leverage private sector investment and innovation, such as a carbon dividend, said Hannon Armstrong HASI, -0.45% Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Eckel. This is how we turn the tide on the climate crisis and propel our country toward a thriving economy that is good for people and the planet. Hannon Armstrong is the first U.S. public company that provides capital to companies in energy efficiency, renewable energy and other sustainable infrastructure markets.

Policymakers must ensure that the decisions that are being taken today to rebuild our economy also factor in the dire climate consequences that are not too far behind, said Mindy Lubber, CEO and president at Ceres. They have the potential to reshape a new resilient economy in fundamental ways that prevent the next climate-fueled crisis.

Through smart investments in infrastructure and clean energy, we can create and build on industries and pave the way for family-sustaining careers, all while keeping our families healthy and making our communities more resilient for decades to come, said Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat of Florida, and chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Cement and ultimately, concrete, is a fundamental part of society, literally creating the foundation and structure of every city and community in the United States, said Jamie Gentoso, CEO, U.S. Cement at LafargeHolcim. As the leader in cement manufacturing in the U.S., LafargeHolcim actively seeks ways to decrease our carbon footprint. In participating with such a diverse, accomplished group of companies, I believe our combined experience, expertise and advocacy efforts will prompt Congress to take action on the climate crisis.

In the face of a global pandemic, Americas farmers have displayed tremendous resolve to ensure we remain fed and fueledbut grower profitability is at even greater risk due to the economic impact of the virus, said David Perry, CEO of Indigo Ag. By paying farmers for storing carbon in their soil we can create a new income stream for farmers during this challenging time, while leveraging one of the most scalable, affordable and immediate opportunities to address climate change: agriculture. Indigo is proud to stand by industry-leading companies to encourage Congress to build back better with climate positive stimulus funding, including incentives for agricultural carbon sequestration.

Tiffany & Co. TIF, -0.31% has long been committed to operating in a manner that respects both people and the planet, said Anisa Kamadoli Costa, chief sustainability officer at Tiffany & Co. Businesses must continue to lead in this way but cannot tackle climate change alone. We need smart public policies to advance our economy while protecting societys most vulnerable citizens and facilitating a net-zero emissions future.

The ski industry has been increasingly vocal about the need for climate action at the federal level. Now, the opportunity exists to rebuild our economy and future focused on renewable, clean energy, said Kelly Pawlak, president and CEO, National Ski Areas Association. Ski areas have paved the way for other small and rural businesses by installing and investing in wind and solar energy, and making broad-scale change to their operations to reduce their carbon emissions. This pandemic has given us a preview of the havoc climate change can wreak on our industry, and our way of life. Its time to raise our collective voice and advocate for the policies that ensure a sustainable future.

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Microsoft, Visa and others worth combined $11.5 trillion want Congress to include climate in COVID-19 recovery plan - MarketWatch