BOSTON (AP) — In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior U.S. officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. It concluded that “Microsoft's security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul" given the company's ubiquity and critical role in the global technology ecosystem. Three think tanks and four foreign government entities, including Britain's National Cyber Security Center, were among those compromised, it said. Separately, the board expressed concern about a separate hack disclosed by the Redmond, Washington, company in January — this one of email accounts including those of an undisclosed number of senior Microsoft executives and an undisclosed number of Microsoft customers and attributed to state-backed Russian hackers. The board lamented “a corporate culture that deprioritized both enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management.”The Chinese hack was initially disclosed in July by Microsoft in a blog post and carried out by a group the company calls Storm-0558.

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Persons: Biden, Gina Raimondo, “, Nicholas Burns, Alejandro Mayorkas, Redmond, Morgan Stanley Organizations: BOSTON, Microsoft, State Department, Microsoft Exchange, U.S, Cyber Security, Homeland, Storm, Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Dow Chemical Locations: China, Washington, Russian