What you need to know
- Former Amazon cloud executive Charlie Bell is joining Microsoft.
- Bell will fill a newly created role at Microsoft that oversees security, compliance, identity, and management.
- Bell will be an executive vice president that reports to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The biggest Microsoft news of the day is that the company announced that Brad Smith will become its vice chair, but that isn't the only company news of the day. Microsoft is bringing on former Amazon cloud executive Charlie Bell to lead the company's security. Bell will fill a newly created role that oversees security, compliance, identify, and management, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Bell announced his move to Microsoft today on LinkedIn, stating, "I'm thrilled to join Microsoft to take on one of the greatest challenges of our time, leading a newly formed engineering organization: Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management."
He continues in his post to explain how Microsoft provides a unique opportunity for improving security:
We all want a world where safety is an invariant, something that is always true, and we can constantly prove we have. We all want digital civilization. I believe Microsoft is the only company in a position to deliver this and I couldn't be more excited to work with this talented team to make the world safer for every person and organization on the planet.
Bell will report to Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella as an executive vice president. According to an email from Nadella to employees that was obtained by Bloomberg, Bell will start in his new role once "a resolution is reached with his former employer." Bloomberg notes that Microsoft confirmed the contents of the email.
"Cybersecurity is one of the most challenging issues of our time – for every person and organization on the planet – and it is core to our mission," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in his email about Bell.
In his time at Amazon, Bell was a senior vice president. He reported to the previous AWS chief Andy Jasssy who is now Amazon's president and CEO. Bell oversaw the engineering teams that worked on the main software services of AWS.
