Can the online world move from the digital equivalent of medieval times to a new era of civilization?

That was the question on Charlie Bell's mind when the veteran engineering leader decided to leave Amazon after more than 23 years and

join Microsoft to lead its 15 billion dollar cybersecurity business.

And what dawned on me as I started to really think about it and get deep on it is that, you know, the security problem is the mother of all problems. If you don't solve the security problem, you don't get to innovate on anything else.

More than a year into that quest, Bell joined us recently at the GeekWire Summit for a status report,

sharing insights on the state of digital security and the potential for progress in the years ahead.

Because everything that we're creating in technology

ends up being a potential weapon in the hands of somebody who wants to do evil

and they can point it back at us.

I'm GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.

Coming up on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring highlights from my recent conversation on stage with Microsoft Executive Vice President Charlie Bell.

Let's talk about cyber security. This was the challenge and is the challenge that you decided to take on. What has surprised you most as you've gotten really deep insights over the last year not only

running a 10,000 person organization that's involved in all aspects of this

quest but also insights into the research that Microsoft has into cyber attackers, cyber crime.

What about the threat landscape as you look at that?

Are there things there that you're most concerned about right now that people especially in this audience

should know about?

Yeah, well, really important.

I think, first of all, the threat is growing.

And that I kind of, I knew from before, but but you know I've now up close and personal with a lot of

what's going on there.

Microsoft has tremendous depth of knowledge of what's going on in the threat landscape.

...