This is the best summary I could come up with:

U.S. officials and Microsoft said in July that Chinese state-linked hackers since May had accessed email accounts at around 25 organizations, including the U.S. Commerce and State Departments.

The State Department has begun moving to “hybrid” environments with multiple vendor companies and improved uptake of multi-factor authentication, as part of measures to protect its systems, according to the officials at the briefing.

The hackers compromised a Microsoft engineer’s device, which allowed them to breach the State Department’s email accounts, according to the briefing.

“We need to harden our defenses against these types of cyberattacks and intrusions,” Schmitt said in a statement shared by the staffer in an email to Reuters following the briefing.

The company, which has faced criticism over its security practices since the breaches, has said that the hacking group behind them - dubbed Storm-0558 - had broken into webmail accounts running on the firm’s Outlook service.

The State Department did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday, and Schmitt wasn’t available for an interview.

The original article contains 414 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 59%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!