News

IT for financial services

• March 11, 2025 11 Mar'25

  March Patch Tuesday brings 57 fixes, multiple zero-days

  The third Patch Tuesday of 2025 brings fixes for 57 flaws and a hefty number of zero-days

• March 11, 2025 11 Mar'25

  Perimeter security appliances source of most ransomware hits

  Perimeter security appliances and devices, particularly VPNs, prove to be the most popular entry points into victim networks for financially motivated ransomware gangs, according to reports

• March 06, 2025 06 Mar'25

  Big bank systems crashed for over 800 hours in last two years due to IT outages

  Bank bosses forced to reveal extent of banking IT failures to MPs on the Treasury Select Committee

• March 06, 2025 06 Mar'25

  CFIT publishes blueprint for digital company business IDs

  Plan to increase the use of digital identities by businesses could add billions of pounds to UK economy through compliance savings and reduced fraud

• March 05, 2025 05 Mar'25

  IR35: Government outlines two-pronged approach to umbrella company regulation

  The government looks set to deliver on its long-promised vow to roll out regulation for umbrella companies

• February 28, 2025 28 Feb'25

  Major UK banks hit by payday digital banking problems again

  A month after Barclays suffered online banking problems, customers at multiple banks report further issues

• February 27, 2025 27 Feb'25

  CVE volumes head towards 50,000 in 2025, analysts claim

  Many trends, notably a big shift to open source tools, are behind an expected boom in the number of disclosed vulnerabilities

• February 26, 2025 26 Feb'25

  CISOs spending more on insider risk

  Insider risk management budgets have more than doubled in the past 12 months and look set to grow further still in 2025, according to a report

• February 24, 2025 24 Feb'25

  Government seeks payments tech partner through £49m contract

  UK government wants tech partner to help it embed open banking functionality into its Gov.uk Pay platform

• February 21, 2025 21 Feb'25

  A landscape forever altered? The LockBit takedown one year on

  The NCA-led takedown of the LockBit ransomware gang in February 2024 heralded a transformative year in the fight against cyber crime. One year on, we look back at Operation Cronos and its impact

• February 19, 2025 19 Feb'25

  CaixaBank outlines artificial intelligence intentions in €5bn plan

  Spanish bank announces Cosmos, an investment in its processes and technology that sits within its €5bn strategic plan

• February 18, 2025 18 Feb'25

  EY: Industrial companies worldwide stunted in emerging technology use

  Businesses globally are spending more on emerging technologies year-on-year, but struggle to expand experimental use cases, finds EY’s sixth annual Reimagining Industry Futures study

• February 18, 2025 18 Feb'25

  Cyber Monitoring Centre develops hurricane scale to count cost of cyber attacks

  A non-profit company aims to measure the impact of cyber events on the economy using a 1 to 5 scale borrowed from hurricane classification

• February 18, 2025 18 Feb'25

  Meta’s planned subsea cable will exceed circumference of Earth and support AI innovation

  Meta’s planned 50,000 km subsea cable will be the world’s longest and connect the five major continents

• February 17, 2025 17 Feb'25

  ‘Times are hard’ for fintech but latest report reveals glimmer of recovery

  Fintech investment in the UK hit a four-year low last year, as the wider EMEA region saw the lowest numbers in eight years

• February 14, 2025 14 Feb'25

  Gartner: CISOs struggling to balance security, business objectives

  Only 14% of security leaders can ‘effectively secure organisational data assets while also enabling the use of data to achieve business objectives’, according to Gartner

• February 14, 2025 14 Feb'25

  Government launches consultation on plan to streamline business through e-invoicing

  Government announces 12-week consultation on electronic invoicing as part of its plan for change

• February 12, 2025 12 Feb'25

  Cisco Live EMEA: Network supplier tightens AI embrace

  At its annual EMEA show, Cisco tech leadership unveiled a raft of new products, services and features designed to help customers do more with artificial intelligence

• February 11, 2025 11 Feb'25

  MPs demand bank bosses come clean over IT outages following Barclays crash

  Treasury committee wants banks to provide details of how IT failures have affected their businesses over the past two years

• February 09, 2025 09 Feb'25

  HMRC spends £785m a year on running digital tax systems

  Beyond £785m spend, HMRC also spent £482m on upgrading legacy systems and introducing new digital systems, as it continues to fall behind its plans to become one of the most digitally advanced tax authorities in the world

• February 07, 2025 07 Feb'25

  US lawmakers move to ban DeepSeek AI tool

  US politicians have introduced a bill seeking to ban the use of the DeepSeek AI tool on government-owned devices, citing national security concerns due to its alleged links to the Chinese state

• February 07, 2025 07 Feb'25

  Ransomware payment value fell over 30% in 2024

  Several factors, including the impact of law enforcement operations disrupting cyber criminal gangs and better preparedness among users, may be behind a significant drop in the total value of ransomware payments

• February 06, 2025 06 Feb'25

  UK’s Cyber Monitoring Centre begins incident classification work

  The Cyber Monitoring Centre will work to categorise major incidents against a newly developed scale to help organisations better understand the nature of systemic cyber attacks and learn from their impact

• February 05, 2025 05 Feb'25

  MPs to scrutinise use of artificial intelligence in the finance sector

  MPs launch inquiry into the use of artificial intelligence technologies in the financial services sector

• February 04, 2025 04 Feb'25

  Can AI identify financially vulnerable people better than humans?

  Research from customer experience firm Nice finds that AI can identify financially vulnerable people better than humans and offer more comfortable channels for financial problem solving

• February 03, 2025 03 Feb'25

  Nationwide Building Society to train people to think like cyber criminals

  Nationwide wants to help bring more diversity into UK cyber security skills base through partnership with training specialist

• January 31, 2025 31 Jan'25

  Barclays hit by major IT outage on HMRC deadline day

  Customers of Barclays Bank are left unable to access web app and online banking following a significant IT outage that seems to have come at the worst possible time

• January 29, 2025 29 Jan'25

  Vallance rejects latest charge to reform UK hacking laws

  Science minister Patrick Vallance rejects proposed amendments to the Computer Misuse Act, arguing that they could create a loophole for cyber criminals to exploit

• January 27, 2025 27 Jan'25

  Three sentenced over OTP.Agency MFA fraud service

  Three men have been sentenced over their role in a cyber criminal subscription service that offered access to online accounts using illicitly obtained one-time passcodes

• January 27, 2025 27 Jan'25

  Cyber incident that closed British Museum was inside job

  An IT incident that disrupted visitor access to the British Museum last week was the work of a disgruntled contractor who had been let go

• January 23, 2025 23 Jan'25

  ICO launches major review of cookies on UK websites

  ICO sets out 2025 goals, including a review of cookie compliance across the UK’s top 1,000 websites, as it seeks to achieve its ultimate goal of giving the public meaningful control over how their data is used

• January 22, 2025 22 Jan'25

  Privacy professionals expect budget cuts, lack confidence

  Over 50% of privacy professionals in Europe expect to see less money earmarked for data security initiatives in 2025, and many don’t have faith their organisations are taking the issue seriously, according to an ISACA report

• January 22, 2025 22 Jan'25

  Funksec gang turned up ransomware heat in December

  The criminal ransomware fraternity was hard at work over the festive period, with attack volumes rising and a new threat actor emerging on the scene

• January 20, 2025 20 Jan'25

  The death of the piggy bank marks coming of age of a fintech

  Fintech is a broad church that can be applied to high finance and child savings alike, as the team at startup Those Beyond have demonstrated

• January 16, 2025 16 Jan'25

  Almost half of UK banks set to miss DORA deadline

  A significant minority of financial services organisations in the UK will not be fully compliant with the EU’s DORA cyber and risk management regulation when it comes into force on 17 January

• January 16, 2025 16 Jan'25

  Bank of England and New York counterpart exchange puts technology cooperation into 3D

  A staff exchange between regulators will see US and UK financial technology experts cross the Atlantic

• January 15, 2025 15 Jan'25

  Government, Nesta and ODI issue £600k smart data challenge to technologists

  Department for Business and Trade, Challenge Works and the Open Data Institute have issued a Smart Data Challenge to app developers and entrepreneurs with a total prize fund of £600,000

• January 15, 2025 15 Jan'25

  Biggest Patch Tuesday in years sees Microsoft address 159 vulnerabilities

  The largest Patch Tuesday of the 2020s so far brings fixes for more than 150 CVEs ranging widely in their scope and severity – including eight zero-day flaws

• January 15, 2025 15 Jan'25

  UK’s female fintech leaders hit harder by investment collapse

  UK fintechs led by women suffered disproportionately as a result of the fall in investment in the sector

• January 13, 2025 13 Jan'25

  Experts say ‘something has to break’ before banks slow IT-driven cost-cutting measures

  Banks will cut costs until something breaks and they are forced to scale back, according to industry experts

• January 10, 2025 10 Jan'25

  US bank FNBO uses Pindrop to tackle voice fraud, deepfakes

  Learn how First National Bank of Omaha in the US is enhancing customer authentication and verification in its contact centres, eliminating friction points and making life easier for its customer service teams, with Pindrop voice security technology

• January 10, 2025 10 Jan'25

  Mandiant: Latest Ivanti vulns exploited by Chinese cyber spooks

  Threat actors are once again lining up to exploit vulnerabilities in the widely used Ivanti product suite, with an apparent link to Chinese espionage activity

• January 10, 2025 10 Jan'25

  UK fintech investment drops by almost double global average

  Global fintech investments fell 20% compared to 37% in the UK, according to latest Innovate Finance figures

• January 03, 2025 03 Jan'25

  US Treasury incident a clear warning on supply chain security in 2025

  A cyber incident at the US Department of the Treasury – blamed on a Chinese state actor – raises fresh warnings about supply chain risk after it was found to have originated via vulnerabilities in a remote tech support product

• December 30, 2024 30 Dec'24

  Top 10 financial services stories of 2024

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 financial services stories of 2024

• December 20, 2024 20 Dec'24

  Interview: Wendy Redshaw, chief digital information officer, NatWest Retail Bank

  The retail bank is moving at pace to introduce generative AI into key customer-facing services as part of a wider digital transformation across the organisation

• December 20, 2024 20 Dec'24

  Government introduces technology adoption review

  Whitehall has launched a call for evidence on barriers to adopting new technologies in the UK, wanting to know what needs to change for the country to stay at the forefront of technology adoption

• December 19, 2024 19 Dec'24

  LockBit ransomware gang teases February 2025 return

  An individual associated with the LockBit ransomware gang has broken cover to tease details of a new phase of the cyber criminal operation's activity, which they claim is set to begin in February 2025

• December 19, 2024 19 Dec'24

  Latest attempt to override UK’s outdated hacking law stalls

  Amendments to the Data Bill that would have given the UK cyber industry a boost by updating restrictive elements of the Computer Misuse Act have failed to progress beyond a Lords committee

• December 18, 2024 18 Dec'24

  The Security Interviews: Martin Lee, Cisco Talos

  Threat intel expert and author Martin Lee, EMEA technical lead for security research at Cisco Talos, joins Computer Weekly to mark the 35th anniversary of the first ever ransomware attack