News

IT for financial services

• 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

• December 18, 2024 18 Dec'24

  Top 10 cyber security stories of 2024

  Data breaches, data privacy and protection, and the thorny issue of open source security were all hot topics this year. Meanwhile, security companies frequently found themselves hitting the headlines, and not always for good reasons. Here are ...

• December 18, 2024 18 Dec'24

  Top 10 cyber crime stories of 2024

  From ransomware targeting the NHS to nation-state-backed intrusions, 2024 was another big year for cyber criminals and cyber spooks alike, but they didn't have it all their own way as the good guys fought back

• December 16, 2024 16 Dec'24

  Top 10 IT leadership interviews of 2024

  The top technology leaders talk to Computer Weekly to discuss the challenges they face and the strategies, solutions and successes they are delivering

• December 13, 2024 13 Dec'24

  Computer Misuse Act reform gains traction in Parliament

  An amendment to the proposed Data (Access and Use) Bill that will right a 35-year-old wrong and protect security professionals from criminalisation is to be debated at Westminster

• December 13, 2024 13 Dec'24

  Post Office scandal 2024 – part 3: Fujitsu’s 12-month fall from grace

  After years of refusing to comment, Fujitsu was unable to continue hiding from its role in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal as politicians and a public inquiry demanded answers

• December 12, 2024 12 Dec'24

  Emerging Ymir ransomware heralds more coordinated threats in 2025

  A newly observed ransomware strain has the community talking about more collaboration, and blurred lines, between threat groups next year, according to NCC’s monthly cyber barometer

• December 10, 2024 10 Dec'24

  Dangerous CLFS and LDAP flaws stand out on Patch Tuesday

  Microsoft has fixed over 70 CVEs in its final Patch Tuesday update of the year, and defenders should prioritise a zero-day in the Common Log File System Driver, and another impactful flaw in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

• December 10, 2024 10 Dec'24

  iOS vuln leaves user data dangerously exposed

  Jamf threat researchers detail an exploit chain for a recently patched iOS vulnerability that enables a threat actor to steal sensitive data, warning that many organisations are still neglecting mobile updates

• December 02, 2024 02 Dec'24

  NCSC boss calls for ‘sustained vigilance’ in an aggressive world

  NCSC CEO Richard Horne is to echo wider warnings about the growing number and severity of cyber threats facing the UK as he launches the security body’s eighth annual report

• December 02, 2024 02 Dec'24

  UK economy could see £600m boost through digital IDs for businesses

  Government-backed organisation kicks off initiative to widen use of digital identities, in an effort to streamline financial services and cut hundreds of millions of pounds of economic crime

• November 26, 2024 26 Nov'24

  Russian threat actors poised to cripple power grid, UK warns

  UK government escalates cyber rhetoric in a speech at a Nato event, saying Russian advanced persistent threats stand ready to conduct cyber attacks that could ‘turn off the lights for millions’

• November 25, 2024 25 Nov'24

  Microsoft calls on Trump to ‘push harder’ on cyber threats

  Microsoft’s Brad Smith urges president-elect Donald Trump to keep the faith when it comes to fighting back against hostile cyber actors from China, Iran and Russia

• November 25, 2024 25 Nov'24

  Geopolitical strife drives increased ransomware activity

  The lines between financially motivated cyber criminals and nation state APTs are rapidly blurring, as geopolitical influences weigh heavily on the threat landscape, according to data from NCC

• November 21, 2024 21 Nov'24

  BianLian cyber gang drops encryption-based ransomware

  The Australian and American cyber authorities have published updated intelligence on the BianLian ransomware gang, which has undergone a rapid evolution in tactics

• November 21, 2024 21 Nov'24

  Microsoft slaps down Egyptian-run rent-a-phish operation

  Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit has conducted a successful takedown of almost 250 malicious websites used in the cyber criminal ONNX phishing-as-a-service operation

• November 20, 2024 20 Nov'24

  Apple addresses two iPhone, Mac zero-days

  Two zero-day vulnerabilities uncovered in Apple’s operating systems could have allowed for arbitrary code execution and cross-site scripting attacks

• November 19, 2024 19 Nov'24

  Nationwide Building Society backs HPE GreenLake for hybrid cloud push

  Nationwide Building Society's digital transformation efforts are continuing apace, with the company enlisting the help of HPE GreenLake to meet its hybrid cloud goals

• November 18, 2024 18 Nov'24

  How banks are navigating the AI landscape

  Industry experts discuss the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in banking, while addressing the challenges and governance implications of integrating AI into financial services

• November 18, 2024 18 Nov'24

  AWS widening scope of MFA programme after early success

  AWS reports strong take-up of multi-factor authentication among customers since making it compulsory for root users earlier this year, and plans to expand the scope of its IAM programme in spring 2025