News

IT innovation, research and development

• October 27, 2023 27 Oct'23

  Google launches bug bounties for generative AI attack scenarios

  Google expands its bug bounty programme to encompass generative AI and takes steps to grow its commitment to supply chain security as it relates to the emerging technology

• October 26, 2023 26 Oct'23

  Sunak sets scene for upcoming AI Safety Summit

  Prime minister Rishi Sunak has outlined how the UK will approach making AI safe, but experts say there is still too big a focus on catastrophic but speculative risks over real harms the technology is already causing

• October 26, 2023 26 Oct'23

  Facebook pins future on Quest 3 and AI development

  Parent company Meta has focused on establishing Twitter rival Threads and its new augmented reality headset Quest 3

• October 24, 2023 24 Oct'23

  Research team tricks AI chatbots into writing usable malicious code

  Researchers at the University of Sheffield have demonstrated that so-called Text-to-SQL systems can be tricked into writing malicious code for use in cyber attacks

• October 24, 2023 24 Oct'23

  Government puts £75m into innovation hubs

  Eight innovation ‘launchpads’ will each get a share of the funding for projects covering sectors such as agri-tech, digital healthcare, renewable energy and technologies for the creative industry

• October 24, 2023 24 Oct'23

  OCBC to roll out GenAI chatbot

  Singapore’s OCBC Bank is rolling out a GenAI chatbot powered by Azure OpenAI to assist employees with writing, research and idea generation

• October 23, 2023 23 Oct'23

  How Ensign is leading the charge in cyber security

  Lee Fook Sun, chairman of Ensign InfoSecurity, traces the company’s journey and how it is leading the charge in cyber security by doing things differently, investing in R&D and engaging with the wider ecosystem

• October 20, 2023 20 Oct'23

  Fixing developer AI fear is a team effort

  A study by Pluralsight has looked at the risks of building a team of “star developers” and instilling a competitive culture

• October 17, 2023 17 Oct'23

  Five Eyes issues five tips on thwarting nation state threats

  Intelligence chiefs from the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US have published guidance on building resilience against nation state cyber threats

• October 16, 2023 16 Oct'23

  How APAC organisations are tapping generative AI

  Organisations in the region are deploying and experimenting with generative AI in healthcare, citizen services and other use cases amid cost-related concerns and other challenges

• October 13, 2023 13 Oct'23

  UAE makes significant contribution to AI computing power

  UAE technology holding company G42 recently began a partnership with US-based Cerebras Systems to build a cluster of supercomputers and a set of accompanying technologies that will speed up the training process for large language models

• October 13, 2023 13 Oct'23

  UK startups pilot semiconductor funding

  ChipStart is a new initiative from the UK government to help build out the National Semiconductor Strategy by supporting startups

• October 12, 2023 12 Oct'23

  Scottish biometrics watchdog outlines police cloud concerns

  Police Scotland’s response to the biometrics commissioner’s formal information notice ‘did not ameliorate’ his concerns about the sovereignty and security of the sensitive biometric information being uploaded to cloud infrastructure that is subject ...

• October 11, 2023 11 Oct'23

  North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust uses RealWear headsets for training

  NHS trauma and orthopaedic department deploys head-mounted cameras to livestream surgeon’s view footage of operations to classroom

• October 05, 2023 05 Oct'23

  Government launches £60m Regional Innovation Fund

  The £60m fund aims to support universities in areas with lower R&D investment, while the government is also pumping £8m towards AI scholarships

• October 04, 2023 04 Oct'23

  IR35: HMRC completes first phase of CEST upgrades with Ocelot platform migration

  HMRC has confirmed that its online IR35 status checker tool has completed its migration to a new platform, as the government tax collection agency’s revamp of the service continues apace

• October 04, 2023 04 Oct'23

  Lloyds Bank launches digital identity app

  Lloyds Bank has launched a digital identity app with tech startup Yoti, after it invested £10m in the firm

• October 04, 2023 04 Oct'23

  Visa to invest $100m in generative AI startups

  Payments giant investing in startups that focus on applying generative AI to commerce and payments

• October 03, 2023 03 Oct'23

  Cyber experts urge EU to rethink vulnerability disclosure plans

  The European Union’s proposed cyber security vulnerability disclosure measures are well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive, as making unmitigated vulnerabilities public knowledge increases the risk of their exploitation by various actors, ...

• October 03, 2023 03 Oct'23

  Public sector needs systemic reform of capacity to innovate

  Improving the public sector’s capacity to innovate requires a culture of innovation underpinned by people, skills and new ways of working with the private sector

• October 02, 2023 02 Oct'23

  How the Australian government is approaching AI

  The Australian government is experimenting with AI use cases in a safe environment while it figures out ways to harness the technology to benefit citizens and businesses

• September 29, 2023 29 Sep'23

  Government hands over £12.5m to farming tech innovators

  Some 19 projects focusing on automation and robotic technology will get funding from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to boost the agricultural sector

• September 29, 2023 29 Sep'23

  Government to hire 2,500 people for digital roles by 2025

  Government is aiming to ramp up digital skills in Whitehall with a promise to recruit 2,500 new tech and digital roles through apprenticeships and talent programmes

• September 29, 2023 29 Sep'23

  Government launches £65m space tech fund

  The funding from the UK Space Agency is part of the National Space Innovation Programme (NSIP), and aims to support and accelerate innovation in the sector

• September 29, 2023 29 Sep'23

  Scottish watchdog urges wider biometric oversight

  Scotland’s biometrics watchdog urges Scottish Parliament to extend oversight of biometric information to include the entire criminal justice system, not just police

• September 29, 2023 29 Sep'23

  As India takes off to space, the stardust will fall on IT

  India's progress in space technology will yield benefits not only for its burgeoning space industry but also propel IoT and telephony applications

• September 26, 2023 26 Sep'23

  UK government quietly disbands data ethics advisory board

  The government has disbanded its Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation’s advisory board in favour of pulling the relevant artificial intelligence (AI) and data knowledge from a pool of external experts

• September 22, 2023 22 Sep'23

  How ready does the world need to be for the quantum era?

  Great use cases may exist for quantum computing, but no one knows for sure how long they will need to wait for a production-ready machine

• September 22, 2023 22 Sep'23

  Lords begin inquiry into large language models

  Lords will examine the risks and opportunities of large language models and look at how government can effectively manage them in the coming years

• September 20, 2023 20 Sep'23

  Multi-agency pilot aims to help innovators navigate regulatory landscape

  Regulators join forces in pilot scheme to help businesses deploy new technologies in a way that complies with cross-industry regulations

• September 19, 2023 19 Sep'23

  38TB Microsoft data leak highlights risks of oversharing

  An accidentally disclosed SAS token with excessive privileges enabled researchers to access nearly 40TB of Microsoft’s data, highlighting the risks of privilege mismanagement and oversharing

• September 19, 2023 19 Sep'23

  UK wants international collaboration on AI for development

  Foreign secretary James Cleverly uses speech at United Nations General Assembly to set out vision for potential of AI technology to speed up development in the world’s poorest nations

• September 15, 2023 15 Sep'23

  How India is driving tech developments at G20

  India’s G20 presidency marks an important stride towards establishing a global regulatory framework for the crypto industry, among other tech developments discussed at the global forum in New Delhi this year

• September 15, 2023 15 Sep'23

  UK space sector needs more people with AI skills, according to survey

  Space sector survey shows machine learning and artificial intelligence skills are highly sought after, as the industry struggles to recruit and retain people with the necessary talent

• September 14, 2023 14 Sep'23

  Singapore firefighters don smartglasses for equipment inspections

  Firefighters from the Singapore Civil Defence Force will employ smartglasses equipped with computer vision and 5G capabilities to perform visual inspections of their equipment

• September 14, 2023 14 Sep'23

  Bristol Uni to host one of Europe’s most power supercomputer clusters

  A high-performance computer system being built at the University of Bristol will run thousands of GPUs to support research in artificial intelligence and scientific discovery

• September 13, 2023 13 Sep'23

  ExtraHop open sources 16 million rows of threat domain data

  NDR specialist ExtraHop says making its entire machine learning dataset available for anybody to view will help organisations better defend against cyber attacks originating from malicious domains generated by algorithms

• September 13, 2023 13 Sep'23

  How DocuSign is extending its capabilities beyond e-signatures

  DocuSign is harnessing large language models to help individuals make sense of agreements and employing AI-based biometrics to verify the identity of signers, as part of its broader efforts to expand its capabilities beyond electronic signatures

• September 12, 2023 12 Sep'23

  Whitehall only capable of ‘piecemeal’ digital transformation, says PAC

  The Public Accounts Committee is unconvinced government will achieve its digital transformation ambitions as progress is thwarted by staff shortages and a lack of senior leadership engagement

• September 12, 2023 12 Sep'23

  European enterprises to spend more on generative IT to close gap on US

  European organisations are upping their spending on generative AI innovation, but face challenges recruiting the right people to support this

• September 11, 2023 11 Sep'23

  University of Glasgow launches Centre for data science and AI

  Scottish university will apply artificial intelligence and data science to help solve some of the world's biggest challenges

• September 11, 2023 11 Sep'23

  Salesforce and Zoom embrace ethical hackers. You should, too

  Software companies Salesforce and Zoom discuss their successful bug bounty programmes, what they learned at a recent in-person hackathon in which they participated, and why others shouldn’t be scared of hackers

• September 11, 2023 11 Sep'23

  How Culture Amp is tapping generative AI

  Australia’s Culture Amp is building a generative AI capability that summarises employee survey responses, automating a process that typically takes HR admins up to hundreds of hours to complete

• September 08, 2023 08 Sep'23

  HSBC collaborates on hybrid quantum optimisation

  The bank, which wants to be at the forefront of quantum computing, is looking at how it can manage collateral assets more efficiently

• September 08, 2023 08 Sep'23

  Executive interview: Richard Moulds, Amazon Braket

  We speak to Richard Moulds, who heads up Amazon’s Braket quantum computing services, about how the technology is progressing

• September 08, 2023 08 Sep'23

  KPMG finds growing demand for emerging tech

  KPMG’s latest global tech report reveals an increase in the number of businesses adopting emerging technologies

• September 08, 2023 08 Sep'23

  North Koreans using new zero-day to target security researchers

  A threat actor linked to the North Korean government is continuing a long-running campaign targeting legitimate security researchers, using an as-yet undisclosed zero-day vulnerability to gain access to their victims

• September 07, 2023 07 Sep'23

  UK minister fails to reassure tech companies over encryption risk

  Technology companies say reassurances by government ministers that they have no intention of weakening end-to-end encrypted communication services do not go far enough

• September 07, 2023 07 Sep'23

  Honeywell goes quantum to protect utilities from future threats

  Honeywell and quantum computing specialist Quantinuum will integrate quantum-hardened encryption keys into future smart meters

• September 07, 2023 07 Sep'23

  Singapore taps Lidar and laser scanning in remote building inspections

  With the 3D data generated reality capture technologies, detailed inspections can be conducted remotely, eliminating the need for inspectors from technical authorities to be present onsite