News

IT legislation and regulation

• July 17, 2025 17 Jul'25

  Terrorist potential of generative AI ‘purely theoretical’

  UK terror legislation advisor takes stock of the potential for generative artificial intelligence systems to be adopted by terrorists, particularly for propaganda and attack planning purposes, but acknowledges the impact may be limited

• July 16, 2025 16 Jul'25

  Co-op chief ‘incredibly sorry’ for theft of 6.5m members’ data

  Co-op chief executive Shirine Khoury-Haq has revealed that all the personal data of all 6.5 million of its members was compromised in the April 2025 cyber attack on its systems

• July 16, 2025 16 Jul'25

  Meta AI training will be challenged at Europe’s highest court, says data protection chief

  The data protection commissioner for Hamburg believes Meta’s AI training should be stopped

• July 15, 2025 15 Jul'25

  Ada Lovelace: using market forces to professionalise AI assurance

  The Ada Lovelace Institute examines how ‘market forces’ can be used to drive the professionalisation of artificial intelligence assurance in the context of a wider political shift towards deregulation

• July 11, 2025 11 Jul'25

  EU broadband challengers warn of fixed connectivity monopolies

  Non-incumbent EU fixed broadband providers raise alarm at proposed legislation, insisting that regulatory certainty is needed to drive investment in connectivity

• July 11, 2025 11 Jul'25

  MoD supply chain cyber scheme gets up and running

  The Ministry of Defence and IASME have launched a certification scheme for organisations working in the UK defence supply chain, with construction firm Morgan Sindall the first business to achieve compliance

• July 11, 2025 11 Jul'25

  UK to create ‘governance framework’ for police facial recognition

  Home secretary Yvette Cooper has confirmed UK will regulate police facial recognition, citing police reticence to deploy systems without proper governance, but declined to say if any new framework will be statutory

• July 11, 2025 11 Jul'25

  UK online safety regime ineffective on misinformation, MPs say

  A report from the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee outlines how the Online Safety Act fails to deal with the algorithmic amplification of ‘legal but harmful’ misinformation

• July 11, 2025 11 Jul'25

  European Commission accused of rigging data watchdog appointment

  The European Commission has been accused of rigging the selection process for the next European Data Protection supervisor

• July 10, 2025 10 Jul'25

  Four arrested in M&S cyber attack investigation

  Police have made four arrests in connection with a trio of cyber attacks on UK retailers Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Harrods

• July 09, 2025 09 Jul'25

  Ofcom: use comms regulation to drive innovation

  As it looks to boost British business by achieving its ambitions in connectivity, UK comms regulator outlines three key areas to prioritise

• July 09, 2025 09 Jul'25

  Three-quarters of UK champion continued broadband infrastructure investment

  Study from trade association for organisations building and delivering UK’s internet services finds almost half of Brits would sooner give up the gym than lose web access, but also highlights a need for real partnership and bolder action to bridge ...

• July 08, 2025 08 Jul'25

  M&S calls for mandatory ransomware reporting

  The government should extend ransomware reporting mandates to businesses to help gather more intelligence and better support victims, says M&S chairman Archie Norman

• July 08, 2025 08 Jul'25

  SEC and SolarWinds to settle lawsuit over 2020 breach

  The US SEC and SolarWinds have reached a settlement in principle to resolve litigation over alleged security failings that led to the 2020 compromise of the supplier’s Orion platform by Russian cyber spies

• July 08, 2025 08 Jul'25

  NHS trust accused of ‘at best cavalier, at worst deceitful’ behaviour after deleting emails

  A London hospital trust faces allegations it withheld key evidence from a tribunal hearing after one of its directors attempted to destroy more than 90,000 emails

• July 02, 2025 02 Jul'25

  Dutch study uncovers cognitive biases undermining cyber security board decisions

  Dutch research reveals how cognitive biases can lead to catastrophic security decisions

• July 01, 2025 01 Jul'25

  Cloudflare to let customers block AI web crawlers

  Publishers and other providers of creative content now have the option to block AI crawlers from accessing and scraping their intellectual property with new tools from Cloudflare.

• June 27, 2025 27 Jun'25

  Over 2 million affected by US supermarket breach

  Belgian-Dutch supermarket operator Ahold Delhaize reveals that more than two million people, including employees, had their data compromised following a November 2024 ransomware attack

• June 27, 2025 27 Jun'25

  MPs propose ban on predictive policing

  MPs are attempting to amend the UK government’s forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill so that it prohibits the use of controversial predictive policing systems

• June 27, 2025 27 Jun'25

  UK joins global health regulator network for safe use of AI

  The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has become a founding member of the HealthAI Global Regulatory Network, aiming to get trustworthy artificial intelligence tools into the NHS

• June 26, 2025 26 Jun'25

  British hacker IntelBroker faces years in a US prison cell

  US authorities have unsealed charges against 25-year-old hacker Kai West, aka IntelBroker, accusing him of being behind multiple cyber attacks

• June 23, 2025 23 Jun'25

  Industrial strategy: Takeaways for UK tech innovations

  Labour wants to put the UK at the forefront of tech innovation. Its industrial strategy offers a funding boost for tech and lighter-touch regulation

• June 23, 2025 23 Jun'25

  Police to gain powers to grab online data when they seize phones and laptops

  Academics and civil liberties experts say that proposed ‘authoritarian’ powers to allow police to trawl online and cloud services used by owners of seized devices should require approval from a judge

• June 20, 2025 20 Jun'25

  UK data reforms become law

  UK passes wide-ranging data protection reforms to ‘simplify’ organisations’ sharing and processing of data, but questions remain whether changes will be accepted by European Commission when renewing UK data adequacy

• June 19, 2025 19 Jun'25

  Inca warns of ‘unjustified’ Openreach prominence in comms review

  Trade association for UK’s independent broadband providers urges regulator to ensure forthcoming legislation secures the future of infrastructure investment, fosters regulatory consistency and promotes a fair and competitive landscape

• June 18, 2025 18 Jun'25

  Traditional fake news detection fails against AI-generated content

  As generative AI produces increasingly convincing text, Dutch researchers are exploring how linguistic cues, model bias, and transparency tools can help detect fake news.

• June 11, 2025 11 Jun'25

  NHS IT the big winner in Reeves’ Spending Review

  The chancellor of the exchequer has significantly upped spending on digital and technology initiatives in the current Spending Review period, with the NHS receiving a 50% tech funding increase

• June 11, 2025 11 Jun'25

  Cyber Bill at risk of becoming a missed opportunity, say MPs

  An APPG report warns that the government’s flagship cyber security legislation is too narrow in its scope and risks missing opportunities to embed resilience at the heart of the British economy

• June 10, 2025 10 Jun'25

  Third-party security weaknesses threaten Europe’s big banks

  Security breaches via third parties increased by 25% at Europe’s largest finance firms

• June 09, 2025 09 Jun'25

  US lawmakers say UK has ‘gone too far’ by attacking Apple’s encryption

  US politicians are calling for Congress to rewrite the US Cloud Act to prevent the UK issuing orders to require US tech companies to introduce ‘backdoors’ in end-to-end encrypted messaging and storage

• June 06, 2025 06 Jun'25

  UK ICO publishes AI and biometrics strategy

  The UK data regulator has outlined how it will approach the regulation of artificial intelligence and biometric technologies, which will focus in particular on automated decision-making systems and police facial recognition

• June 05, 2025 05 Jun'25

  UK’s error-prone eVisa system is ‘anxiety-inducing’

  People experiencing technical errors with the Home Office’s electronic visa system explain the psychological toll of not being able to reliably prove their immigration status in the face of a hostile and unresponsive bureaucracy

• June 04, 2025 04 Jun'25

  Artificial intelligence to initiate and manage litigations after ‘landmark’ approval

  The Garfield Project created an artificial intelligence-based litigation service for small claims, but how far can the technology reach in the legal sector

• June 04, 2025 04 Jun'25

  European Commission should rescind UK data adequacy

  Civil society organisations have urged the European Commissioner to not renew the UK’s data adequacy, given the country’s growing divergence from European data protection standards

• June 02, 2025 02 Jun'25

  US cyber agency CISA faces stiff budget cuts

  CISA is one of several US agencies facing drastic budget cuts under the Trump administration

• May 30, 2025 30 May'25

  Dutch businesses lag behind in cyber resilience as threats escalate

  While non-IT business professionals in the middle of their careers face the most disruption from AI, professionals in the IT services sector and their employers must prepare for change

• May 28, 2025 28 May'25

  UK biometric surveillance exists in ‘legal grey area’

  The rapid proliferation of ‘biometric mass surveillance technologies’ throughout the UK’s public and private sectors is taking place without legal certainty or adequate safeguards for the public

• May 28, 2025 28 May'25

  Remote purchase fraud surges 14%, says banking industry

  Brits lost over £1bn to payment fraud in its many forms last year, according to the latest banking industry numbers

• May 27, 2025 27 May'25

  Maturing UK fintechs increase tech and cyber security hiring

  Increased hiring reflects that fintechs are maturing and now require more cyber security and compliance experts

• May 27, 2025 27 May'25

  US makes fresh indictments over DanaBot, Qakbot malwares

  US charges the operators of two malwares, DanaBot and Qakbot, whose actions led to millions of dollars worth of cyber theft and fraud

• May 23, 2025 23 May'25

  Data embassies and US embargo halt give Saudi AI hope

  Gulf autocracy gets access to powerful AI chips subject to export ban and pursues legal reforms to make foreign computing firms feel comfortable about putting their data there

• May 22, 2025 22 May'25

  Microsoft raises posse to target dangerous Lumma malware

  Microsoft, along with a consortium of partners, has seized and disrupted a significant part of the Lumma malware-as-a-service network used to steal data and funds

• May 22, 2025 22 May'25

  Lloyds and Nationwide to use UK finance sector LLM

  Industry-specific large language models could improve customer services, strengthen security and support regulatory compliance

• May 21, 2025 21 May'25

  Capital One pushes out data tokenisation

  Organisations using the Databricks and Snowflake platforms will be able to use Capital One’s Databolt tool to secure their data

• May 19, 2025 19 May'25

  Chinese cyber spooks lure laid-off US government workers

  A Washington DC-based think tank has published evidence that Chinese intelligence services have been running a network of digital ‘front’ companies targeting laid-off government workers as recruits

• May 19, 2025 19 May'25

  Legal Aid Agency breach may encompass millions of people

  Legal Aid Agency says the data of anybody who applied for legal aid over the past 15 years has been compromised in a cyber attack

• May 15, 2025 15 May'25

  How close is quantum computing to commercial reality?

  At a recent event, experts explored the progress towards logical qubits and how these will be applied to empower business IT

• May 14, 2025 14 May'25

  Scattered Spider retail attacks spreading to US, says Google

  Google’s threat intel analysts are aware of a number of in-progress cyber attacks against US retailers linked to the same Scattered Spider gang that supposedly attacked M&S and Co-op in the UK

• May 14, 2025 14 May'25

  Why we must reform the Computer Misuse Act: A cyber pro speaks out

  Britain’s outdated hacking laws are leaving the UK’s cyber practitioners hamstrung and afraid. Security professional Simon Whittaker reveals how he nearly ran afoul of the Computer Misuse Act, and why he’s speaking out for reform

• May 14, 2025 14 May'25

  UK government outlines plan to surveil migrants with eVisa data

  Electronic visa data and biometric technologies will be used by the UK’s immigration enforcement authorities to surveil migrants living in the country and to ‘tighten control of the border’, attracting strong criticism from migrant support groups