News

IT legislation and regulation

• July 23, 2024 23 Jul'24

  Chrome cookies reprieved amid Google Privacy Sandbox changes

  Google abruptly changes tack on third-party cookies in its Chrome web browser, cancelling plans to deprecate them in favour of an unspecified ‘new experience’ for users

• July 22, 2024 22 Jul'24

  NCA cracks digitalstress DDoS-for-hire operation

  The UK authorities have taken down a major component of the multinational DDoS cyber attack-for-hire ecosystem, hacking into the digitalstress.su service and exfiltrating data on its users, who now face arrest

• July 22, 2024 22 Jul'24

  BT fined £17.5m for ‘catastrophic’ emergency network outage

  UK comms regulator issues fine to country’s leading telco for being underprepared to handle disruption in June 2023, affecting 14,000 emergency calls and lasting 10.5 hours

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  UK Cyber Bill teases mandatory ransomware reporting

  In the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill introduced in the King's Speech, the UK's new government pledges to give regulators more teeth to ensure compliance with security best practice and to mandate incident reporting

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  Hackney Council reprimanded over 2020 ransomware attack

  The London Borough of Hackney has been reprimanded by the ICO over a series of failures that led to a devastating cyber attack, but at the same time, the regulator praised the local authority for its response and commitment to making improvements

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  Labour government plans new laws around cyber security, data sharing and skills

  The King's Speech outlined the legislative agenda for the new Parliament, including several bills that will impact the tech community

• July 16, 2024 16 Jul'24

  Strategic Defence Review must emphasise cyber security, says industry

  Cyber security leaders say the new government's Strategic Defence Review needs to put digital security front and centre

• July 16, 2024 16 Jul'24

  CMA looks deeper into Microsoft’s AI hirings

  Microsoft recently hired two former co-founders of AI specialist Inflection AI, and signed a deal to host the company’s AI model on Azure

• July 10, 2024 10 Jul'24

  The security interview: Managing the ‘no’ mindset

  Matt Riley, data protection and information security officer at Sharp Europe, discusses balancing cyber risks with business leaders’ goals

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Revamped DSIT to transform digital public services, says government

  The incoming government sets out preliminary plans to conduct a major revamp and relaunch of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

• July 03, 2024 03 Jul'24

  NCA’s Operation Morpheus targets illicit Cobalt Strike use

  International law enforcement operation targets cyber criminals using the Cobalt Strike penetration testing framework for dodgy purposes

• July 03, 2024 03 Jul'24

  Former Post Office chair 'regrets' keeping critical Horizon report secret

  Tim Parker, chairman of the Post Office from 2015 to 2022, admits he should not have accepted legal advice to prevent release of a review that could have supported victims of the Horizon scandal

• June 28, 2024 28 Jun'24

  How FWD is driving its digital strategy

  FWD’s group chief technology and operations officer talks up how the pan-Asian insurer is driving change faster and putting technology at the heart of its services

• June 26, 2024 26 Jun'24

  Ignorance of ‘legal niceties’ from Post Office expert IT witness saw innocent people jailed

  IT expert used by Post Office to give evidence supporting prosecutions of subpostmasters did not understand legal duties he was bound to

• June 26, 2024 26 Jun'24

  Police Scotland did not consult ICO about high-risk cloud system

  Police Scotland chose not to formally consult with the data regulator about the risks identified with a cloud-based digital evidence sharing system, while the regulator itself did not follow up for nearly three months

• June 25, 2024 25 Jun'24

  Numbers prove former subpostmaster federation boss’s ignorance over Post Office scandal

  George Thomson is ignoring the numbers when he downplays subpostmaster prosecutions based on Horizon data

• June 24, 2024 24 Jun'24

  Sellafield pleads guilty to criminal charges over cyber security

  Nuclear Decommissioning Authority-backed organisation Sellafield Ltd pleads guilty to criminal charges brought over significant cyber security failings that could have compromised sensitive nuclear information

• June 24, 2024 24 Jun'24

  Metropolitan Police could investigate one of its own staff in Post Office probe

  Former Post Office investigator deleted references to software errors in a witness statement from Fujitsu’s Gareth Jenkins during the wrongful prosecution of a subpostmaster

• June 21, 2024 21 Jun'24

  Qilin ransomware gang publishes stolen NHS data online

  The ransomware gang behind a major cyber attack on NHS supplier Synnovis has published a 400GB trove of private healthcare data online

• June 21, 2024 21 Jun'24

  Kaspersky says it can continue to sell cyber threat intelligence in spite of US ban

  The US government is stopping Kaspersky Lab from offering its antivirus software and cyber security tools to US firms and citizens

• June 21, 2024 21 Jun'24

  ICO police cloud guidance released under FOI

  Long-awaited guidance from the UK data regulator on police cloud deployments highlights some potential data transfer mechanisms it thinks can clear up ongoing legal issues, but tells forces it’s up to them to decide if the measures would work

• June 20, 2024 20 Jun'24

  Sir Alan Bates hits out at Post Office ‘incompetence’ after data breach

  Victims of the scandal react with anger at news the Post Office published a document containing their names and addresses on its website

• June 19, 2024 19 Jun'24

  Post Office Horizon system investigators were blocked and threatened as they witnessed cover-up

  Independent investigators who put Post Office and its Horizon system under spotlight faced aggression as they witnessed cover-up

• June 19, 2024 19 Jun'24

  Microsoft admits no guarantee of sovereignty for UK policing data

  Documents show Microsoft’s lawyers admitted to Scottish policing bodies that the company cannot guarantee sensitive law enforcement data will remain in the UK, despite long-standing public claims to the contrary

• June 18, 2024 18 Jun'24

  General election 2024: The Green Party promises Digital Bill of Rights

  The Green Party manifesto contains several tech nuggets, including a bill to ensure independent regulation of social media platforms, increase R&D investment and a cautious regulatory approach to AI pledges

• June 17, 2024 17 Jun'24

  Artificial intelligence to make Olympic Games more inclusive

  The International Olympic Committee is working with Intel to use AI at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games

• June 14, 2024 14 Jun'24

  Post Office scandal victims in Scotland have convictions quashed

  Scotland follows England, Wales and Northern Ireland in exonerating wrongfully convicted subpostmasters en masse

• June 13, 2024 13 Jun'24

  General election 2024: Labour promises to boost digital infrastructure

  The Labour Party manifesto for the UK general election promises a new industrial strategy and an overhaul of planning rules to help support the digital and tech sector

• June 13, 2024 13 Jun'24

  AI’s environmental cost could outweigh sustainability benefits

  Artificial intelligence can help organisations manage and mitigate their environmental impacts in a number of ways, but the highly polluting nature of the technology could outweigh its other sustainability benefits if not dealt with

• June 13, 2024 13 Jun'24

  Q&A: Adalbjorn Thorolfsson on IT project management in Iceland

  With a small, but very sophisticated population, Iceland has unique ways of keeping up with the rest of the world in the IT sector. Adalbjorn Thorolfsson, president of the Icelandic Project Management Association, describes some lessons for the rest...

• June 12, 2024 12 Jun'24

  IT witness was hidden away from Post Office court battle, but supported it from shadows

  Former Fujitsu chief architect provided evidence support to Post Office witnesses in High Court battle despite being unfit to provide it directly

• June 10, 2024 10 Jun'24

  AI firms can’t be trusted to voluntarily share risk information

  Workers at frontier AI firms have warned that their employers – including OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic – can’t be trusted to voluntarily share information about their systems capabilities and risks with governments or civil society

• June 07, 2024 07 Jun'24

  DDoS gang threatens to disrupt European elections

  Russian hacktivists are threatening to disrupt the European Parliament elections, while the BBC reports on new deepfake threats to the UK’s electoral process

• June 07, 2024 07 Jun'24

  HP loses in US fraud case against Autonomy's Mike Lynch

  Autonomy founder cleared of fraud in US trial, following on from HP's $5bn write-down after tts acquisition of the data discovery firm

• June 07, 2024 07 Jun'24

  Rapid AI development poses supervisory challenges in the Netherlands

  In the Netherlands, the financial regulator and the monetary authority are grappling with the pace of artificial intelligence development and its implications for the financial industry

• June 06, 2024 06 Jun'24

  FBI finds 7,000 LockBit decryption keys in blow to criminal gang

  The US authorities say they now have more than 7,000 LockBit decryption keys in their possession and are urging victims of the prolific ransomware gang to come forward

• June 05, 2024 05 Jun'24

  Qilin ransomware gang likely behind crippling NHS attack

  Security experts investigating a major cyber attack on an NHS partner that has caused frontline services across South London to grind to a halt say the Qilin ransomware gang appears to be the culprit

• June 04, 2024 04 Jun'24

  Invasive tracking ‘endemic’ on sensitive support websites

  Websites set up by police, charities and universities to help people get support for sensitive issues like addiction and sexual harassment are deploying tracking technologies that harvest information without proper consent

• June 04, 2024 04 Jun'24

  Russia used fake AI Tom Cruise in Olympic disinformation campaign

  Microsoft threat researchers report a surge in Russian disinformation campaigns targeting the 2024 Summer Olympics, including AI-enhanced propaganda

• June 03, 2024 03 Jun'24

  AI Seoul Summit review

  Dozens of governments and tech companies attending the second global AI Safety Summit have committed themselves to the safe and inclusive development of the technology, but questions remain around whether the commitments made go far enough

• May 30, 2024 30 May'24

  Europol sting operation smokes multiple botnets

  Malware droppers including Bumblebee and Smokeloader were among those targeted in one of the largest ever joint operations against cyber criminal botnets

• May 29, 2024 29 May'24

  Next UK government must be prepared to legislate on AI, say MPs

  The House Science, Innovation and Technology Committee says the next government should be ready to legislate on artificial intelligence to plug any regulatory gaps

• May 29, 2024 29 May'24

  Interview: EU data chief Ulrich Ahle on obstacles to Europe’s digital single market

  EU data scheme Gaia-X is trying to plug the UK into Europe’s planned digital single market as opposition mounts to efforts to extend the reach of Europe’s vast and controversial data laws over global supply chains

• May 28, 2024 28 May'24

  Executive Interview: Why Dell wants to be your one-stop AI shop

  At Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, artificial intelligence was the talk of the town as Dell staked out an all-encompassing strategy ahead of an anticipated goldrush. Dell’s Nick Brackney explains why the tech giant believes it's onto a winner

• May 28, 2024 28 May'24

  Post Office scandal: Met Police investigation set to go national

  The police investigation into Post Office and Fujitsu executives is about to gain the status of a major national investigation – but it could be years before any individuals are charged with crimes or face trial

• May 24, 2024 24 May'24

  Over 700 wrongful subpostmaster convictions overturned by new legislation

  Parliament has approved a law that will see hundreds of subpostmasters with wrongful convictions exonerated as one of the government’s final acts before the general election

• May 24, 2024 24 May'24

  Paula Vennells boasted about removing Horizon risk reference in Royal Mail flotation prospectus

  A reference to Horizon was removed from Royal Mail prospectus by Paula Vennells in the eleventh hour

• May 23, 2024 23 May'24

  Northern Ireland police face £750,000 fine after data protection blunder put lives at risks

  Information commissioner John Edwards uses discretion to reduce proposed fine from £5.6m to £750,000

• May 22, 2024 22 May'24

  Dutch employers should discuss using algorithms in managing staff

  Dutch organisations must engage in open discussions with employees about the use of algorithms and data in managing staff

• May 22, 2024 22 May'24

  AI Seoul Summit: 27 nations and EU to set red lines on AI risk

  The countries will now work together to identify thresholds at which the risks presented by an AI model or system would be unacceptable without safeguards in place, as well as develop interoperable safety testing regimes for the technology