News

Managing IT and business issues

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  Bumblebee malware flies on the wings of Zoom and ChatGPT

  Bumblebee malware, often used as a stepping stone to ransomware, is now spreading via trojanised installers for popular software applications

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  UK Emergency Alert Test sparks cyber fraud warning

  Fraudsters and scammers are likely to use the upcoming test of the UK's new mobile Emergency Alert system as bait in their attacks, while misinformation and conspiracy theories spread

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  3CX incident may be world’s first double supply chain attack

  It’s supply chain attacks all the way down as Mandiant publishes information suggesting that the 3CX software supply chain compromise was initiated via a prior software supply chain compromise

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  Banks don’t want to develop fintech in-house

  Banks are increasingly partnering with fintechs to gain access to their platforms, with few interested in developing such capabilities in-house

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  Good Friday Agreement key to growth of Northern Ireland cyber hub

  Now 25 years since the historic Good Friday Agreement ended the Troubles, Northern Ireland has become a flourishing centre of cyber security excellence and has ambitions to grow further

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  New GovAssure cyber regime launches across UK government

  An enhanced cyber security regime is being put in place to better protect UK government IT systems from growing threats

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  UK SMEs are the most tech savvy in Europe

  UK SMEs have taken to contactless payments faster than their counterparts in continental Europe

• April 20, 2023 20 Apr'23

  Capita customer data was stolen in March ransomware attack

  Capita says it has uncovered evidence of data exfiltration from a small proportion of its server estate following a cyber attack at the end of March

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  CyberUK 23: Ukraine offers masterclass in withstanding cyber war

  Russian cyber activity has seen an unprecedented evolution in scale and pace over the past year, but Ukraine’s resilience has enabled it to mount a masterful response, says the NCSC

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  CyberUK 23: Irresponsible use of commercial hacking tools a rising threat

  Commercial cyber tools and hackers-for-hire pose a growing threat to organisations and individuals worldwide, according to an NCSC report

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  TUC says government is failing to protect workers from AI harms

  TUC issues warning about artificial intelligence leading to more widespread workplace discrimination if the right checks are not put in place

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  UK plc sees fewer cyber breaches and attacks, but lacks resilience

  Latest government figures reveal UK businesses and charities reported lower volumes of cyber breaches and attacks over the past 12 months, but the statistics mask widespread underreporting and the true state of cyber readiness and resilience appears...

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  Surrey and Sussex police spared fines after recording 200,000 phone calls without people’s knowledge

  Police forces escape potential £1m fines following change of policy by ICO to protect the finances of public sector bodies

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  IT Priorities 2023: Budget optimism among EMEA IT leaders

  IT leaders across the EMEA region are optimistic that their budgets will increase over the coming year

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  CyberUK 23: NCSC launches Cyber Advisor service for SMEs

  The UK’s NCSC has launched an industry assurance scheme designed to address the needs of SMEs, and is calling for potential advisors to step up and help out

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  CyberUK 23: NCSC CEO calls for collaboration and warns against complacency

  NCSC boss Lindy Cameron kicked off the annual CyberUK conference in Belfast with a plea for collaboration and a warning against complacency

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  Cisco urges users to keep its network hardware up-to-date

  In the wake of a campaign of threat activity targeting a six-year-old Cisco router vulnerability, the networking giant has warned users to be on high alert and update their hardware

• April 19, 2023 19 Apr'23

  CyberUK 23: Alert over mercenary Russian threat to CNI

  Russian hacktivists supportive of their government’s war on Ukraine are turning their attention to disruptive or destructive attacks on critical infrastructure in the UK, the NCSC has warned

• April 18, 2023 18 Apr'23

  Reduced spending on cloud services weighs European IT services market down

  Reduced spending on cloud services in the EMEA region meant a year-on-year drop in total IT and BPO services spend

• April 18, 2023 18 Apr'23

  CyberUK 23: NCSC conference centres cyber collaboration

  The NCSC’s annual CyberUK conference gets underway in Belfast this week, with collaboration and cooperation high on the agenda

• April 18, 2023 18 Apr'23

  Tech companies and NGOs urge rewrite of Online Safety Bill to protect encrypted comms

  The Online Safety Bill faces amendments in the House of Lords amid concerns that it could weaken the security of end-to-end encrypted communications for UK citizens

• April 18, 2023 18 Apr'23

  Focus on these three risky behaviours to boost cloud security

  Some 80% of cloud security alerts are triggered by just 5% of security rules. Security teams can substantially improve their resilience by zeroing in on a small set of risky behaviours, according to a report

• April 18, 2023 18 Apr'23

  UK presses on with post-Brexit data protection reform

  The revised version of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill has had its second reading in Parliament as the government presses on with post-Brexit changes, but critics remain sceptical that the EU will be convinced to maintain the UK's ...

• April 17, 2023 17 Apr'23

  Restaurants hit by IT problems after BlackCat attack on supplier NCR

  Ransomware attack on systems of payments giant causing service outages for restaurants around the world

• April 17, 2023 17 Apr'23

  Charity data stolen in ransomware attack on supplier

  A number of charities in Ireland and the UK have had their data compromised following a ransomware attack on an IT supplier

• April 17, 2023 17 Apr'23

  Public cloud adoption set to surge in Australia

  New and existing workloads are increasingly being migrated to public cloud, with two-thirds of Australian organisations already running cloud workloads in production in 2022

• April 14, 2023 14 Apr'23

  Global spending on IT and BPO down as cloud deals slow

  Spending on IT and BPO services drops as demand for cloud services slows

• April 13, 2023 13 Apr'23

  Thousands at risk from critical RCE bug in legacy MS service

  Thousands of organisations worldwide are at risk from three vulnerabilities – one critical – in a legacy Microsoft service that they may not be aware they are running

• April 13, 2023 13 Apr'23

  UK joins key allies to launch secure-by-design guidelines

  The UK has joined international partners in sharing new advice to help technology companies embed security into the product design and development process

• April 13, 2023 13 Apr'23

  Three charged over banking fraud for hire website

  UK authorities have charged three men in connection with the operation of a website that sold social engineering tools to cyber fraudsters

• April 13, 2023 13 Apr'23

  Italy to lift ChatGPT ban subject to new data protection controls

  Italian regulator will lift its ban on OpenAI’s ChatGPT subject to a strict new data protection regime

• April 13, 2023 13 Apr'23

  AstraZeneca launches African healthtech hub

  AstraZeneca has launched its latest healthcare innovation hub, which will focus on using digital technology to improve healthcare in Africa

• April 13, 2023 13 Apr'23

  How Agoda is shaping up to be a technology powerhouse

  Agoda’s CTO Idan Zalzberg explains why the online travel agency with a massive technology footprint prefers to run things in-house and not rely too much on public cloud services

• April 13, 2023 13 Apr'23

  ICO responds to UK government AI regulation plans

  The ICO has officially responded to the government’s plans for regulating artificial intelligence as outlined in its recent whitepaper, but called for clarity on certain aspects before the proposals are taken further

• April 12, 2023 12 Apr'23

  UK police double down on ‘improved’ facial recognition

  The Met and South Wales Police have doubled down on their use of facial recognition technology after research found improved accuracy in their algorithms when using certain settings, but civil society groups maintain that the tech will still be used...

• April 12, 2023 12 Apr'23

  April Patch Tuesday fixes zero-day used to deliver ransomware

  A zero-day in the Microsoft Common Log File System that has been abused by the operator of the Nokoyawa ransomware is among 97 vulnerabilities fixed in April’s Patch Tuesday update

• April 12, 2023 12 Apr'23

  Gartner: Rebalance cyber investment towards human-centric elements

  Security decision-makers need to reprioritise their investment outlooks towards people, rather than technology, according to the latest market forecast from Gartner

• April 12, 2023 12 Apr'23

  Bank of England starts recruiting Britcoin team

  The Bank of England is recruiting people to join its team focused on the development of a digital pound

• April 11, 2023 11 Apr'23

  NatWest supports tech training for displaced Ukrainian women

  NatWest bank joins scheme to give tech training to displaced Ukrainian women in Scotland

• April 11, 2023 11 Apr'23

  Anne Keast-Butler named as new director of GCHQ

  The government has appointed current MI5 deputy director general Anne Keast-Butler to head signals and cyber agency GCHQ

• April 11, 2023 11 Apr'23

  KFC, Pizza Hut data stolen in January ransomware attack

  Yum!, the parent organisation behind KFC and Pizza Hut in the UK, has disclosed that employee data was accessed and exfiltrated in a January 2023 ransomware attack

• April 06, 2023 06 Apr'23

  IBM's Nataraj Nagaratnam on the cyber challenges facing cloud services

  Governments are introducing increasingly prescriptive data protection policies, but with organisations becoming ever more reliant on multiple cloud service platforms for essential business needs, how can they ensure they meet regulatory requirements?

• April 06, 2023 06 Apr'23

  Prioritise automated hardening over traditional cyber controls, says report

  A report from strategic risk specialist Marsh McLennan advises security buyers to funnel their budgets towards automated cyber security hardening techniques, saying they have a much better chance of reducing risk in a meaningful way

• April 06, 2023 06 Apr'23

  Clop ransomware booms in March as Fortra zero-day pays off for gang

  Backed by the threat actor tracked variously as Gold Tahoe and TA505, the Clop ransomware operation hit new ‘heights’ of activity last month, according to researchers

• April 06, 2023 06 Apr'23

  CCRC says ‘door open’ for more reviews of subpostmaster convictions

  The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has told former Post Office workers the door is still open for them to come forward if they were prosecuted for financial crimes based on evidence from Horizon software

• April 05, 2023 05 Apr'23

  Quick-acting Rorschach ransomware appears out of nowhere

  Emergent Rorschach ransomware strain is highly advanced and quite unusual in its capabilities, warn researchers, who say they have been unable to link it to any other known strains

• April 05, 2023 05 Apr'23

  Cops bust Genesis cyber crime marketplace

  Multinational Operation Cookie Monster takes down Genesis Market, a crucial source of compromised data used by criminals for fraud and other cyber attacks

• April 05, 2023 05 Apr'23

  Italy’s ChatGPT ban: Sober precaution or chilling overreaction?

  Italy’s data protection authority issued a temporary ban on ChatGPT citing data protection concerns and alleged breaches of the GDPR. Is this a reasonable precaution, or a chilling restriction on personal freedoms?

• April 05, 2023 05 Apr'23

  Scottish police tech piloted despite major data protection issues

  Scottish policing bodies are pressing ahead with a data sharing pilot despite data protection issues around the use of US cloud providers, placing sensitive personal data of tens of thousands of people at risk

• April 05, 2023 05 Apr'23

  CGI signs up to prison leaver employment initiative

  IT supplier is working with training company specialised in helping prison leavers to find recruitment in the tech sector