News

Managing IT and business issues

• March 21, 2023 21 Mar'23

  Ransomware gangs harass victims to ‘bypass’ backups

  Analysis reveals how cyber criminal gangs are turning to extensive, targeted harassment campaigns to force victims to pay up, even if their backups are in good order

• March 20, 2023 20 Mar'23

  NCSC launches cyber check-up tools for SMEs

  The NCSC has launched two new security services aimed at SMEs that lack the resources to address cyber issues, and may underestimate their vulnerability to attack

• March 20, 2023 20 Mar'23

  BBC cracks down on TikTok after review

  The BBC is asking staff not to install TikTok on corporate-owned devices without a justified business purpose, although its use will still be allowed to share media content with its audiences

• March 20, 2023 20 Mar'23

  Inside AIA’s cloud adoption journey

  The Hong Kong-based multinational insurance firm has moved 86% of its IT infrastructure to public cloud to drive growth, productivity and efficiency

• March 17, 2023 17 Mar'23

  CIO interview: Russ Thornton, chief technology officer, Shawbrook Bank

  Russ Thornton swapped life on the theatre podium for financial services IT, but thrives in an environment where orchestrating IT teams is a core skill

• March 17, 2023 17 Mar'23

  UK government to create code of practice for generative AI firms

  The code will look to strike a balance between copyright holders and generative AI firms so that both parties can benefit from the use of copyrighted material in training data

• March 16, 2023 16 Mar'23

  BEC attacks doubled in 2022, outstripping ransomware

  Massive growth in the volume of Business Email Compromise or BEC attacks was linked to a surge in successful phishing campaigns, according to data from Secureworks

• March 16, 2023 16 Mar'23

  TikTok banned on UK government devices

  The UK government has followed in the footsteps of its US and European counterparts and banned the use of Chinese social media app TikTok on official devices

• March 16, 2023 16 Mar'23

  Budget 2023: startups extra funding via R&D relief and pensions

  UK government aims to promote increased investment in research and development-intensive startups through tax relief measures, relaxed pension rules, and new investment zones

• March 16, 2023 16 Mar'23

  Rubrik customer, partner data exposed in possible Clop attack

  Rubrik was supposedly compromised by the Clop ransomware gang via a zero-day vulnerability in a managed file transfer software package it uses

• March 16, 2023 16 Mar'23

  Mandiant: Dangerous MS Outlook zero-day widely used against Ukraine

  A zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook that was fixed in the March Patch Tuesday update has likely been actively exploited by Russian actors for a year or more, and its use will now spread rapidly

• March 16, 2023 16 Mar'23

  Developing countries risk being left behind by green tech revolution, warns UN development body

  United Nations Conference on Trade and Development urges action from governments and developed countries to ensure the developing world does not miss out on the opportunity to benefit economically from the green tech revolution

• March 15, 2023 15 Mar'23

  IT gives Ukrainian economy resilience in the face of adversity

  Computer Weekly speaks to IT companies from Kharkiv a year after the Ukrainian city became headline news across the world as Russian troops invaded

• March 15, 2023 15 Mar'23

  Chinese Silkloader cyber attack tool falls into Russian hands

  A loader tool used by Chinese cyber criminals seems to have been enthusiastically taken up in recent weeks by Russian ransomware operators

• March 15, 2023 15 Mar'23

  Microsoft patches Outlook zero-day for March Patch Tuesday

  A highly dangerous privilege escalation bug in Outlook is among 80 different vulnerabilities patched in Microsoft’s March Patch Tuesday update

• March 14, 2023 14 Mar'23

  NatWest introduces limits on crypto trading to prevent fraud

  UK bank says its retail customers will benefit from daily and monthly limits on the amount they can pay into cryptocurrency exchanges

• March 14, 2023 14 Mar'23

  NCSC warns over AI language models but rejects cyber alarmism

  The UK's NCSC has issued advice for those using the technology underpinning AI tools such as ChatGPT, but says some of the security doomsday scenarios being proposed right now are not necessarily realistic

• March 14, 2023 14 Mar'23

  AI interview: Elke Schwarz, professor of political theory

  Elke Schwarz speaks with Computer Weekly about the ethics of military artificial intelligence and the dangers of allowing governments and corporations to push forward without oversight or scrutiny

• March 13, 2023 13 Mar'23

  Subpostmaster demands names of Post Office executives who crushed him to suffocate truth

  One Post Office scandal victim was deliberately destroyed by the Post Office to deter other subpostmasters from challenging the integrity of its core computer system

• March 13, 2023 13 Mar'23

  MI5 to oversee new National Protective Security Authority

  The new National Protective Security Authority will address various national security threats including state-sponsored cyber espionage against UK targets

• March 13, 2023 13 Mar'23

  SolarWinds doubles down on APAC business

  SolarWinds teams up with key systems integrators in the APAC region to develop joint offerings as it bolsters its capabilities in observability and autonomous operations

• March 10, 2023 10 Mar'23

  Technology minister Michelle Donelan defends data reforms

  Secretary of state Michelle Donelan has defended the government’s new data reforms as providing certainty for businesses while simultaneously retaining high standards of data protection, but industry figures are having mixed reactions

• March 10, 2023 10 Mar'23

  Government departments need to better understand digital transformation or efforts will ‘peter out’

  National Audit Office report says that the people making digital transformation decisions in government don't properly understand the challenges

• March 08, 2023 08 Mar'23

  UK government introduces revised data reform bill to Parliament

  Designed in close collaboration with technology businesses, the UK government is re-introducing an updated version of its Data Protection and Digital Information Bill to Parliament, which civil society groups say upends key safeguards

• March 07, 2023 07 Mar'23

  Nine in 10 enterprises fell victim to successful phishing in 2022

  Egress annual email security risk report breaks down impacts of email-based phishing attacks and data loss, and the effect these can have on organisations in terms of staff retention and morale

• March 07, 2023 07 Mar'23

  Taking back control: Could a distributed model breed a better AI?

  AI tools such as ChatGPT are trained on datasets scraped from the web, but you don’t have much say if your data is used. Technologist Bruce Schneier says it’s time to give control of AI training data back to the people

• March 07, 2023 07 Mar'23

  APAC IT leaders bullish on tech spending

  Over half of respondents in this year’s IT Priorities study have bigger IT budgets as they continue to make strategic investments in cyber security, cloud and automation, among other areas

• March 06, 2023 06 Mar'23

  How to get mainframe modernisation right

  Around a third of mainframe modernisation efforts fail, but that doesn’t need to be the case if organisations can harness the best of mainframe and distributed architectures, according to Rocket Software

• March 03, 2023 03 Mar'23

  White House unveils National Cybersecurity Strategy

  The strategy will focus on ensuring closer collaboration on cyber security between government and industry, while giving software and other tech companies a bigger role in combatting threats due to their resources and expertise

• March 03, 2023 03 Mar'23

  Shawbrook Bank uses Pegasystems for low-code business process rewrite

  SME lending and savings bank Shawbrook Bank is using a low-code platform from Pegasystems to rewrite outdated business processes

• March 02, 2023 02 Mar'23

  AI interview: Michael Osborne, professor of machine learning

  Artificial intelligence researcher speaks with Computer Weekly about the implications of a market-driven AI arms race and the overwhelming dominance of the private sector over the technology

• March 02, 2023 02 Mar'23

  Uber introduces dynamic pricing algorithm in London

  The dynamic pricing algorithm will allow Uber to set variable pay and pricing levels, but drivers are concerned about how their personal data will be used and the impact the algorithm will have on their livelihoods

• March 02, 2023 02 Mar'23

  WH Smith staff data accessed in cyber attack

  The retailer has said that customer data has not been affected by the incident as it is held in different systems, and that investigations into the attack are ongoing

• March 02, 2023 02 Mar'23

  Salt Labs identifies OAuth security flaw within Booking.com

  Security flaw in Booking.com OAuth implementation could be used to launch account takeovers, but researchers discovered and flagged the issue before it could be exploited in the wild

• March 01, 2023 01 Mar'23

  Post Office ditched plan to replace Fujitsu with IBM in 2015 due to cost and project concerns

  Post Office attempted to replace controversial Horizon system 10 years ago, but was put off by project’s scale and cost.

• March 01, 2023 01 Mar'23

  APAC is proving to be ‘substantial growth engine’ for Rimini Street

  Rimini Street CEO Seth Ravin outlines growth opportunities in Asia-Pacific and discusses the company’s move up the support value chain

• February 28, 2023 28 Feb'23

  Industrial safetytech startups secure £150m funding since 2020

  Industrial safetytech investment reached a record high of $100m in 2021, and remains significantly ahead of pre-pandemic funding levels despite a dip in 2022

• February 28, 2023 28 Feb'23

  LastPass attack saw employee’s home computer hacked

  The ongoing investigation into a series of linked security incidents at LastPass has found that the attacker was successfully able to compromise a developer’s home PC using a vulnerability in a media software package

• February 28, 2023 28 Feb'23

  Korea telecom giant SKT doubles down on AI

  SKT plans to broaden the use of AI across its business, from delivering AI-powered services to improving customer experience using generative AI models

• February 27, 2023 27 Feb'23

  How Dell is future-proofing its business

  Dell Technologies is building a more resilient supply chain, investing in growth areas like edge and multicloud, and responding to shifts in consumption models to position itself for long-term growth

• February 24, 2023 24 Feb'23

  Royal Mail stands firm as LockBit leaks data and renews ransom demand

  The LockBit ransomware gang has made good on its threat to leak data exfiltrated from Royal Mail’s systems, but the postal service is not entertaining the possibility of giving in

• February 24, 2023 24 Feb'23

  HMCTS Common Platform roll-out put ‘avoidable pressure’ on courts

  The digital case management system was rolled out without adequate assurance it was robust enough to be deployed, and is having a ‘detrimental impact on courts’, the National Audit Office has found

• February 23, 2023 23 Feb'23

  WithSecure proposes ‘undo’ button for ransomware

  WithSecure’s Activity Monitor technology supposedly overcomes the shortcomings of sandbox test environments, and may be able to stop ransomware attacks from ever happening

• February 23, 2023 23 Feb'23

  ANZ CIOs flag priorities amid inflation concerns

  CIOs in Australia and New Zealand are concerned about inflation and plan to adjust their technology priorities to optimise resources and combat cyber threats

• February 23, 2023 23 Feb'23

  Santander SME platform harnesses Salesforce

  Bank platform that helps UK small and medium-sized enterprises expand export opportunities is built on cloud technology from Salesforce

• February 22, 2023 22 Feb'23

  UK HSE to launch regulatory sandbox for industrial safety tech

  The sandbox will see the regulator work with industry and tech startups to accelerate the development and adoption of a range of safety-related technologies, with a particular emphasis on data and analytics

• February 22, 2023 22 Feb'23

  UK forces lead live-fire cyber war exercise

  The seven-day Defence Cyber Marvel 2 exercise put cyber responders from 11 countries through their paces

• February 22, 2023 22 Feb'23

  Researchers find new bug ‘class’ in Apple devices

  A group of vulnerabilities in Apple products that stem from the ForcedEntry exploit used by spyware firm NSO constitutes a whole new class of bug, say researchers at Trellix

• February 22, 2023 22 Feb'23

  Half of cyber leaders to switch jobs by 2025, citing stress

  A substantial number of cyber security leaders are plotting their great escape, saying the industry is leaving them too stressed to go on, according to a study

• February 21, 2023 21 Feb'23

  Royal Mail resumes full export service after cyber attack

  Royal Mail resumes the last of its international services as it recovers from a ransomware attack, while the Post Office offers postmasters compensation for their lost business