News

Privacy and data protection

• March 25, 2025 25 Mar'25

  Tech specialist files legal claim after being refused security clearance for MI6 role

  An IT specialist has asked the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to investigate a series of hacking incidents after disclosing their social media accounts to MI6 vetting staff

• March 20, 2025 20 Mar'25

  NCSC proposes three-step plan to move to quantum-safe encryption

  The NCSC urges service providers, large organisations and critical sectors to start thinking today about how they will migrate to post-quantum cryptography over the next decade

• March 17, 2025 17 Mar'25

  PSNI’s ‘ridiculous’ withholding of evidence in spying operation delayed court hearings 

  Landmark ruling by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal will decide whether the surveillance court can award costs against government bodies accused of unreasonable behaviour 

• March 17, 2025 17 Mar'25

  Online Safety Act measures come into effect

  Regulator Ofcom is now able to take enforcement action against platforms under the Online Safety Act if they fail to proactively safeguard against content such as terrorist or child sexual abuse material

• March 14, 2025 14 Mar'25

  Apple encryption legal challenge heard behind closed doors despite calls for public hearing

  Investigatory Powers Tribunal hearing held behind closed doors as press and civil society groups argue for open hearings

• March 14, 2025 14 Mar'25

  AI Action Summit review: Differing views cast doubt on AI’s ability to benefit whole of society

  Governments, companies and civil society groups gathered at the third global AI summit to discuss how the technology can work for the benefit of everyone in society, but experts say competing imperatives mean there is no guarantee these visions will...

• March 13, 2025 13 Mar'25

  US Congress demands UK lifts gag on Apple encryption order

  Apple and Google have told US lawmakers that they cannot tell Congress whether they have received technical capability notices from the UK

• March 12, 2025 12 Mar'25

  iPhone, iPad update fixes critical WebKit flaw

  iPhone and iPad users are advised to update their devices as Apple addresses an out-of-bounds write issue in the WebKit browser engine that appears to have been exploited in targeted cyber attacks

• March 11, 2025 11 Mar'25

  Secret London tribunal to hear appeal in Apple vs government battle over encryption

  Campaigners call for High Court hearing to be held in public as tech giant appeals against UK government order to open a backdoor into its encrypted iCloud service

• March 11, 2025 11 Mar'25

  UK government under-prepared for catastrophic cyber attack, hears PAC

  The Commons Public Accounts Committee heard government IT leaders respond to recent National Audit Office findings that the government’s cyber resilience is under par

• March 11, 2025 11 Mar'25

  Singapore IT leaders boost AI security defences

  Study reveals a surge in perceived importance of artificial intelligence for cyber security in Singapore, but declining investment in traditional measures raises concerns as sophisticated cyber attacks intensify

• March 10, 2025 10 Mar'25

  How CISOs are tackling cyber security challenges

  Security chiefs at the recent Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in Sydney share insights on navigating board communication, organisational resilience and the importance of understanding business needs

• March 07, 2025 07 Mar'25

  Managing security in the AI age

  Gartner experts offer guidance on harnessing AI’s power while mitigating its risks, from managing shadow AI to implementing security controls and policies

• March 06, 2025 06 Mar'25

  UK cyber security damaged by ‘clumsy Home Office political censorship’

  Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre secretly censors computer security guidance and drops references to encryption

• March 05, 2025 05 Mar'25

  Apple IPT appeal against backdoor encryption order is test case for bigger targets

  The Home Office decision to target Apple with an order requiring access to users’ encrypted data is widely seen as a ‘stalking horse’ for attacks against encrypted messaging services WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal

• March 04, 2025 04 Mar'25

  Aussie businesses ramp up security spending

  Australian organisations are set to spend A$6.2bn on security and risk management in 2025, a 14.4% jump from the previous year, driven by the rise of AI and a growing threat landscape

• March 03, 2025 03 Mar'25

  Singapore’s HomeTeamNS hit by ransomware attack

  The non-profit organisation suffered a ransomware attack that affected some servers containing employee and member data, prompting an investigation and enhanced security measures

• February 26, 2025 26 Feb'25

  US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard probes UK demand for Apple’s encrypted data

  A secret order issued by the UK against Apple would be a ‘clear and egregious violation’ if it provides back door access to Americans’ encrypted data, says US director of national intelligence

• February 26, 2025 26 Feb'25

  CISOs spending more on insider risk

  Insider risk management budgets have more than doubled in the past 12 months and look set to grow further still in 2025, according to a report

• February 23, 2025 23 Feb'25

  Check Point co-founder on AI, quantum and independence

  Gil Shwed, Check Point’s co-founder and executive chairman, discusses the company’s focus on artificial intelligence-driven security and his commitment to remaining an independent force in the cyber security market

• February 21, 2025 21 Feb'25

  Apple withdraws encrypted iCloud storage from UK after government demands ‘backdoor’ access

  After the Home Office issued a secret order for Apple to open up a backdoor in its encrypted storage, the tech company has instead chosen to withdraw the service from the UK

• February 19, 2025 19 Feb'25

  Warning over privacy of encrypted messages as Russia targets Signal Messenger

  Russia is using phishing attacks to compromise encrypted Signal Messenger services used by targets in the Ukraine. Experts warn that other encrypted app users are at risk

• February 14, 2025 14 Feb'25

  Gartner: CISOs struggling to balance security, business objectives

  Only 14% of security leaders can ‘effectively secure organisational data assets while also enabling the use of data to achieve business objectives’, according to Gartner

• February 14, 2025 14 Feb'25

  Lenovo CSO: AI adoption fuels security paranoia

  Doug Fisher, Lenovo’s chief security officer, outlines the company’s approach to security and AI governance, and the importance of having a strong security culture to combat cyber threats amplified by the use of AI

• February 14, 2025 14 Feb'25

  Government renames AI Safety Institute and teams up with Anthropic

  Addressing the Munich Security Conference, UK government technology secretary Peter Kyle announces a change to the name of the AI Safety Institute and a tie-up with AI company Anthropic

• February 14, 2025 14 Feb'25

  Top cryptography experts join calls for UK to drop plans to snoop on Apple’s encrypted data

  Some of the world’s leading computer science experts have signed an open letter calling for home secretary Yvette Cooper to drop a controversial secret order to require Apple to provide access to people’s encrypted data

• February 13, 2025 13 Feb'25

  UK accused of political ‘foreign cyber attack’ on US after serving secret snooping order on Apple

  US administration asked to kick UK out of 65-year-old UK-US Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement after secret order to access encrypted data of Apple users

• February 11, 2025 11 Feb'25

  Google: Cyber crime meshes with cyber warfare as states enlist gangs

  A report from the Google Threat Intelligence Group depicts China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as a bloc using cyber criminal gangs to attack the national security of western countries

• February 10, 2025 10 Feb'25

  Apple: British techies to advise on ‘devastating’ UK global crypto power grab

  A hitherto unknown British organisation – which even the government may have forgotten about – is about to be drawn into a global technical and financial battle, facing threats from Apple to pull out of the UK

• February 07, 2025 07 Feb'25

  Tech companies brace after UK demands back door access to Apple cloud

  The UK has served a notice on Apple demanding back door access to encrypted data stored by users anywhere in the world on Apple’s cloud service

• February 07, 2025 07 Feb'25

  US lawmakers move to ban DeepSeek AI tool

  US politicians have introduced a bill seeking to ban the use of the DeepSeek AI tool on government-owned devices, citing national security concerns due to its alleged links to the Chinese state

• February 05, 2025 05 Feb'25

  Met Police spied on BBC journalists’ phone data for PSNI, MPs told

  The Metropolitan Police monitored the phones of 16 BBC journalists on behalf of police in Northern Ireland, a cross-party group of MPs heard

• February 05, 2025 05 Feb'25

  Youth activists protest Meta over mental health impacts

  Protest outside Meta’s London offices marks launch of Mad Youth Campaign, an effort by activists to challenge the ways in which corporate power negatively shapes the conditions young people live under

• February 03, 2025 03 Feb'25

  New Relic extends observability to DeepSeek

  The observability tools supplier now offers enhanced monitoring for DeepSeek models to help businesses reduce the costs and risks of generative AI development

• February 03, 2025 03 Feb'25

  DeepSeek-R1 more readily generates dangerous content than other large language models

  Research scientists at cyber firm Enkrypt AI publish concerning findings from a red team exercise conducted against DeepSeek, the hot new generative AI tool

• February 03, 2025 03 Feb'25

  Australian government doubles down on AWS

  Federal government signs three-year whole-of-government agreement with Amazon Web Services, expanding access to cloud services for all levels of government

• January 31, 2025 31 Jan'25

  Police swoop on Sky ECC cryptophone distributors in Spain and Holland

  Dutch and Spanish police have arrested four people accused of making millions of euros by distributing Sky ECC encrypted phones to criminal organisations

• January 31, 2025 31 Jan'25

  AI jailbreaking techniques prove highly effective against DeepSeek

  Researchers at Palo Alto have shown how novel jailbreaking techniques were able to fool breakout GenAI model DeepSeek into helping to create keylogging tools, steal data, and make a Molotov cocktail

• January 31, 2025 31 Jan'25

  DeepSeek API, chat log exposure a ‘rookie’ cyber error

  Security researchers at Wiz find a trove of DeepSeek data including API secrets and chat logs publicly exposed via an open source database management tool, raising questions about the fast-growing service’s approach to security

• January 29, 2025 29 Jan'25

  Vallance rejects latest charge to reform UK hacking laws

  Science minister Patrick Vallance rejects proposed amendments to the Computer Misuse Act, arguing that they could create a loophole for cyber criminals to exploit

• January 28, 2025 28 Jan'25

  Over 40 journalists and lawyers submit evidence to PSNI surveillance inquiry

  Angus McCullough, who is leading a review into the police surveillance of journalists and lawyers in Northern Ireland, says victims will be informed if they were unlawfully spied on – subject to ‘legal constraints’

• January 27, 2025 27 Jan'25

  Three sentenced over OTP.Agency MFA fraud service

  Three men have been sentenced over their role in a cyber criminal subscription service that offered access to online accounts using illicitly obtained one-time passcodes

• January 24, 2025 24 Jan'25

  US indicts five in fake North Korean IT contractor scandal

  The US authorities have accused five men, including two American citizens, of involvement in a scheme which saw companies duped into hiring fake North Korean IT contractors

• January 24, 2025 24 Jan'25

  High Court: Sky Betting ‘parasitic’ in targeting problem gambler

  UK High Court rules that Sky Betting acted unlawfully after breaching a customer’s data protection rights when it obtained his personal data through cookies and used it to profile him for the purposes of direct marketing, despite his ‘impaired’ ...

• January 23, 2025 23 Jan'25

  ICO launches major review of cookies on UK websites

  ICO sets out 2025 goals, including a review of cookie compliance across the UK’s top 1,000 websites, as it seeks to achieve its ultimate goal of giving the public meaningful control over how their data is used

• January 22, 2025 22 Jan'25

  Privacy professionals expect budget cuts, lack confidence

  Over 50% of privacy professionals in Europe expect to see less money earmarked for data security initiatives in 2025, and many don’t have faith their organisations are taking the issue seriously, according to an ISACA report

• January 22, 2025 22 Jan'25

  Funksec gang turned up ransomware heat in December

  The criminal ransomware fraternity was hard at work over the festive period, with attack volumes rising and a new threat actor emerging on the scene

• January 22, 2025 22 Jan'25

  Europol seeks evidence of encryption on crime enforcement as it steps-up pressure on Big Tech

  Europol wants examples of police investigations hampered by end-to-end encryption as it pressures tech companies to provide law enforcement access to encrypted messages

• January 17, 2025 17 Jan'25

  US Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban

  The US Supreme Court has upheld a legal ban on TikTok, meaning that the video-sharing application will be shut down from midnight on Sunday 19 January

• January 16, 2025 16 Jan'25

  Biden signs new cyber order days before Trump inauguration

  With days left in the White House, outgoing US president Joe Biden has signed a wide-ranging cyber security executive order with far-reaching implications