News

Privacy and data protection

• December 22, 2023 22 Dec'23

  Top 10 government IT stories of 2023

  In the year that gave life to four new government departments, Whitehall bosses have continued to fly the flag for technology, with mixed results and success. Here are the stories that made waves in 2023

• December 21, 2023 21 Dec'23

  Top 10 cyber crime stories of 2023

  Ransomware gangs dominated the cyber criminal underworld in 2023, a year that will prove notable for significant evolutionary trends in their tactics

• December 19, 2023 19 Dec'23

  Top 10 cyber security stories of 2023

  The past 12 months have seen the security agenda dominated by the usual round of vulnerabilities, concerns over supply chain security and more besides, but it was the chaotic state of global geopolitics that really made an impact

• December 14, 2023 14 Dec'23

  Government plans to regulate to tackle datacentre threats

  DSIT outlines a range of proposals designed to protect data storage facilities from cyber attacks, as well as physical threats and the effects of climate breakdown

• December 14, 2023 14 Dec'23

  ICO complaint seeks answers from prosecutors over deleted Assange emails

  An Italian journalist has complained to the data protection watchdog after the Crown Prosecution Service gave conflicting explanations over its deletion of key emails on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

• December 13, 2023 13 Dec'23

  How ransomware gangs use the tech media against their victims

  Ransomware gangs are increasingly media-savvy operators, and this means incident response plans now need to account for communications and PR strategies too

• December 13, 2023 13 Dec'23

  Inside the Singapore government’s cloud journey

  The Smart Nation Group’s chief digital technology officer outlines the government’s cloud journey, including its approach to cloud migration and how it came to host mission-critical workloads on AWS

• December 12, 2023 12 Dec'23

  MoD fined after breach of Afghan staffers’ data put lives at risk

  The MoD has been fined £350,000 by the ICO after an email blunder exposed data on Afghan nationals who had worked with British forces and were at risk of Taliban reprisals

• December 12, 2023 12 Dec'23

  Outdated data protection practice key factor in PSNI data breach

  The August 2023 data breach at the Police Service of Northern Ireland arose chiefly from an outdated approach to data protection and compliance at the force, according to an independent review

• December 12, 2023 12 Dec'23

  Top IT predictions in APAC in 2024

  Generative AI will continue to leave its mark on many areas in business and IT, along with other trends such as sustainability, cyber security and smart factories that are expected to shape the region’s technology landscape in 2024

• December 11, 2023 11 Dec'23

  Nordic governments join forces to protect data transfers

  Nordic countries deepen their cooperation over cyber security amid heightened threat from neighbouring Russia

• December 08, 2023 08 Dec'23

  Fancy Bear targets Nato entities via critical Outlook flaw

  A vulnerability patched in March has likely been exploited by the Russian state actor Fancy Bear, for over two years, according to the latest intelligence

• December 07, 2023 07 Dec'23

  UK names Russian FSB agents behind political hacking campaign

  Russian hacking group, Star Blizzard, was part of a Russian intelligence operation aimed at interfering with UK politics and the democratic process, says government.

• December 07, 2023 07 Dec'23

  NCSC exposes Russian cyber attacks on UK political processes

  The NCSC has firmly attributed a long-running campaign of cyber attacks targeting UK political processes to a group run out of Russia’s FSB intelligence agency, known as Star Blizzard

• December 07, 2023 07 Dec'23

  How Proofpoint is helping to mitigate AI security threats

  Proofpoint is offering monitoring tools to prevent leakage of sensitive information in generative AI models and other capabilities to mitigate AI mediated attacks

• December 05, 2023 05 Dec'23

  Operator of Sellafield nuclear facility denies hacking claims

  The operator of the Sellafield nuclear site has denied allegations that senior managers covered up a series of cyber security lapses that enabled Chinese and Russian threat actors to compromise its networks

• December 04, 2023 04 Dec'23

  Rhysida ransomware gang hits hospital holding royal family’s data

  Ransomware gang boasts of having stolen data on the royal family in an attack on a private London hospital

• December 01, 2023 01 Dec'23

  Human augmentation tech requires dual use oversight

  Researchers investigating human augmentation technologies must acknowledge the potential military applications of their work, and military bodies cannot be allowed to dismiss ethical concerns in their pursuit of national security interests, says NGO...

• December 01, 2023 01 Dec'23

  Report reveals sorry state of cyber security at UK football clubs

  Football clubs up and down the country are putting staff, players and fans alike at risk through outdated attitudes to cyber security, according to a report

• November 30, 2023 30 Nov'23

  Government’s Online Fraud Charter welcomed

  The government has corralled 11 of the largest tech platforms in the world to commit to its Online Fraud Charter, designed to tackle online scams, fake adverts, and more

• November 30, 2023 30 Nov'23

  Rhysida gang stole hundreds of gigabytes of British Library data

  The Rhysida ransomware gang behind the cyber attack on the British Library has published almost 600GB of stolen data to its dark web leak site

• November 28, 2023 28 Nov'23

  Meta faces GDPR complaint over processing personal data without 'free consent'

  Paid-for service means data protection is only available to those who can afford it, privacy group argues in data protection complaint

• November 24, 2023 24 Nov'23

  UK police plan national roll-out of facial-recognition phone app

  UK police chiefs plan to expand use of facial-recognition technology through a nationwide roll-out of mobile-based tools and increases in retrospective facial-recognition, but oversight problems persist

• November 23, 2023 23 Nov'23

  Australia ups ante on cyber security

  Australia’s new cyber security strategy will focus on building threat-blocking capabilities, protecting critical infrastructure and improving the cyber workforce, among other priorities

• November 22, 2023 22 Nov'23

  Palantir awarded NHS FDP data contract

  NHS England has awarded a £330m, seven-year contract to US data specialist Palantir, prompting concerns from data privacy practitioners

• November 21, 2023 21 Nov'23

  Internal documents leaked as Rhysida claims responsibility for British Library ransomware attack

  Ransomware group Rhysida threatens to sell documents stolen from the British Library to the highest bidder

• November 20, 2023 20 Nov'23

  Kingfisher develops AI-agnostic platform to power DIY assistant

  The platform provides a framework for security and compliance and enables developers to test different large language models

• November 20, 2023 20 Nov'23

  Cubbit DS3 Composer brings DIY cloud to object storage pool

  Cubbit customers can now build and configure S3-compatible clouds from unused capacity and offer MSP-grade services with high levels of resilience, security and data sovereignty

• November 20, 2023 20 Nov'23

  IT not ready for AI, Pure Storage survey finds

  Storage, compute and networking hardware won’t cope without upgrades, and that often means total IT infrastructure overhaul

• November 20, 2023 20 Nov'23

  Defence lawyers seek appeal of tribunal ruling on police EncroChat cryptophone hack

  Defence lawyers are seeking leave to appeal against a tribunal ruling that found the National Crime Agency had lawfully obtained warrants to access messages from 9,000 cryptophones used in the UK

• November 16, 2023 16 Nov'23

  Outgoing police tech watchdog warns of declining oversight

  The outgoing biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner for England and Wales discusses police deployment of powerful new surveillance technologies, and the declining state of oversight in this area

• November 16, 2023 16 Nov'23

  Ransomware gang grasses up uncooperative victim to US regulator

  The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware gang has added a new tactic to its playbook, going to ever more extreme lengths in search of a pay-off

• November 16, 2023 16 Nov'23

  British Library’s Halloween cyber scare was ransomware

  The British Library has provided an update on an ongoing cyber incident affecting its systems, confirming it to be the result of a ransomware attack

• November 15, 2023 15 Nov'23

  BlackCat affiliate seen using malvertising to spread ransomware

  Researchers at eSentire identified a wave activity from an ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware affiliate which has adopted a somewhat unusual approach to delivering its locker

• November 15, 2023 15 Nov'23

  Russian cyber criminal pleads guilty to running IPStorm botnet

  Sergey Manikin faces years in jail after his illicit proxy botnet service was taken down by US law enforcement

• November 13, 2023 13 Nov'23

  Rogue state-aligned actors are most critical cyber threat to UK

  The prospect of rogue nation-state-aligned attackers bringing down the UK’s critical infrastructure is keeping the NCSC up at night

• November 13, 2023 13 Nov'23

  Encrypted mail service Tuta says it was wrongly accused of being a front for intelligence services

  German encrypted email service Tuta, formerly known as Tutanota, has denied claims by a former Canadian police intelligence officer accused of passing secrets to criminals that it was compromised by intelligence services

• November 13, 2023 13 Nov'23

  ICO alerted after technical ‘issue’ exposed college files to student barristers

  A training college for barristers has reported a data breach that left sensitive data on hundreds of current and former students accessible to other trainees

• November 09, 2023 09 Nov'23

  NCSC makes annual Black Friday plea to consumers

  Ahead of the annual festival of retail avarice, the NCSC is once again asking consumers to do the bare minimum to avoid falling victim to scams

• November 09, 2023 09 Nov'23

  UK government does not see need for specific AI legislation

  The UK government does not currently see the need for new artificial intelligence legislation, as many regulators are already dealing effectively with AI-related harms

• November 08, 2023 08 Nov'23

  Data-sharing management gap highlights cyber risk, says report

  Organisations are struggling to secure their use of communications tools to share data with third-party partners and suppliers, and in the process are exposing themselves to heightened levels of risk, according to a report

• November 08, 2023 08 Nov'23

  Iconic Singapore hotel caught up in major data breach

  The Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore uncovered a data breach of its guest loyalty programme last month

• November 08, 2023 08 Nov'23

  King’s Speech misses the mark on cyber law reform, says campaign

  A group of activists who want to reform the UK’s computer misuse laws to protect bona fide cyber pros from prosecution have been left disappointed by a lack of legislative progress

• November 07, 2023 07 Nov'23

  Unesco unveils seven-point anti-disinformation plan

  United Nations body outlines seven proposals for civil society, governments, regulators and tech platforms to adopt to combat the source of disinformation

• November 02, 2023 02 Nov'23

  UK workers exhibit poor security behaviours, report reveals

  Report by KnowBe4 has found that four in five UK workers do not make security-conscious choices, whether in-office, remote or hybrid working

• November 02, 2023 02 Nov'23

  How the UK crime agency repurposed Amazon cloud platform to analyse EncroChat cryptophone data

  UK crime agency repurposed AWS-based analytics platform to triage EncroChat data and identify threats to life in messages sent on encrypted phone network

• November 02, 2023 02 Nov'23

  EU digital ID reforms should be ‘actively resisted’, say experts

  Over 300 cyber security experts have called for the EU to rethink its proposals for eIDAS digital identity reforms, saying some of the provisions risk damaging user privacy and security

• November 01, 2023 01 Nov'23

  Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson on her AI Safety Summit goals

  As the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park takes place, Computer Weekly caught up with Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson to find out what one of the UK’s most prominent AI advocates wants from proceedings

• October 31, 2023 31 Oct'23

  Biden’s AI plans focus on US workers’ protection

  The US president has issued an Executive Order that sets out his administration’s strategy for AI safety and security

• October 30, 2023 30 Oct'23

  Frontier AI Taskforce starts recruitment drive

  The second progress report from the Frontier AI Taskforce reveals new hires plus vacancy posts for software and research engineers