C-suite executives are confident in their organisation’s ability to prevent and respond to cyber-attacks, but this confidence may be dangerously misplaced.
Research from Node4 found that 91% of mid-market C-suite executives are confident in their organisation’s cyber posture, with over half expressing strong confidence. However, further research reveals that a third of senior leaders are not taking active steps to address cybersecurity threats, and of those who are, 21% do not expect to make progress in the next 12 months.
Despite their confidence, 53% of c-suite executives acknowledge facing security or performance challenges across their hybrid infrastructure. Worryingly, just 26% have fully resolved data security risks associated with offering hybrid work. This includes provisioning secure remote access to business systems and implementing zero-trust identity management. Furthermore, a third of executives report specific cybersecurity skills shortages and difficulty filling vacant positions within their organisation.
“Many businesses routinely underestimate evolving cybersecurity risks such as AI-driven threats, vulnerabilities across hybrid networks, or the increased sophistication of supply chain attacks,” says Richard Moseley, CEO, Node4.
“Cyber-criminals don’t stand still, and the C-Suite shouldn’t either. They have a responsibility to ensure defences remain fit for purpose. But this won’t happen if cybersecurity complacency at the top spreads through the rest of the organisation.”
He adds: “C-Suite leaders should also remember that attackers continue to use low-effort tactics, such as social engineering, to trick employees into sharing login information or approving MFA requests.
They can also hijack valid sessions or use leaked data from breaches. These methods don’t require traditional hacking skills; they depend on exploiting oversights—sneaking in through open doors. Recent retail sector breaches demonstrate that mid-market organisations cannot afford to be complacent about these types of threats either.”
Complacency is also evident in the relative importance C-Suite executives give to cybersecurity. It’s ranked seventh out of a list of ten strategic priorities for the next 12 months—behind skills development, net zero and digital transformation.
And although 29% say that cybersecurity threats have the most significant external influence on their organisation’s IT strategy, executives still think sustainability, hybrid working, and evolving regulations all have a greater impact.
Aside from exposing their organisations to cyberattacks, Node4’s report also suggests that cybersecurity complacency could delay AI adoption. Over a quarter of C-Suite executives think that ensuring data security and compliance is the biggest challenge in their organisation’s data strategy—a critical foundation for successful AI implementation.
Furthermore, almost 40% think concerns over data security and governance represent the biggest challenge to AI adoption within their organisation.
“The low priority assigned to cybersecurity correlates with the inflated confidence levels noted in our report. It suggests senior leaders are shifting their focus to other pressing issues, underestimating their organisations’ vulnerabilities,” Moseley said.
“Our findings indicate that cybersecurity is now seen as operational hygiene—still important but no longer a competitive or strategic differentiator. This complacency could prove detrimental—increasing risk exposure and hindering adoption of new technologies that could drive efficiency and growth.”
AI is set to transform advertising models and drive hyper-personalisation, PwC predicts, forecasting advertising spend to grow three times as fast as entertainment and media consumer spending.
As growth for paid or subscription products slows amid heightened industry competition and constrained consumer spending, particularly in mature markets, advertising is forecast to represent a significant driver of revenue growth for the E&M industry at-large.
The fastest growing E&M revenue metrics over the next five years are all advertising driven – including retail advertising (15%), social and mobile on-stream video advertising (15%), and connected TV in-stream internet advertising (14%).
Digital formats, which account for 72% of overall ad revenue in 2024, will rise to 80% in 2029, with new technologies including AI and hyper-personalisation expected to drive this even further.
High growth areas include retail search advertising in e-shopping (rising from 32.7% in 2020 to 45.5% in 2029) and advertising in video games (rising from 32.8% in 2024 to 38.5% in 2029).
AI is impacting the E&M industry in many ways. One of the areas in which it is likely to influence revenue growth is in connected TV. In 2020, connected TV advertising revenue equated to just 5.9% of total traditional broadcast TV advertising.
In 2024, this figure had jumped to 22%. But with the rise of digital engagement and the prospect of AI-assisted hyper-personalisation, which may lead to greater end-user uptake, connected TV ad revenues will rise to $51bn in 2029, equal to 45% of traditional broadcast TV advertising.
“As the E&M industry continues to be impacted by broader economic uncertainty and constrained consumer spending, advertising is emerging as the leading powerhouse of the global entertainment and media industry’s revenues – a transformation expected to continue as AI transforms delivery models, democratises content production, serves highly curated content experiences, and reduces barriers to entry,” Bart Spiegel, global entertainment and media leader, PwC US, said.
“The E&M industry has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, but companies will need to remain nimble and proactive to embrace the future and satisfy consumers in an ecosystem that rewards creativity and tailored content.”
The British Standards Institute (BSI) has published the world’s first international standard for how audit bodies must operate when certifying AI management systems, establishing a new global benchmark for the ethical and accountable deployment of AI systems.
The announcement comes amid growing concerns about unchecked AI adoption and rising calls for government oversight.
Launching July 31, it plugs a critical gap helping to prevent a “wild west” of uneven and unreliable AI audits in a rapidly expanding market where oversight is often lacking and risks to privacy, data integrity, and compliance are mounting.
By setting rigorous criteria for assessing the quality and governance of AI audits, BSI seeks to ensure that both public and private sector organisations can trust the systems they deploy.
As adoption of AI tools accelerates across sectors, many firms remain unsure about how to manage risk, especially when it comes to third-party AI tools and data sharing.
Experts say the BSI’s global standard is a critical step in defining what safe and responsible AI should look like, ensuring that AI audits evaluate fairness, safety, bias, and reliability transparently and rigorously.
Arkadiy Ukolov, co-founder and CEO at Ulla Technology Ltd, commented: “The UK is crying out for AI oversight from government and the regulators to combat the AI wild west that is taking over the business world. Too often, staff are sharing unauthorised data on third-party AI systems, which breaches privacy and compliance protocols, exposing confidential information.”
“For AI to be truly fit for purpose, it must be built on privacy-first foundations, where data remains under the user’s control and is processed securely within an enclosed environment. This must be supported by robust governance frameworks to ensure ethical and safe AI usage, protecting data at all stages.”
The new standard supports the UK’s efforts to position itself as a global leader in responsible AI development by continuing to work on AI regulation.
As generative AI becomes embedded in day-to-day operations, organisations are being urged to proactively assess the AI tools they use, not just for performance, but for auditability, data governance, and long-term accountability, leaving a clear message from regulators that AI oversight isn’t optional; it’s the new baseline.
New research from Mistral AI adds to the growing database of the shocking environmental impact of AI models, from their intensive training to everyday use.
The French AI model creator published a peer-reviewed report on the environmental impact of its Mistral Large 2 LLM across three key figures: greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and materials use.
With less than 18 months of existence, the Large 2 LLM generated 20,4 ktCO2e of greenhouse gases, consumed 281,000 cubit metres of water, and used 660 kg Sb eq of materials. The water usage is on par with 112 Olympic swimming pools.
What mainly drove these figures as the training and running of the model, otherwise known as inference, which accounted for 85.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and 91% of water consumption in the 18 months.
Mistal also tracked the amount of resource use and emissions over smaller use cases. Generating one page of text using the model emitted 1.14g CO2e of greenhouse gases, the same as watching online streaming in the US for 10 seconds, or 55 second for a user in France, and 0.05 litres of water, the same amount required in growing a small pink radish. The materials consumed is the equivalent of those used in producing a 2 euro cent coin, or 0.2 mg Sb eq.
“These figures reflect the scale of computation involved in Gen AI, requiring numerous GPUs, often in regions with carbon-intensive electricity and sometimes water stress,” the research said. “They also include “upstream emissions” – impacts from manufacturing servers for instance, and not just energy use.”
Further, while these figures may seem inconsequential, just a small number of users required just a page of text can see these numbers skyrocket.
Mistral found a strong correlation between a model’s size and its environmental footprint. “Benchmarks have shown impacts are roughly proportional to model size: a model 10 times bigger will generate impacts one order of magnitude larger than a smaller model for the same amount of generated tokens,” the study noted.
This underlines the importance of selecting the right model for the right use cases – bigger does not always mean better, but it does tend to mean a higher environmental impact.
The report also highlighted the need for standardised environmental impact monitoring for AI models, from their training to their everyday use, the better track these metrics and understand its total impact on the greater environment.
While the metrics tracked in the study are important, they did not highlight the impact of the specific materials used that needed to be mined or manufactured, as well as the impact of data centres on water pollution and quality.
The research did highlight, however, that the geographic location of AI model training data centres is very important in mitigating their impact. Choosing cooler areas with more readily available water can significantly decrease the environmental impact of data centres, which require more energy and water to cool themselves down.
Ofcom’s age check verification requirements will come into force tomorrow, the 25th of July, as the regulator prepares to enforce the new regulation under the Online Safety Act.
Sites and apps which allow harmful content – including pornography – must protect children from accessing it from the end of this week, the regulator warned, as the deadline approaches for tech firms to comply with new rules.
The changes mean that risky sites and apps – large and small – must use highly effective ‘age gating’ methods to identify which users are children, and then prevent them from accessing pornography, as well as self-harm, suicide, and eating disorder content.
Porn Sites
Over the last month, the UK’s biggest and most popular adult service providers – including Porn Hub – plus thousands of smaller sites, have committed to deploying age-checks across their services.
Other online platforms have now announced they will deploy age assurance – including Bluesky, Discord, Grindr, Reddit, and X.
Ofcom is ready to enforce against any company which allows pornographic content and does not comply with age-check requirements by the deadline.
The regulator is now extending its existing age assurance enforcement programme, previously focused on studio porn services – to cover all platforms that allow users to share pornographic material, whether they are dedicated adult sites or other services that include pornography.
Ofcom says it will be actively checking compliance from 25 July, and is prepared to launch any investigations into non-compliant services next week.
Shielding Children
Under the new rules, sites that allow other forms of harmful content must also have highly effective age checks from 25 July.
Ofcom is launching a new age assurance enforcement programme, building on work undertaken by its ‘small but risky taskforce’ to monitor the response from industry. This will specifically target sites dedicated to the dissemination of harmful content, including self-harm and suicide, eating disorders, or extreme violence and gore.
As well as preventing children from encountering the most harmful content, Ofcom’s codes also demand that online services act to protect children from dangerous stunts or challenges, misogynistic, violent, hateful or abusive material, and online bullying.
To hold sites and apps to account, the regulator is launching an extensive monitoring and impact programme, primarily focused on the biggest platforms where children spend the most time – including Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube.
Ofcom’s newly released research also shows that the majority of UK parents believe that regulator’s Protection of Children Codes will improve the safety of children.
Over seven in ten (71%) feel that the measures overall will make a positive difference to children’s safety online, while over three-quarters (77%) are optimistic that age checks specifically will keep children safer.
Nine in ten parents (90%) agree that it is important for tech firms to follow Ofcom’s rules, but a significant minority (41%) are sceptical about whether tech firms will comply in practice.
“Prioritising clicks and engagement over children’s online safety will no longer be tolerated in the UK,” Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s Chief Executive said.
“Our message to tech firms is clear – comply with age-checks and other protection measures set out in our Codes, or face the consequences of enforcement action from Ofcom.”
Business confidence in Scotland fell further in the second quarter of 2025, though it still remains positive and above the UK average.
This is according to the latest Business Confidence Monitor from ICAEW, which surveyed 1,000 ICAEW chartered accountants covering a range of UK sectors, regions, and company sizes to ensure a representative picture of the UK economy.
The survey found that confidence among Scottish Businesses fell to +3.3 in Q2 2025, which is now below its historical norm of +6.3, though it has beat out the UK average of -4.2.
The score of +3.3 is the lowest recording since the end of 2023, with sentiment drifting down ovr recent quarters as national and international headwinds gather overhead.
The Scottish economy grew by 0.4% in Q1 2025, an improvement on GDP growth of 0.1% recorded in Q4 2024.
But much like the wider UK, more recent estimates for monthly GDP report a 0.2% decline in Scottish output between March and April 2025, with falls in manufacturing and accommodation & food services creating the largest drag on growth.
While confidence among Scottish households has also dipped, as the Scottish Consumer Sentiment Indicator fell in April to its lowest level in two years, the large pipeline of energy and transport related infrastructure projects is no doubt providing a buffer for some Scottish businesses to heightened global uncertainty.
Annual domestic sales growth in Scotland was weaker than any other UK region, while export growth remains below the national average. Scottish businesses are also less optimistic than average about the coming year.
While businesses anticipate export growth will improve by 3.1% next year, its projected growth is lower than the UK-wide forecast (3.5%) and down on previous quarters, with the weaker export expectations of Energy, Water and Mining businesses, which are significant in Scotland, likely weighing on the outlook.
Businesses in Scotland are concerned about slowing sales, as the main growing worry among businesses was customer demand (48%), higher in Scotland than the rest of the UK (42%).
Challenging trading conditions were also cited, as marketplace competition was the top challenge for 47% of those surveyed – also more widely reported in Scotland than the rest of the UK.
Scottish business are also more concerned about the tax burden, as well as regulation.
In terms of employment, the survey found a slight decline, with employment growth reported at -0.1% in the second quarter. Scotland is the only UK region to report a decline in employment over this period, and similarly, has a lower projected employment growth (0.7%) than the national average (1.3%).
At the same time, wages only grew 2.5% in Scotland, while the UK average saw 3% growth in wages over the last quarter.
Scotland’s cooling labour market is reflected in the proportion of companies citing the availability of skills as a growing challenge. Reports about the availability of management (13%) and non-management skills (17%) were below their respective historical averages in Scotland in Q2 2025.
However, the report did find that inflationary pressures have eased, as input price growth and salary growth slows.
Still, the investment environment in Scotland has weakened over the past year, with annual capital investment falling by 0.1% in the last quarter, the only UK region to report a decline.
However, a healthy pipeline of planned investment projects saw projected investment expand by 2.4% in the next 12 months, exceeding national figures (1.8%) and the historical average (2.1%).
Research and development budgets did see an expansion int he last 12 months to the second quarter of 2025, and Scottish companies are planning on raising these budgets to 1.7%, a stronger uplift than expected elsewhere in the UK, though still behind the Scottish historical average (2%).
IT and security leaders are bypassing basic security measures as hopes for a zero trust strategy fails.
A survey of 1,000 IT, security, and engineering leaders from Tailscale investigated where organisations stand in their security posture and zero trust adoption, finding that many organisations are falling flat.
Eighty-three per cent of respondents said that they bypassed security measures just to accomplish tasks, whether it was sharing credentials (23%), using unapproved software (28%), or using their own personal device (32%).
It’s also human factors that often cause vital security upgrades to be delayed. About two in five (42%) of those surveyed said that upgrades were delayed due to the risk of disruptions to workflows or integrations.
A further 39% pointed to leadership or organisations priorities, while a third said the upgrades had an unclear business case or return on investment value. About three in ten also noted that upgrades often lacked clear direction or suitable solutions.
It appears that many are unsatisfied with their company’s security flow, with 99% wanting to redesign their organisation’s network setup from scratch.
About half (49%) complained that their organisation’s infrastructure could not be scaled, with two thirds saying that their workflows were actively blocked or misunderstood by IT and security policies.
Further, humans seem to be at every step of an organisation’s process, opening them to future risk. About seven in ten (68%) of organisations rely on manual processes for network access, ranging from static firewalls and IP-based permissions. About 90% also reported issues with their current VPN.
Further, the majority of those surveyed (68%) also had access to systems of jobs they had left, leaving even more room for risk.
While zero trust was an aspiration for most organisations, less than a third (29%) primarily use an identity-based access model.
The report offers startling revelations into the long journey ahead to achieving zero trust, hampered by human risk.
The first quarter of 2025-2026 (April to June) saw corporate insolvencies in Scotland rise by 17.3% year-on-year, totalling 332.
The new figures come from Accountant in Bankruptcy, Scotland’s insolvency service, which showed that there was a quarter-on-quarter increase of 12.9% corporate insolvencies, with the last quarter of 2024 having 294 total insolvencies.
Personal insolvency numbers (bankruptcies and protected trust deeds) in Scotland for the first quarter of 2025 decreased by 5.8% compared with the first quarter of 2024, to a total of 1,935.
Compared with the previous quarter, from January to March 2025, the number of personal insolvencies rose 15.8%.
“Corporate insolvency activity in Scotland is picking up pace, with more firms entering an insolvency process last quarter than at any point in the past two years,” Tim Cooper, immediate past president of R3 and partner at Addleshaw Goddard LLP, said.
“This upward trend stands in contrast to England and Wales, where corporate insolvency numbers increased only slightly on the quarter and fell year-on-year.
“The more significant rise and overall upward trend in Scotland has been driven largely by a significant increase in Compulsory Liquidations, which have reached their highest level in six years, a high proportion of which are driven by HMRC, indicating a more robust approach to tax debt collection and enforcement, and other creditors adopting a similar and more active approach through the courts.”
Voluntary liquidations from creditors have dipped in the previous quarter and the same period in 2024.
“This all paints a picture in the Scottish economy of businesses struggling with liquidity to pay creditors as they fall due, with creditors including HMRC taking proactive court action to enforce payment or bring businesses to a close and prevent further losses,” Cooper commented.
“From a voluntary liquidation perspective, there may be hesitation among directors to take decisive steps in the current climate, or that they are able to find other avenues towards rescue and recovery including creditor support and forbearance which avoids an insolvency or otherwise enables a solvent closure. That said, Members’ Voluntary Liquidations remain above last year’s level but have fallen from the heightened numbers seen in late 2024 and early 2025, when many directors accelerated closures to benefit from the lower Business Asset Disposal Relief rates ahead of planned tax increases.
“There are indications that momentum in Scotland’s economy is stalling, and these latest figures indicate more businesses in Scotland are paying the price. Amid high operating costs, low confidence, and persistent inflation, many firms are facing tough choices around whether to keep trading, let alone grow.
“Rising costs from the National Minimum Wage and employers’ National Insurance contributions at the start of this quarter, combined with concerns over potential autumn tax hikes and tariffs, are clouding decision-making and forcing many firms into a holding pattern as they wait for greater certainty.”
Meta is adding new safety features to Instagram for adult accounts that prominently feature children.
These include adults who regularly share photos and videos of their children, and adults – such as parents or talent managers – who run accounts that represent teens or children under 13.
While users need to be at least 13 to use Instagram, adults are able to run accounts that represent younger children if it is clear in the account biography that adults are managing the account.
While Meta contends that many of these accounts are harmless, it does admit that many people may abuse them, leaving sexualised comments or requesting sexual images from these accounts.
These accounts will therefore receive some of the automatic account protections given to teen accounts, including stricter messaging settings, and the filtering of offensive comments.
Meta will also try to weed out suspicious adults who have had their accounts blocked by teen accounts from accessing these child-featuring accounts.
These come in conjunction with some updates to new safety measures for teen accounts.
Teen accounts will now feature more context on direct messages that will provide them with information about the accounts they are interacting with, and help them spot potential spammers.
Teens will see new options to see safety tips and block unwanted accounts, as well as information on when a user joined the app.
Meta has also launched a new block and report option on DMs, so that people can take both actions together in a combined click, making the process easier.
These new features follow Meta’s other safety notices and tools rolled out over the past couple of months. In June, Meta introduced location notices to Instagram DMs, which will alert users if the accounts they are messaging are in a different country. This feature is meant to protect people from potential sextortion scammers who often misrepresent their location.
Meta also rolled out a nudity protection feature globally, which blurs potentially nude images, and prompts users to think twice before forwarding any suspected nude images.
Meta said that earlier this year, its teams removed nearly 135,000 Instagram accounts for leaving sexualised comments or requesting sexual images from adult managed accounts featuring children. It also removed an additional 500,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts that were linked to those accounts.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority has taken more decided aim at the mobile platform ecosystem, designating Google and Apple with ‘strategic market status’ as it publishes roadmaps to improve competition in the mobile sphere.
The CMA found through its ongoing investigations that Apple and Google’s mobile platforms hold an effective duopoly, with around 90-100% of UK mobile-devices running on Apple or Google’s mobile platform.
In its investigations, the CMA heard of concerns from UK business and consumers surrounding this market control.
The UK’s app developer community is the largest in Europe, generating an estimated 1.5% of the UK’s GDP, and supports around 400,000 jobs. While Apple and Google control and enable many of these app developers, their hold on the market can lead to less competition and more strain than benefits on developers.
Developers told the CMA that Apple and Google’s duopoly often leads to inconsistent and unpredictable app review processes, leading to uncertainty and in some cases, failed app launches. This is only increased as inconsistent app store rankings often benefit the firms’ own apps over independent competitors.
Further, developers noted restrictions on access to features and functionality which may impede their innovation, benefiting the controlling firms. In conjunction, default settings, pre-instillation, and other aspects of ‘choice architecture’ often favour firms’ own services, limiting genuine competition from outsiders.
“It is essential the digital economy works well to power the success of businesses across the UK economy,” the CMA said.
“More competition and choice will unlock opportunities for UK businesses to invest, innovate and grow, as well as allowing UK consumers to benefit from the latest innovations, high quality experiences and more choice.”
The CMA has published new roadmaps to unlock better digital markets competition, outlining how Apple and Google and others in the market can offer better consumer choice.
This will include setting fairer review and ranking processes in App Stores, and allowing users to be steered out of app stores for purchases.
Further, the CMA aims to address interoperability issues with Apple, with direct emphasis on digital wallets and connected devices.
Overarchingly, the CMA’s roadmap will try to ensure that consumers have genuine choice in the services they access on their devices. The CMA will also seek ways in which AI will proliferate in the sector to ensure that this is also deployed on a level playing field.
“Apple and Google’s mobile platforms are both critical to the UK economy – playing an important role in all our lives, from banking and shopping to entertainment and education. But our investigation so far has identified opportunities for more innovation and choice,” Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, said.
“The targeted and proportionate actions we have set out today would enable UK app developers to remain at the forefront of global innovation while ensuring UK consumers receive a world-class experience. ”
“Time is of the essence: as competition agencies and courts globally take action in these markets, it’s essential the UK doesn’t fall behind.”
Adarma, the Edinburgh-based cybersecurity firm, has officially filed for administration, but over 100 employees claim they are owed wages that are as yet, unpaid.
Interpath was appointed the administrators for the company, which has its headquarters in Fountainbridge and another office in London, after Adarma’s financial situation became “incredibly challenging”.
“Following our appointment as joint administrators, we have been working with staff as a matter of priority, and are doing all we can to help them make claims to the Redundancy Payments Service in order to secure contributions towards wage arrears, as well as holiday, notice and redundancy payments, where applicable,” Alistair McAlinden, managing director and joint administrator, said.
Interpath was appointed as administrators about a week ago, shortly after it was revealed that Adarma had intentions of administration.
Since then, however, over 100 workers for the company have been ‘cruelly left in the lurch’ according to Thompsons Solicitors Scotland, which is represented a number of former employees of Adarma.
“Yet again loyal hard working employees have been led up the garden path by a company that knew it was in trouble but yet told them nothing,” Paul Kissen, a senior lawyer at Thompsons said.
“The employees have been treated with contempt. These workers are entitled to compensation through a protective award and I will make sure they get it.
“The employees who are part of the action will each get several weeks’ extra pay for the protective award, even those who only worked there for a very short amount of time.”
According to an Adarma employee who wished to remain anonymous, workers were told that the firm was seeking a new owner, but to not tell clients of the financial woes as they kept on working.
“Not long afterwards we were told about the administration and that we wouldn’t get paid. We were kept completely in the dark and then dumped without our salaries. As usual the actual workers are just cast aside without a second thought,” they said.
The cybersecurity firm, which was granted £2m from Scottish Enterprise to expand in 2022, had 173 employees at the time of its dissolution, who were then made redundant.
Solicitors at Thompsons are working to ensure that former employees are given compensation for any lost wages.
“Adarma had built a strong reputation in the cyber security sector, but sustained margin and cashflow pressures ultimately proved insurmountable,” Interpath’s chief executive Will Wright, said.
“Like many in the industry, the business faced intense competition, rising operational costs and a continual need for investment – given Adarma’s financial position, we’ve made the difficult decision to cease trading.”
Alistair McAlinden added: “We understand this is an incredibly difficult time for all those affected by the administration of Adarma, particularly employees.
“Unfortunately, the financial position of the business was incredibly challenging, which ultimately led to it filing for insolvency and no option but to make redundancies.”
NatWest Group has announced a new five-year collaboration with Amazon Web Services and Accenture to transform its customer service by accelerating the modernisation of its digital, data and analytics, and AI capabilities.
The collaboration will enable NatWest to provide more intuitive, engaging and personalised services to its 20 million customers – drawing on the combination of Accenture and AWS’s cloud and AI, and banking expertise to help anticipate and respond to customer needs faster and more effectively.
In parallel, it will further enhance colleagues’ skills and foster a data-driven culture through access to new AI technologies that empower them to more swiftly and easily serve customers.
NatWest hopes the collaboration will help it deliver against its strategic priorities ranging from disciplined growth, bank-wide simplification, and risk management.
“This collaboration with Accenture and AWS is key to helping us progress the transformation of NatWest as we become a simpler, more technology and data-driven bank,” Paul Thwaite, CEO of NatWest Group, said.
“Our industry – and the expectations of our customers – are changing rapidly and we are building our capabilities in order to understand and serve their needs better and faster than ever before.
“Equipped with high quality data, we can continue to quietly revolutionise how we serve our customers through the use of AI and other technologies in order to provide more personalised products and services as a trusted partner in the moments that matter most.”
AI and data will play a central role in meeting NatWest’s priorities, ranging from creating real time communication for customers, moving data streams into a bank-wide data platform, and agile capital management.
“NatWest has a bold vision to use the power of its data to seamlessly tie together its products, channels and customer touchpoints — a major step forward in making banking easier for its customers and providing them with more personalised experiences,” Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO of Accenture, said.
“We are excited to partner with NatWest and AWS and bring our deep industry experience and data and AI expertise to this reinvention, which will increase efficiency, drive greater productivity and create value. Together, we will help NatWest raise the bar for how banks can use data and AI to better serve customers and reach new levels of performance.”
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, said “NatWest is working with AWS and Accenture to bring together banking data to better serve customers.
“Using AWS’s deep and extensive experience in financial services technology, NatWest is setting new standards in banking as a more agile, customer-focused bank.
“Their AI-enabled platform will deliver the agility, security, and reliability needed to deepen customer relationships and drive growth. This exemplifies how forward-thinking financial institutions work with AWS to solve real problems and innovate at scale.”
The United Nations is urging big tech corporations to fuel their data centres with exclusively renewable energy by 2030.
UN secretary-general António Guterres said that Big Tech needs to start taking responsibility for its energy usage, including the water usage required to cool data centres.
Guterres presented concerning reports on Seizing the Moment of Opportunity in partnership with the International Renewable Energy Agency.
“AI can boost efficiency, innovation and resilience in energy systems, but it is also energy hungry,” Guterres said. “This is not sustainable — unless we make it so.”
AI is causing data centre energy and water usage to surge, with AI data centres typically consuming as much energy as 100,000 homes, the UN found. However, the largest centres currently being built will use 20 times this. Data centres are expected to consume as much electricity as Japan by 2030. And not everyone is going to reap these benefits equally.
While certain, more developed nations are advancing in their renewable energy transition, other countries are struggling to catch up. The UN found that clean energy is not replacing fossil fuels at the rate necessary to prevent further climate disaster.
With tumultuous geopolitical tensions, the transition to cleaner energy could become more difficult and costly, even to nations that are currently adopting them.
However, in the long term, the UN predicts that clean power costs will continue to lower, making it a smart investment.
The International Renewable Energy Agency found that over 90% of new renewable projects produce the same electricity for less than the lowest-cost fossil fuel option.
However, clean power adoption remains an uneven game, with less than one in every five dollars that went towards clean power coming from nations outside of China since the Paris Agreement in 2016.
The emphasis on big tech comes after years of climate concerns regarding the rise of AI and nations’ often enthusiastic reception for the emerging technology. The push for more data centres seems to often not be accompanied by strict environmental regulations or clean energy infrastructure to ensure that AI does not contribute more than it already has to imminent climate disaster.
The UN, however, has continually hit out against big tech in other ways, as UN special rapporteur for human rights reported on the complicity of certain tech companies for the genocide in Gaza.
Tech companies’ reliance on metals and minerals, even when they seek greener solutions, have also lead to the rise of violence, genocide, and child slavery in nations like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been exploited and ravaged by demand for cobalt, coltan, and copper.
Return to office mandates are hurting Sottish worker’s mental wellbeing as leaders crack down on hybrid and remote work, Hays found.
In a new report from the recruitment outfit, Hays surveyed 3,600 workers in the UK, 209 of which work in Scotland.
Overwhelmingly, most (84%) of those working in a hybrid role say it has positively impacted their overall wellbeing, with seven in ten (71%) of employers in Scotland backing flexible working in investment.
However, as leaders urge their workers back to the office, many Scots have voiced their concerns. Over half (58%) are worried about the financial impact of having to work in the office more regularly. Working in the office may increase transportation or child care costs.
“Our research shows that 43% of workers in Scotland say recent new stories about employers asking staff to return to the office more regularly has had a negative knock-on effect on their wellbeing,” Keith Mason, director at Hays Scotland, said.
“These ‘scare stories’ are mostly affecting younger workers aged between 20 and 29, more than the older age group of over 50s across the UK.”
Mason said that ignoring these financial concerns could “have a negative impact on the sustained success of their business.”
The survey found that work itself is impacting people’s wellbeing negatively with workers citing a high workload (46%), inadequate compensation and benefits (39%), and a lack of recognition and appreciation (36%) worsening their wellbeing.
Interestingly, even reporting on return to office mandates is negatively impacting worker’s wellbeing in anticipation of the added stress and strain of going into the office.
This was noted to more negatively affect women workers than men, perhaps indicating unequal strain from care duties, or negative workplace culture.
Overall, in the UK, Hays found that 54% of professionals feel stressed at work.
While Hays surveyed a range of sectors across the UK, the survey does provide valuable insight into the UK tech sector, as many tech professionals are questioning their role in the industry due to stress and a lack of compensation.
Women are reportedly leaving the sector in droves due to a lack of work progression and equal pay – could a return to office mandate be the last straw for some workers who already have one foot out the door?
AI adoption has become nearly universal among UK enterprises, with 93% of UK organisations using the technology in some form.
However, only 7% have fully embedded governance frameworks to manage its risks, according to Trustmarque’s AI Governance Index 2025.
AI governance is the framework of policies and controls to ensure AI operates transparently, fairly, and meets regulatory requirements. As AI becomes embedded in critical business processes, governance must be integrated from design through to deployment. By preventing bias, safeguarding data and meeting compliance requirements, solid governance builds confidence and paves the way for long‑term, trustworthy AI.
Trustmarque, a technology reseller, has launched a report, based on a survey of 507 senior UK IT decision-makers, highlighting a widening gap between the speed of AI adoption and the maturity of supporting governance structures.
The report found that just 4% of firms consider their technology infrastructure fully AI-ready, with only 8% having integrated AI governance into their software development lifecycle.
The research found that organisations still largely rely on legacy software development processes which haven’t been updated to account for AI-specific risks such as model bias or explainability gaps. Only 28% apply bias detection during testing, and fewer still (22%) test for model interpretability.
Infrastructure and tooling also present barriers to governance according to the IT leaders surveyed. Just 4% of organisations say their data and infrastructure environments are fully prepared to support AI at scale. Registries, audit trails, and version control for AI models are often manual or missing entirely.
When it comes to accountability for AI oversight, the research found it is fragmented. Only 9% report alignment between IT leadership and governance, while 19% say there is no clear owner for governance activity. Executive engagement remains low, with most AI governance driven at the departmental level rather than through strategic leadership.
This lack of central ownership is reflected in how few organisations measure the effectiveness of their governance. Just 18% have implemented continuous monitoring with KPIs to track progress.
“Our report shows that AI adoption is outpacing governance,” said Seb Burrell, head of AI at Trustmarque. “It’s a clear gap – 93% of organisations are using AI but only 7% have fully embedded governance frameworks.
“Right now, systems and processes haven’t kept up with the speed of innovation. Development teams lack proper tooling and infrastructure, and the issues are compounded by the lack of management buy-in for building robust governance systems.
“Governance is also often seen as a constraint, but our findings suggest otherwise. Organisations that have adopted AI governance are seeing real, tangible benefits – faster deployments, stronger accountability, and reduced manual review cycles. It’s a vital support function to enable responsible, scalable AI.”
James McKeown, AI Governance Specialist and Principal Test Consultant at Acutest said: “What stood out in this research is how many organisations are adopting AI without fully understanding the risks,” said James McKeown, AI Governance Specialist and Principal Test Consultant at Acutest.
“We see projects moving fast, but often without the checks, controls, or delivery oversight needed to support them. That’s where governance makes the difference. Without it, you’re not just risking compliance gaps, you’re risking poor outcomes, rising costs, and wasted time. Governance isn’t about slowing things down. It’s what helps organisations scale AI safely and effectively.”
Funding from the Scottish Government to inspire young people to set up their own business has been increased by more than a third.
The Entrepreneurial Education Fund 2025-26 will make up to £1.2 million available for courses and projects that will encourage more young people, from a wide range of backgrounds, to choose business ownership as a career path.
Last year’s Fund supported programmes that embedded entrepreneurial education in Scotland’s classrooms right through school from P1 to S6.
The scope of this year’s fund has been expanded further to encourage more applications for vocational programmes equivalent to SCQF Levels 7 and 8.
“Fostering and supporting entrepreneurial talent is vital for ensuring a growing, thriving economy and the Scottish Government continues to invest in expanding the pipeline of support available to help this and the next generation of business founders to succeed,” deputy first minister Kate Forbes said.
“Entrepreneurial education helps build the mindset, skills and attitudes needed to succeed. It also, critically, increases participation from an early age, breaking down barriers to people considering entrepreneurship as a career choice.
“Last year’s Fund was run competitively for the first time, resulting in a diverse set of programmes to inspire young people across all school ages. With increased funding and further expansion to the scheme this year we are putting in place strong foundations to embed an entrepreneurial mindset at a crucial time.”
The Entrepreneurial Education Pathways Fund is open for applications until 20 August 2025, with grants of up to £250,000 available to public and private sector organisations to deliver courses and projects.
Chief Entrepreneur Ana Stewart said. “Scotland’s future economy will be built by the bold ideas and creative minds we nurture today. This new round of the Entrepreneurial Education Fund will help to further embed innovation and ambition into entrepreneurial learning and teaching programmes. Importantly, this competitive fund will encourage innovation and impact by offering support to new providers in the field, as well as the more established organisations.
“By investing in the next generation of potential founders, we are shaping a culture where entrepreneurship is accessible, inclusive, and a natural path for anyone to turn an idea into a business.”
Daydream Believers received £146,200 from the Scottish Government’s Entrepreneurial Education Fund in 2024-25 to develop the Dreamers and Doers Playlist, a 120-hour learning programme delivered in schools across the country.
There is a troubling gap between risk awareness and real-world action among UK businesses, research from Umazi reveals, with many firms still relying on gut instinct and goodwill over hard verification when choosing suppliers, partners, and clients.
According to Umazi’s findings, nearly 30% of UK businesses admit they don’t request any documentation when engaging with a business that has a recognised industry name. Even more worryingly, 29% of organisations say they knowingly accept the risk of working with entirely unverified businesses.
Despite growing concern over corporate identity theft, data breaches and fraud, over 20% of businesses say they perform no due diligence at all, citing a lack of tools or knowledge to do so.
“Not every business mistake can be undone. When companies engage with unverified partners, the fallout isn’t just a bad deal or a temporary setback; it can lead to financial collapse, legal exposure, and in the worst cases, needless liquidation,” said Cindy van Niekerk, CEO and founder of Umazi.
“We’ve seen it time and again: a fraudulent supplier, a fake corporate identity, a data breach that spirals out of control, and suddenly a business that was stable is gone. And yet, this is entirely preventable.
“The tools exist. Digital verification is not a future concept – it’s here now. We don’t need more cautionary tales. We need a cultural shift where trust is earned through verification, not assumed through reputation. This isn’t something to fix later, it’s something to fix now.”
The report also uncovers the persistence of outdated practices. 63% of businesses still feel comfortable emailing sensitive information to third parties, and 73% say they trust the recipient to store that data securely.
“The appetite for change is clear: 88% of respondents said that having access to a digital business identity that confirms a partner or supplier’s legitimacy would significantly improve the due diligence process,” Van Niekerk added.
“The same number also agrees that a universally recognised “trust stamp” – indicating a business has been digitally verified, would be invaluable. The issue is not only verifying others. Many businesses also reported frustration at the difficulty of proving their legitimacy to clients and partners, often having to repeat lengthy, manual processes that stall growth and damage trust.
“In a high-risk, high-speed business world, trust without verification is a liability. We now have the technology to eliminate that risk and build a healthier, more resilient economy in the process.”
The UK government has struck a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, aiming to expand AI security research collaborations and infrastructure investment.
The collaboration also plans to find new ways for taxpayer funded services like security and education to make best use of the latest tech.
It comes as OpenAI deepens its commitment to the UK, with plans to increase the size of its London office to follow. The move will build out what started as the company’s first international location just two years ago, where research and engineering teams contribute to the development of frontier AI models, and support is provided to UK business, developers, and start-ups.
The partnership will explore where the UK government can deploy AI in areas such as justice, defence and security, and education technology in line with UK standards and guidelines to demonstrate the opportunity to make taxpayer funded services more efficient and effective.
The memorandum of understanding signed by technology secretary Peter Kyle and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sets out intent to build on the UK’s strengths in science, innovation and talent to “maintain a world-leading UK AI ecosystem rooted in democratic values.”
Under the partnership, OpenAI will also explore potential routes to deliver the infrastructure priorities laid out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, with the potential of investing in AI Growth Zones to support key infrastructure developments like data centres.
“AI will be fundamental in driving the change we need to see across the country – whether that’s in fixing the NHS, breaking down barriers to opportunity or driving economic growth,” Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said.
“That’s why we need to make sure Britain is front and centre when it comes to developing and deploying AI, so we can make sure it works for us.
“This can’t be achieved without companies like OpenAI, who are driving this revolution forward internationally.
“This partnership will see more of their work taking place in the UK, creating high-paid tech jobs, driving investment in infrastructure, and crucially giving our country agency over how this world-changing technology moves forward.”
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, said: “AI is a core technology for nation building that will transform economies and deliver growth. Britain has a strong legacy of scientific leadership and its government was one of the first to recognise the potential of AI through its AI Opportunities Action Plan.
“Now, it’s time to deliver on the plan’s goals by turning ambition to action and delivering prosperity for all.”
The UK government may be backing down from its demand that Apple provide a backdoor to its end-to-end encryption for British law enforcement as the US places pressure on British officials.
Back in January, the UK Home Office issued a secret order to Apple to create a backdoor to its end-to-end encryption that would be accessible by law enforcement. Encryption has long been scorned by law enforcement agencies as a barrier to investigations.
Apple, however, disputed the ask, instead opting to remove its encryption technology – advanced data protection (ADP) – rather than create a backdoor that it says could create a security risk, as well as impinge on people’s privacy.
Since this went public, the US has critiqued the UK Home Office for the order, with US Vice President JD Vance calling the backdoor order “crazy.”
Now, the Financial Times has reported that Whitehall officials say that the Home Office is “basically going to have to back down” due to ongoing pressure from the US.
“They are working on a way around it now,” another Whitehall source said, as reported by the FT.
The sources told FT explicitly that: “One of the challenges for the tech partnerships we’re working on is the encryption issue. It’s a big red line in the US – they don’t want us messing with their tech companies.”
As the UK attempts to make the UK an attractive destination for major tech companies, it is trying to balance this with concerns from law enforcement on how encryption may be impeding investigations into online crimes such as child abuse, drug sales, and terrorism.
However, as tensions between the US and the UK simmer down when it comes to tariffs and trade, the UK likely does not want to risk any business assurity with the temperamental US government.
Apple plans to challenge the UK order, saying in February: “We have never built a back door or master key to any of our products, and we never will.”
Meta has refused to sign the EU’s AI Act code of practice just weeks before the new rules are set to take effect.
The code of practice is for general-purpose AI models, and is a voluntary framework the EU hopes will aid companies in implementing the necessary processes to comply with the AI Act.
The code has a number of voluntary requirements, ranging from companies regularly providing and updating documentation on their AI tools and services, as well as preventing developers from training their AI on stolen or pirated content. AI trainers must also comply with data owner’s request to not use their data to train their AI models.
These voluntary requests aim to make compliance with the new law easier for big companies training their AI. The AI Act does ban some AI use cases that are deemed an “unacceptable risk,” like social scoring. High risk uses like facial recognition will also be restricted, as well as decision-making in areas like employment and education.
Companies that develop AI will also be required to register their systems with the EU, which will ascertain if they meet certain requirements surrounding risk and quality.
Meta has rejected the code of practice, calling the entire act an “overreach.”
“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI,” Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer at Meta wrote in a LinkedIn post. “We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI (GPAI) models and Meta won’t be signing it. This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.
“Businesses and policymakers across Europe have spoken out against this regulation. Earlier this month, over 40 of Europe’s largest businesses signed a letter calling for the Commission to ‘Stop the Clock’ in its implementation.
“We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them.”
Other top AI companies including Microsoft, Alphabet, and Mistral AI have been pushing back on the EU AI Act’s roll out, urging the European Commission to delay the legislation.
The EU is forging ahead, however, and shared guidelines for AI model providers to comply with by 2 August.
The UK government is launching a consultation on self-driving vehicles, giving the public a chance to offer their views on making autonomous vehicles safe and accessible before the first services in the UK become available next year.
Future Roads minister Lilian Greenwood is inviting the public and industry to give their views on the automated passenger services (APS) permitting scheme, and the draft statutory instrument, a key legal element of how taxi, private hire, and bus services of self-driving vehicles will be regulated once they hit roads in Great Britain.
Safety, innovation, and world-leading regulation and accessibility will be at the forefront of the consultation, the government says, with the self-driving vehicles rollout aiming to reduce human error, which contributes to 88% of all road collisions.
Self-driving vehicles can provide greater choice and flexibility for passengers to get around more easily, including during unsociable hours.
They could also help add new public transport options in rural areas to boost connectivity for local communities and improve mobility, accessibility and independence for those unable to drive.
Self-driving vehicles can provide greater choice and flexibility for passengers to get around more easily, including during unsociable hours.
They could also help add new public transport options in rural areas to boost connectivity for local communities and improve mobility, accessibility and independence for those unable to drive.
Bringing forward the pilots of self-driving vehicles will help the government deliver the Plan for Change by creating 38,000 jobs to put money in people’s pockets, driving investment to back British engineering excellence and unlocking an industry worth £42 billion by 2035.
“Self-driving vehicles are one of the most exciting opportunities to improve transport for so many people, especially those in rural areas or unable to drive. We want to work with passengers and industry to make this new form of transport safe and accessible, as we take our next steps towards adoption,” future of roads minister Lilian Greenwood said.
“This technology doesn’t just have the potential to improve transport for millions of people. It will help stimulate innovation, create thousands of jobs, and drive investment to put more money in people’s pockets – all part of delivering our Plan for Change.”
Through the consultation, representative groups, industry stakeholders, trade unions, and members of the public will be able to make their views heard and influence future government policy over a variety of areas critical for self-driving vehicles to run safely and efficiently.
Topics of conversation will include how self-driving vehicles can be made as accessible as possible for disabled and older people, as well as how services of self-driving vehicles are approved by councils.
Further, the public can comment on how and when permits to operate a service should be varied, suspended, or withdrawn.
“As the first company to trial an autonomous vehicle on UK roads back in 2016, we are delighted to see the UK continuing to progress towards making automated vehicle services a commercial reality,” Gavin Jackson, CEO of Oxa, said.
“The APS scheme will enable the deployment of innovative public transport services that will augment our current transport network, making it easier and more accessible than ever to get around.”
The APS scheme is an essential part of the of the Automated Vehicles Act, which will regulate taxi-, private-hire- and bus-like self-driving vehicles once it is implemented in full in the second half of 2027.
The Automated Vehicles Act will require self-driving vehicles to achieve a level of safety at least as high as competent and careful human drivers, and they will undergo rigorous safety tests before being allowed on our roads.
Self-driving trials have been taking place in the UK since January 2015, with British companies Wayve and Oxa spearheading significant breakthroughs in the technology.
The UK is already host to a thriving self-driving sector. Wayve secured a record-breaking investment of over $1 billion and announced recent partnerships with Nissan and Uber, while Oxa has already supported ‘bus-like’ services in the US and started rolling out self-driving vehicles at Heathrow Airport to improve baggage handling.
Cybersecurity teams are taking a cautious approach to artificial intelligence (AI), despite industry hype and pressure from business leaders to accelerate adoption, according to a new survey from ISC2.
While AI is widely promoted as a game-changer for security operations, only a small proportion of practitioners have integrated these tools into their daily workflows, with many remaining hesitant due to concerns over privacy, oversight, and unintended risks.
Many CISOs remain cautious about AI adoption, citing concerns around privacy, oversight, and the risks of moving too quickly.
A recent survey of over 1,000 cybersecurity professionals found that just 30 per cent of cybersecurity teams are currently using AI tools in their daily operations, while 42 per cent are still evaluating their options. Only 10 per cent said they have no plans to adopt AI at all.
Adoption is most advanced in industrial sectors (38%), IT services (36%), and professional services (34%). Larger organisations with more than 10,000 employees are further ahead on the adoption curve, with 37% actively using AI tools.
In contrast, smaller businesses, particularly those with fewer than 99 staff or between 500 and 2,499 employees, show the lowest uptake, with only 20 per cent using AI. Among the smallest organisations, 23% say they have no plans to evaluate AI security tools at all.
Andy Ward, SVP international at Absolute Security commented: “The ISC2 research echoes what we’re hearing from CISOs globally. There’s real enthusiasm for the potential of AI in cybersecurity, but also a growing recognition that the risks are escalating just as fast.
“Our research shows that over a third (34%) of CISOs have already banned certain AI tools like DeepSeek entirely, driven by fears of privacy breaches and loss of control.
“AI offers huge promise to improve detection, speed up response times, and strengthen defences, but without robust strategies for cyber resilience and real-time visibility, organisations risk sleepwalking into deeper vulnerabilities.
“As attackers leverage AI to reduce the gap between vulnerability and exploitation, our defences must evolve with equal urgency. Now is the time for security leaders to ensure their people, processes, and technologies are aligned, or risk being left dangerously exposed.”
Arkadiy Ukolov, co-founder and CEO at Ulla Technology Ltd, comments: “It’s no surprise to see security professionals taking a measured, cautious approach to AI.
“While these tools bring undeniable efficiencies, privacy and control over sensitive data must come first. Too many AI solutions today operate in ways that risk exposing confidential information through third-party platforms or unsecured systems.
“For AI to be truly fit for purpose in cybersecurity, it must be built on privacy-first foundations, where data remains under the user’s control and is processed securely within an enclosed environment.
“Protecting sensitive information demands more than advanced tech alone, it requires ongoing staff awareness, training on AI use, and a robust infrastructure that doesn’t compromise security.”
Despite this caution, where AI has been implemented, the benefits are clear. 70% of those already using AI tools report positive impacts on their cybersecurity team’s overall effectiveness.
Key areas of improvement include network monitoring and intrusion detection (60%), endpoint protection and response (56%), vulnerability management (50%), threat modelling (45%), and security testing (43%).
Looking ahead, AI adoption is expected to have a mixed impact on hiring. Over half of cybersecurity professionals believe AI will reduce the need for entry-level roles by automating repetitive tasks.
However, 31% anticipate that AI will create new opportunities for junior talent or demand new skill sets, helping to rebalance some of the projected reductions in headcount.
Encouragingly, 44% said their hiring plans have not yet been affected, though the same proportion report that their organisations are actively reconsidering the skills and roles required to manage AI technologies.
The University of Strathclyde has been awarded £4.35 million from UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) new Global Talent Fund to recruit leading international researchers.
Strathclyde is one of 12 research organisations to secure a share of the £54 million fund, established to support researchers working in advanced manufacturing, clean energy industries, creative industries, defence, digital and technologies, financial services, life sciences, and professional and business services.
The investment will add to Strathclyde’s proven track record in aligning cutting edge research with industrial priorities, and its ability to attract top global talent into key strategic areas such as clean energy, advanced manufacturing, and financial services – key elements of the UK’s Industrial Strategy.
“We welcome this important investment in global talent that UKRI has committed to and the alignment it creates between the new Industrial Strategy and the research and innovation leadership that is critical to its success,” professor Sir Jim McDonald, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Strathclyde.
“Strathclyde is proud of its position as a leading international technological university. We deliver impact collaboratively by bringing together the excellent, talented people we have at Strathclyde, through working closely with partners in other universities, industrial partners, innovation centres and National Laboratories, and through research that addresses market opportunities and national priorities – from climate resilience and sustainable energy to health innovation, and security and resilience.
“This new funding from UKRI and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology reflects confidence in our ability to translate cutting-edge discovery into real-world applications and solutions, working collaboratively with industry, government and global partners.
“It will enhance our research environment, widen our talent pipeline and further enable our mission as a place of useful learning.”
Starting in the 2025-26 financial year and running for five years, the award will support Strathclyde in rapidly recruiting and embedding more world class international researchers, covering relocation, visa and research costs.
The Global Talent Fund is part of the UK Government’s broader strategy to enhance research capacity and position the UK as a world leading destination for international talent.
Science Minister Lord Vallance said: “Genius is not bound by geography. But the UK is one of the few places blessed with the infrastructure, skills base, world-class institutions and international ties needed to incubate brilliant ideas, and turn them into new medicines that save lives, new products that make our lives easier, and even entirely new jobs and industries.
“Bringing these innovations to life, here in Britain, will be critical to delivering this Government’s Plan for Change”
Higher international fees and strict visa rules may also deter international talent from studying or researching at the UK, as long term residency options are more limited as the UK government continues to crack down on legal immigration.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “The UK is home to some of the world’s best universities which are vital for attracting international top talent. Supported by our new Global Talent Taskforce, the Global Talent Fund will cement our position as a leading choice for the world’s top researchers to make their home here, supercharging growth and delivering on our Plan for Change.”
Nearly half (48.4%) of UK companies have experienced data breaches caused by unmanaged or unseen devices in the past year alone, a new study from Scalefusion revealed.
The research, titled Bridging the Visibility Gap, surveyed IT leaders across the UK and uncovered critical blind spots in enterprise device management that are leaving organisations exposed to cyber threats.
More than two-thirds (67%) of IT leaders lack complete visibility into all work devices across their organisation, the research found.
Nearly a quarter (23.5%) detect unauthorised devices accessing corporate data at least monthly, with over a third of breach victims experiencing attacks monthly.
Only 35% of IT leaders feel very confident in their team’s ability to quickly contain and remediate security incidents.
The study reveals that the shift to hybrid and remote working has created unprecedented challenges for IT security teams. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of organisations discovered previously unknown devices or applications being used for work purposes in the last year, highlighting the extent of shadow IT operations.
Of particular concern is the frequency of security incidents among affected companies. Among the 48% who experienced breaches from unmanaged devices, over a third (35%) reported facing attacks on at least a monthly basis, indicating that these are not isolated incidents but ongoing, systematic vulnerabilities.
The research also exposed how organisations’ attempts to address security challenges may actually be making matters worse. 59% of companies are using four or more different endpoint security tools, creating a complex web of systems that’s proving counterproductive.
This tool proliferation is causing significant operational challenges, with over half (53%) citing increased administrative overhead, while more than a third reported lack of interoperability between systems (35%), higher costs (41%), and critical data visibility gaps (37%). Remarkably, only 7% of organisations claimed to face no problems from their multi-tool approach.
“These findings confirm what we’ve been hearing from businesses across the UK and Ireland – there’s a critical gap between the security challenges organisations face and their ability to address them effectively,” Sally King, channel sales manager UK&I at Scalefusion, commented.
“What businesses need is visibility and simplification – a unified approach that brings all endpoints under one management umbrella rather than juggling multiple disconnected systems.”
Despite these challenges, the research identified some positive trends. Unified Endpoint Management platforms are already the most common method for employee onboarding (43%), and there’s a strong appetite for zero-touch deployment solutions, with 68% of IT leaders attracted by the prospect of cutting hands-on time per device.
The study suggests that organisations recognising these challenges and moving toward unified solutions are better positioned to address the evolving threat landscape while reducing operational complexity.
Six months after the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) came into effect, about 96% of EMEA financial services organisations still feel their current level of data resilience falls short.
This is according to a survey commissioned by Veeam Software, which gathered insights from senior IT decision makers at financial services companies in the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, underscoring the ongoing challenges faced by the sector as it adapts to DORA – a framework introduced by the EU to strengthen the financial sector’s cybersecurity posture.
While DORA has been embedded as a strategic priority across the financial sector, many organisations are still navigating the path to full compliance.
The survey found that 94% of organisations surveyed now rank DORA higher in their organisational priorities than they did in the month before the deadline, with 40% calling it a current “top digital resilience priority.”
Half of the respondents said DORA requirements have been integrated into their broader resilience programs, while 39% reported it remains a central focus.
Even with 94% of organisations clear on the steps they need to take, many are facing unforeseen challenges.
About two in five (41%) report increased stress and pressure on IT and security teams, while 37% are dealing with higher costs passed on by ICT vendors.
Just under a quarter (22%) believe that the volume of digital regulation is becoming a barrier to innovation or competition, and a fifth (20%) have yet to secure the necessary budget to meet DORA requirements.
“It’s promising to see that most organisations have embraced and feel confident about meeting DORA’s requirements,” said Edwin Weijdema, field CTO EMEA at Veeam.
“Achieving compliance is an important first step in ensuring your organisation is resilient but given today’s complex threat landscape there’s more to do. New Veeam research shows that many financial institutions still see a gap in their overall resilience and face challenges in securing the necessary budget, even as DORA grows in strategic importance.
“The journey to operational resilience is ongoing, and it’s clear that prioritising data resilience remains critical for organisations’ long-term success.”
Despite this prioritisation, many organisations are still working to meet key DORA requirements, with about a quarter (24%) having not established recovery and continuity testing, and a further 24% not implementing incident reporting.
About one in four (24%) have not identified a DORA implementation lead, while 23% have not conducted digital operational resilience testing, and about a fifth (21%) have not ensured backup integrity and secure data recovery.
The most challenging DORA requirement? Third-party risk oversight, with 34% of organisations citing it as the hardest to implement – despite only 20% yet to do so. There are many possible reasons for this, from the limited visibility many organisations have into their third-party operations to the sheer scale of third-party networks.
“It’s interesting to see that third-party oversight has emerged as a particular pain point for organisations,” Andre Troskie, Field CISO EMEA at Veeam said.
“Over a third named it the most challenging to implement, and many called for additional guidance on establishing it in the first place. An often-overlooked facet of data resilience, it’s promising to see that organisations are interrogating their defences to this degree – which is exactly what it was designed to do.
“Of course, meeting the requirements is key, but DORA was also about getting organizations to assess their resilience holistically – and in that aspect, it seems to be succeeding.”
Additionally, 22% of organizations felt that DORA’s design could have been improved to aid compliance, with calls for simplification, clarification, and more detailed third-party risk guidance.
Investments in an AI growth zone and a boost in supercomputing at the nation’s top university will see Scotland “at the forefront of the UK’s technology revolution,” the UK government says.
The announcement comes as part of the UK Government’s Compute Roadmap which aims to deliver on the £1 billion set aside in the Spending Review to increase the UK’s compute infrastructure.
As part of this, the UK will expand the nations’ AI Research Resource (AIRR) twenty-fold over the next five years.
The AIRR will see the UK’s compute capacity increase to 420 AI exaFLOP by 2030 – the equivalent of one billion people spending 13,316 years doing what the full AIRR will do in one second.
A network of National Supercomputing Centres will also be set up across the country, with the first based at the University of Edinburgh, backed by £750m in funding.
The hubs will work as dedicated centres of expertise, connecting users across the country with access to cutting-edge processing power and catalysing greater collaboration between industry, academia and researchers.
The centres will also help build stronger links with existing talent in their respective regions – giving all areas of the country a supporting role in the UK’s ability to be an ‘AI maker’.
The new network, which will grow over time from this first announcement, will form a crucial part of a country wide-drive to position the UK as an AI leader – creating opportunities to accelerate economic growth and transform public services, with increased compute capacity created to power new breakthroughs in AI.
As for the AI Growth Zone, several potential locations have been scouted across Scotland.
The aim of the zones is for the expedition of critical infrastructure deployment as well as providing researchers and businesses with the vast amount of data necessary to achieve AI breakthroughs.
These dedicated AI hotbeds will aim to offer accelerated planning permissions to speed up the roll-out of data centres, which will aim to be powered responsibly.
Peter Kyle, the Secretary for Science, Innovation and Technology, stated: “From the shipyards of the Clyde to developments in steam engine technology, Scottish trailblazers were central to the industrial revolution.
“AI is this generation’s next great industrial leap, so who better to help drive that change than a nation with innovation hardwired in its DNA. We’ve set out an ambitious plan to cement our position as a global leader in AI, with Scotland set to play a key role – unlocking fresh investment and new opportunities. That’s how we’re putting our Plan for Change into action.
“This is a landmark moment and will place Scotland at the forefront of the UK’s technological revolution.
“The up to £750 million investment in Edinburgh’s new supercomputer also places Scotland at the cutting edge of computing power globally.
“This will see Scotland playing a leading role in creating breakthroughs that have a global benefit – such as new medicines, health advances, and climate change solutions.”
Two people were arrested on suspicion of operating illegal crypto exchanges and money laundering in an operation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Metropolitan Police.
As part of an operation led by the FCA and the Metropolitan Police Service, four premises across southwest London were searched. During the search, seven crypto ATMs were also found and seized by the FCA.
“If you’re operating a crypto ATM or exchange illegally, then you should expect serious consequences,” Therese Chambers, Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA, said.
“There are currently no legally-operated crypto ATMs in the UK, so using one only supports crime. We will continue to partner with law enforcement agencies to fight financial crime and protect consumers.’
Detective Inspector Geoff Donoghue, of the Met’s Cryptocurrency Team, said: “Our team is committed to working alongside our partners to address the growing threat of the misuse of cryptocurrencies.
“As cryptocurrency usage evolves, so does our efforts to safeguard our communities. This operation with the FCA shows our determination to keep Londoners safe from financial criminals.”
It is illegal to operate a cryptoasset exchange or a crypto ATM in the UK without FCA registration. Failure to comply with money laundering regulations is also a criminal offence.
The two suspects were interviewed under caution and released under investigation while enquiries continue.
The FCA is clamping down in illegal crypto networks, having previously raided Leeds and other areas of London.
The British Business Bank has announced a new commitment of £15 million to a new separately managed account (SMA) managed by Prefequity LLP.
Investing alongside Prefequity Credit Opportunities II LP, to which the British Business Bank has already committed £30m, this new co-investment vehicle will enable Prefequity to make larger investments into well-established, profitable businesses meeting its investment criteria. Prefequity is tarting a £150m final close.
The UK-based private credit firm will target non-sponsored companies – those without backing from a private equity firm – that are seeking capital for growth initiatives such as acquisitions, management buy-outs, and capital investment programmes.
Their investment strategy is particularly suited to owner-managers seeking an alternative to private equity investment to support their strategic growth and development plans.
Prefequity is an established private credit manager, focusing on businesses with strong historic performance and BITDA of £2-10m. Their first fund successfully deployed £100m and has achieved four exits to date.
“Following the success of its previous fund, we are pleased to continue our support for Prefequity,” Adam Kelly, managing director and co-head of funds, British Business Bank, said.
“This new co-investment vehicle will unlock growth for businesses in the UK’s Nations and regions, providing them with the flexible debt solutions they need to succeed and reach their full potential.”
Theo Dickens, Prefequity’s managing partner, added: “We are delighted our second fund is off to a strong start and immensely grateful to the British Business Bank and our other investors for backing Fund II and the SMA.”
“We look forward to attracting more LPs in further closings with our investment philosophy that combines downside protection from senior secured loans with the opportunity to partner with high-quality management teams through our equity participation.”
A pair of Edinburgh-based entrepreneurs have launched a new AI-powered planning tool to help audiences cut through the noise of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe while supporting the thousands of artists who often go unseen.
FringeFlow.Ai is a smart, web-based show planner that creates personalised, walkable day-long itineraries in seconds. Those using the tool simply input their preferences – from comedy and theatre to dance or even “something weird” – along with a date and preferred location. The tool then builds a full itinerary, complete with showtimes and walking routes.
Co-developed by Sean Errey, a former Fringe performer turned marketing professional, alongside a long-time friend with a background in tech, FringeFlow.Ai soft-launched earlier this month and has already attracted positive feedback from seasoned festival-goers and newcomers alike.
“We love the Fringe and the wider festival, but we also know how overwhelming it can be,” Errey said. “When I performed in 2013, I saw incredible small shows struggling to find an audience while others dominated the listings. It’s not simply about talent but about how hard it is to choose on any given day.”
Unlike traditional listings apps, FringeFlow.Ai doesn’t rank shows by budget or buzz. Instead, a built-in randomising algorithm means any show that matches your interests – whether in a large venue or a 12-seat back room – has a fair chance of discovery.
“That randomness is part of what makes the Fringe magical,” says Sean. “We didn’t want to flatten that experience, we simply wanted to make it easier to access.”
There’s nothing to download, no login required, and no charge to use the core service. Audiences can share their itineraries instantly, making it especially useful for groups, first-time visitors or anyone looking to make the most of a single day in Edinburgh.
Errey added: “This isn’t AI trying to replace creativity – it’s tech designed by people who love and live the Fringe. What we’ve done is build a tool to support discovery, not dictate it. If we make the Fringe more navigable, we make it more inclusive. FringeFlow is about giving more artists a shot at being seen.”
The tool also includes suggestions for food and drink stops between shows, and local cafés, pubs, and restaurants are encouraged to get involved as the festival gets underway – part of a wider effort to support local business.
Eighty percent of humans will engage with smart robots on a daily basis, and one in 20 supply chain managers will manage robots, rather than humans, by 2030, according to Gartner.
Organisations are placing greater emphasis on enhancing the capabilities of their existing workforce by supplementing with robotics due to factors like labour scarcity and rising costs.
Smart robots have been identified by chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) as an important investment area, though many acknowledge their organisation lacks internal robotics expertise to maximally leverage these innovative technologies.
“CSCOs must develop an organisational structure to support the management of growing fleets of robots by creating a warehouse automation strategy,” said Abdil Tunca, senior principal analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice.
“Managers will encounter different scenarios when managing robots than they would with people, especially when managing fleets of task specific and polyfunctional robots, which will navigate more tasks and spaces within warehouses and fulfilment centres.”
As robot fleets expand rapidly, more companies will adopt and explore diverse applications for robotics.
Initially, when fleets are small and specialised, a technical professional or engineer will oversee operations within specific functional boundaries. However, as fleets grow and companies embrace varied robotics use cases, establishing a management structure to oversee robotics operations becomes essential.
Most organisations have well-established human worker management practices to guide managers on how to manage people and have the skills needed to be successful, yet there are few methodologies today for managing robots and almost none for managing varied fleets of robots.
While it won’t be necessary for supply chain managers to have the engineering skills required to build robots, they will need a general technical understanding of what the robots can do and how they work together with other robots and people. This knowledge will be crucial for understanding the business problems robots can reasonably address and provide this guidance to business leaders.
For instance, if a mobile robot is tasked with retrieving pallets in a warehouse, but the specific pallets are situated at a considerable height within a zone where humans are also present, a manager must acknowledge the safety challenges involved. Additionally, they would need to allocate extra time and resources to ensure the mobile robot can successfully accomplish the task.
Gartner suggests that companies should develop a dedicated robotics competency centres, create holistic approaches to robotics, and include management for the entire robotics journey. Implementing strong governance is also important to address robotics selection processes, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.
“The journey toward adopting robotics will be valuable, but also challenging, and requires organisational support,” Tunca noted. “Initially, robot management will operate as a distinct role within supply chain. Over time, managing robots will become integrated into various departments and job functions, akin to how the IT function has evolved and gained prominence within organisations.”
The number of new UK technology incorporations jumped to a record high in Q2 2025, as businesses adapt to a world of uncertainty, according to audit, tax and consulting firm RSM UK.
RSM’s analysis found a total of 14,262 new tech companies were incorporated in Q2 2025, jumping 16% from 12,318 in the same period last year. The number of tech incorporations also rose by 17% quarter-on-quarter from 12,184 in Q1 2025.
All UK regions were up on last year, with nine out of the 12 regions recording the highest number of new tech incorporations since 2019.
Scotland saw 507 incorporations in the second quarter of 2025, a year-on-year increase of 15%. Wales, however, saw the biggest increase, with 420 incorporations, an 89% year-on-year rise.
Quarter-to-quarter, Scotland saw an increase of 25%, while Wales saw an increase of 62%.
“This surprising jump in new tech incorporations to a record high suggests that, despite the numerous headwinds, tech entrepreneurs and leaders are getting used to dealing with an uncertain world,” Ben Bilsland, partner and head of technology industry at RSM UK, said.
“We’ve seen tech growth cool down over the last year, as businesses and investors delayed big decisions. It’s clear they’ve realised the uncertainty isn’t going away anytime soon, and may be the new norm, so it’s time to press ahead.
“Following very little for UK tech in the Autumn Budget, the government provided more detail on its Industrial Strategy and Digital and Technologies Sector Plan for tech in 2025. This added clarity will have been a boost to the sector, but significant investment is needed, and if economic uncertainty escalates, this will act as a roadblock to future tech growth.
“Increasing pressure on the UK government to address gaps in the budget will leave the tech industry feeling nervous about what tax measures might be introduced. Changes to capital gains tax will make business founders and investors cautious, with a direct impact on investment and exit decisions. Any changes around the research and development scheme would likely send shockwaves through the tech industry, stifling innovation and growth.
“If income tax is raised, a greater tax burden on higher earners could also exacerbate workforce issues in the tech industry. Skilled workers are in high demand, and increased taxes in the UK might make the extremely competitive salaries available overseas even more appealing.
“UK tech faces fierce competition on all fronts from other countries. The government will need to tread carefully to ensure the UK remains one of the best places in the world to start and grow a tech company, as the exit of our brightest businesses and talent overseas could cause long-lasting harm to the economy.”
There was a 63% increase year-on-year in publicly disclosed cyber-attack volumes in Q2 2025, BlackFog found.
The second quarter of 2025 saw 276 incidents, the highest number of incidents in this timeframe – from April to June – since BlackFog began tracking in 2020.
All three months set a new high compared with the same time period in previous years.
June saw an 113% year-on-year increase with 96 attacks, with May seeing 91 attacks at a 40% increase, and April with a 51% increase and 89 attacks.
In terms of disclosed attacks, healthcare was the most targeted sector with 52 attacks. This was followed by the government sector, which recorded 45 attacks and the services industry with 33 attacks.
The retail sector, unsurprisingly, recorded its highest ever Q2 attack volumes, with UK retailers in particular bearing the brunt of high-profile ransomware attacks. The number of publicly disclosed ransomware incidents in this sector jumped by 58% compared to Q1 2025.
High-profile cases including the targeted cyber-attacks against M&S, Co-op, Harrods, and other retailers likely contributed to these high numbers.
The Construction, Hospitality, and Arts and Entertainment sectors also reported the highest ever Q2 attack volumes. Across the board, the use of data exfiltration remained consistently high, with 95% of publicly disclosed attacks involving the theft of sensitive information.
Amongst 53 active ransomware groups, the Qilin ransomware gang took the lead as the most active, responsible for 10% (28) of disclosed attacks and 15% of those revealed on dark web leak sites.
Earlier this year, CISA issued a formal warning after Qilin struck high profile targets in the UK and US and a group labelled a major risk to critical infrastructure.
The figures also reveal that the scale of hidden activity remains significant with 80.9% of all ransomware attacks going unreported. Across Q2 there were 1,446 undisclosed ransomware attacks marking a 19% increase compared to the same quarter in 2024.
As with the first quarter of this year, the services industry was the hardest hit, accounting for 23% (337) of all undisclosed attacks in Q2.
“The findings lay bare the extent of the challenge that organisations face,” Dr. Darren Williams, founder and CEO of BlackFog said.
“The past few months have been especially punishing for global retailers, with prominent high street stores falling victim and absorbing the financial and operational fallout of these attacks.
“The findings also highlight that, time and again, attackers are ultimately after one thing: data. This is yet another reminder that organisations must take decisive action to reduce the risk of exfiltration with controls and processes that form a protective ‘ring of steel’ around their most sensitive data to stop attackers in their tracks.”
Tariffs, trade wars, cyber threats, and economic uncertainty are resetting budget expectations, signalling a shift toward more cautious growth planning, Forrester found.
Amid persistent volatility, leaders must turn to scenario planning and prepare for both deeper budget cuts and unexpected investment opportunities — protecting and prioritizing investments that create customer value, stopping spending on inefficient complexity, and embracing constant, low-cost experimentation to stay ahead.
While it’s no surprise that leaders are less bullish compared to last year, it’s not all doom and gloom, according to Forrester’s 2026 Budget Planning Guides.
Despite the uncertainty, 86% of tech leaders across industries are expecting increased budgets from the year before. Additionally, tech leaders in the financial services and healthcare sectors expect double-digit budget increases, driven by investments in generative AI (genAI), analytics, and threat intelligence.
Forrester’s budget guide advises organisations to increase their investment in data literacy and employee AI readiness programmes. Data and AI leaders must invest in persona-based data and AI literacy programmes, training all employees on the responsible use of AI as well as how to interpret data and AI-driven insights.
Leaders with a clearer grasp of their customers in uncertain times will be able to better engage proactively and should consider developing a rigorous data collection strategy. Investing in customer insights and data management is therefore paramount.
On the other hand, Forrester recommends abandoning a cloud-first strategy approach. New sovereignty and resilience regulations, increasing geopolitical tension, executive pressure to reduce costs, and the growing number of production-ready genAI use cases have switched to public cloud conversation from cloud-first to cloud-as-necessary.
Forrester also recommends a more radical approach to eliminate tech debt. Organisations should declare tech debt bankruptcy and outsource the legacy tech stack to ensure operational reliability while freeing up funds to build a modern, adaptive, and AI-powered ecosystem that drives innovation.
Beyond these, Forrester does recommend some areas for experimentation in 2026 budgets.
If they have not already done so, organisations should look at investing in agentic AI for task automation, first within a single app and then across business apps. Exploring the disruptive potential of agentic AI by experimenting with autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks and make decisions independently could be a worthwhile exploration. Firms can start by prioritising read-only/analytical apps to avoid the risk of breaking data entry or data quality rules.
Enterprises can also collect relevant inputs from mobile, internet-of-things, and other edge devices to provide customers with timely, use-case-driven insights to build industry-specific edge intelligence.
Wide deployment of edge intelligence solutions is expected over the next two to four years, Forrester predicts, as developments occur in chipset functions, form factors, 5G networks, and powerful on-device and on-chip machine learning models.
“While conservative budget expectations are a fine starting point for 2026, now is not the time to get complacent,” said Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester.
“With no end in sight to today’s volatility, leaders should be prepared for both more aggressive cuts and unexpected investment opportunities. They can achieve this through constant, low-cost experimentation and gain the edge to outmaneuver competitors the moment the opportunity strikes.
“Forrester’s Budget Planning Guides are designed to empower business leaders to invest wisely, scale back where needed, and experiment continuously to succeed in times of change.”
The gender gap in tech is costing the UK around £2 to £3.5 billion a year as women exit their tech roles, leaving either their jobs or the industry entirely over being underpaid, a lack of career progression, and a lack of recognition.
This is according to a new Lovelace Report from Oliver Wyman and WeAreTechWomen. Through a survey of over 500 women, a series of roundtables, and in-depth interviews with 20 senior women in tech, the report gathered real insight into why women are consistently leaving the tech industry, and what this is truly costing the UK when it comes to economic prosperity and their tech superpower ambitions.
The UK tech sector is short on 98,000 to 120,000 professionals, and will need to double or even triple this capacity to reach their AI, cybersecurity, and digital infrastructure needs.
Despite this need, between 40,000 and 60,000 women exit their roles in the UK’s tech and digital sectors.
This churn of women moving roles costs between £640 million and £1.3 billion a year in the UK, with those leaving the industry entirely taking between £1.4 billion and £2.2bn in lost economic value.
So, what’s driving women to leave tech? The research found that the reasons did not fit into the traditional myths touted that women exit the industry due to a lack of child care or insufficient role models.
A quarter (25%) cited a lack of career advancement, 17% said inadequate recognition, and 15% pointed to pay inequity. Others also pointed out toxic workplaces and a lack of support. Only 3% said caring duties were a reason for their career change.
The report found that women were consistently having their careers stalled at the mid-career range, when they should be reaching senior roles.
For women with 11 to 20 years of experience, over 75% have waited more than three years for a promotion.
For those with over 20 years of experience, nearly 40% have waited over five years for a promotion, far longer than the two-year average seen for men.
Beyond this, over 50% of women are being paid below the average for their level, despite 70% of them already investing in additional qualifications or leadership training.
This lack of career progression is not for lack of want – 90% of women in tech want to move into management, though only 25% believe this will happen easily, citing unclear promotion pathways, a limitation on high-impact work, and the potential of being overlooked.
The Lovelace Report offered several suggestions on what teams could change to stop women from leaving their tech roles over these issues.
Tracking progression by gender metrics to intervene when individuals or teams are stalled in their career progression can be vital in dissuading resignation letters. This can be achieved by sponsorship and structured support.
Providing fair access to high-impact work can be done by matching talent to opportunity based on skills and potential, rather than rewarding proximity or familiarity. Auditing project allocations to flag and address bias can help mitigate this in the future.
Defining and embedding clear career maps – and enforcing these – can help women have a clearer picture of their work progression and pay benchmarks, ensuring equality is enforced, and enabling women to better advocate for themselves with strengthened transparency.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has committed a serious data breach that was only revealed this week after a super injunction was lifted which put the lives of thousands of Afghan citizens at risk of targeting from the Taliban for seeking refuge in the UK after the group took control of Afghanistan once US troops withdrew from the nation in 2021.
The data breach took place in February 2022, leaking the details of nearly 19,000 people who had applied to relocate to the UK after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. A British official was responsible for the leak – it is unclear if this person was reprimanded, but they have since been removed from their previous job.
Around 18,000 Afghans applying for asylum had their data leaked, including those that fought and aided the UK and US’s military efforts in the region, directly in opposition to the current Afghani government. These people applied for asylum under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) and the Afghanistan Locally Employed Staff Ex-Gratia Scheme (EGS), under the basis that they had worked for the UK during its occupation of the country.
The previous government reportedly first learned of the leak in August 2023, when the MOD discovered that part of this dataset was published on Facebook.
Since then, the Conservative government created a resettlement scheme for those affected by the breach, as they believed them to be at risk of reprisal from the Taliban.
This Afghanistan Response Route lead to 4,500 Afghans arrive in the UK so far, costing £400m, with a projected total cost of £850m. In total, 6,900 people are predicted to enter the UK under the scheme, which has since been closed by the current Labour government.
The existence of this scheme, as well as the breach itself, was hidden in a super injunction issued by the High Court on request of the previous Conservative government, banning any reporting on the story.
In an address, Secretary of Defence John Healey MP said he was briefed on the relocation programme in 2023 when he served as shadow defence secretary, and was also served the super injunction, but that other members of the current Labour cabinet were only made aware of the data breach and the relocation programme upon taking office after the General Election.
“I have felt deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to parliament and the public.”
The lifting of the super injuction comes after an independent review from Paul Rimmer, a former civil servant. The review of the policy found that the dataset falling into the hands of the Taliban would be less problematic than previously thought.
The internal review decided that the Taliban “likely already possesses the key information in the dataset,” and that if they Taliban did get its hands on the data it would be “unlikely to substantially change an individual’s existing exposure.”
This lead to the end of the injunction as decided by the Labour government, as well as the discontinuation of the Afghanistan Response Route. About 600 principals and their families who remain in Afghanistan and were affected by the breach will be able to take up offers made by the ARR, however.
A stop to the scheme, however, means that another 9,500 people would not be able to come into the UK who otherwise would have under the previous government’s scheme.
The mistake – a data breach caused by human error – brings into question government data security and transparency, all while shedding a light on one of the West’s collective failures of intervention and subsequent abandonment of a Middle East quagmire.
The UK government had already failed in basic cyber hygiene in a leak of Afghani details when a civil servant failed to use a blind carbon copy of email addresses of asylum applications of Afghani interpreters who were key allies to the UK. The UK government offered affected individuals £4,000 each in compensation.
The current revelation has sparked concern from current members of Parliament who are dismayed at the lack of transparancy within the UK government, as well as apologies from former Conservative cabinet members.
Healey said he was “unable to say for sure” if anyone was killed as a result of the data breach, but also told the BBC it was “highly unlikely” the breach would increase risks for people being targeted by the Taliban. It seems the Labour government is comfortable with these odds for the remaining people in Afghanistan who risked their lives for the UK’s military operations, and are now under the rule of their previous adversaries.
The UK government has been critiqued for its moves since the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan enabled the Taliban to seize control of the region. The UK set up schemes enabling UK-aligned Afghans who had aid the UK military to apply for asylum, leading to around 36,000 Afghans move to the UK.
The UK Foreign Affairs Committee called the UK evacuation from the region as “disaster and betrayal of our allies that will damage the UK’s interests for years to come.”
The UK government has launched a new £1 million programme aimed to support tech entrepreneurs outside of London to invigorate businesses outside the capital.
The Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology has announced the launch of the Regional Tech Booster Programme, aimed at accelerated the growth of tech clusters and early-stage digital startups in regions including Scotland, the North East, Humber and East, and South Yorkshire.
While London remains Europe’s leading tech hub, the new programme will help close the gap between the capital and regional tech ecosystems by addressing key challenges including entrepreneur support, access to finance, and skills development.
It aims to do so by delivering tailored support programmes for tech founders, such as mentoring, investment promotion events, and workshops to share best practices across regional tech communities.
“Tech innovation doesn’t stop at the M25 and we’re choosing to invest in the talent and ideas flourishing across the UK,” minister for tech and future digital economy, Baroness Jones, said.
“This investment forms an important part of our Plan for Change to kickstart economic growth in every part of the UK. By supporting regional tech entrepreneurs, we’re creating the conditions for innovation and prosperity to flourish.”
The initiative complements existing government support for regional development, including Project Gigabit, the Local Innovation Partnership Fund, AI Growth Zones, and digital skills programmes.
It demonstrates a strategic choice to invest in regional tech ecosystems as part of the government’s wider Industrial Strategy.
“The UK’s nations and regions are home to a diverse and growing network of tech ecosystems. They already make a vital contribution to the economy and with the right support, they can do even more,” Katie Gallagher, chair of the UKTCG and managing director of Manchester Digital, said.
“We’re pleased that DSIT has selected the UK Tech Cluster Group to pilot a new approach. This programme will focus on collaboration, connecting clusters, sharing best practice, supporting founders and entrepreneurs and creating a practical playbook for building strong, sustainable regional tech economies.
“With members from across the UK’s nations and regions, UKTCG is uniquely placed to deliver this work ensuring every part of the country benefits from the UK’s thriving tech sector.”
UK Tech Cluster Group will focus on ensuring the programme delivers sustainable benefits that continue beyond the initial funding period, working closely with industry, academic institutions and local tech leaders to strengthen regional tech communities. Information on how regional tech clusters can apply for the programmes will be announced later this year.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has launched the Vulnerability Research Initiative aiming to bolster its vulnerability research capabilities and aid the sharing of best practices with the wider cybersecurity ecosystem.
The new Initiative is the NCSC’s programme of research with external partners on VR, with a mission to strengthen the UK’s ability to carry out vulnerability research when it comes to cybersecurity.
The programme aims to work with the best in external vulnerability researchers to deepen the understanding of security on a wide range of important technologies.
The NCSC’s VRI works with industry to understand:
The vulnerabilities present in a technology or a technology product
Necessary mitigation measures for fixing vulnerabilities
How researchers conduct research
Tooling used to enable vulnerability research
The NCSC hopes that this work increases its capacity for VR as well as sharing VR expertise across the cyber ecosystem.
The core team behind the VRI includes a combination of technical experts, project managers and project managers. This team is responsible for relaying VR requirements from the VR team to the industry partners, as well as monitoring the progress and outputs of the research.
The research is used to inform the NCSC’s advice when it comes to VR, as well as the guidance of the National Technical Authority when it comes to cybersecurity. It also allows the NCSC to engage with technology vendors, encouraging them to fix bugs and create more secure products and tools.
The NCSC says that in the future it would be interested in extending its engagement on particular topics, and interested parties can contact the team via vri@ncsc.gov.uk.
Young people are reportedly in a crisis. Never before has the future seemed so ultimately bleak for the youngest generation. Young people will have less opportunities economically than their parents, likely face worsening climate disasters, and the fallout of several decades of capitalist growth cumulating into ecological collapse. And that’s just the existential crisis.
In a nation where some young social media influencers can rake in millions of pounds for touting tanned skin on lush beaches, why would say, a 19 year old elect to work the same minimum wage job as a 25 year old with less pay per hour, elect to go to university to potentially amass student loans, or work as an apprentice in a trade for £7.55 per hour in their first year in an industry that may, as many are promising, be taken over by robots or AI in just a number of years?
Oh, but what if these youths are good at coding? Well, they may enjoy a year or two in a high-paying tech job after three or four years of university and a graduate scheme, before being laid off in favour of AI.
Why would a promising young adult, disaffected by society’s rankings of popularity and success, choose to work within a system that is seemingly working against them at all angles? Especially when lucrative, stimulating, and even ‘cool’ alternatives exist?
Perhaps this is just some of the logic under-riding the continuous trend of young people entering the exciting, dark, anonymous underbelly of cyber-criminality.
The NCA arrested four young adults, all under the age of 21 and therefore could be paid less than the measly £12.21 an hour on the national minimum wage, for allegedly breaking the computer misuse act and working with organised crime, in connection to the disastrous data breaches of M&S, Co-op, and Harrods.
Scattered Spider, the infamous ransomware group thought to be behind the attacks, is notable for many reasons – it is not aligned with a political national interest, its members are often native-English speakers from the UK and US, and are often young.
The trend is not attached to one cyber gang, however, with Lapsus$ having several young and even underage members, notably a British teenager who managed to hack Rockstar Games while under arrest with just an Amazon firestick, a hotel television, and a mobile phone.
So, while the motivation and skills are often apparent, how are children, teens, and young people getting into the world of cyber-crime?
All the World’s A Game
Say what you want about cyber-criminal organisations – they know how to recruit. In a nation that is struggling with a cybersecurity skills gap, cyber-crime organisations are going straight to the route, targeting young people who show an aptitude at video games and an interest in hacking.
Video games often have a seemingly harmless level of hacking involved in them – players often share cheat codes and jail breaks to score more points or advance beyond difficult levels. Young digital natives often take this a step further, building their hacking skills.
Cyber-criminals notice this, often using data from Discord servers where players share their cheat codes or gaming prowess as a recruitment tool.
With the average age of a cyber-criminal in the UK being just 17, this trend appears to be working.
About three in five (61%) of hackers in the UK said that they started off their hacking journeys by simply exploring coding and online games, the National Crime Agency found.
Instead of having to apply for apprenticeships, study for uni, or leave their bedrooms, youths are offered easy ways to make money using skills they already have.
Discord is reportedly a hunting ground for cyber gangs to recruit tech savvy young people into their organisations with the promise of easy money and a stimulating job.
Research from Intel471 discovered a large number of online communities on Discord that were made up of young users engaged in illegal activity, from hacking to SIM swapping to stealing crypto.
While the realm offered tech savvy youths a way to achieve notoriety and even anonymous, online fame, the communities noted by Intel471 also had darker tones, rife with offensive language, threats, sextortion, and doxxing.
Intel471 found that some of these Discord forums lured in users with tutorials on hacking, while others offered a platform for users to discuss their illegal activity.
Many cyber-criminals that get their start on Discord begin engaging in illegal activity to win advances in games, employing information stealers to attain digital assets that can be used in games – a gateway to more damaging and illicit crimes.
In a world where young people are more pressured and interested in reaching online fame than ever before, the anonymous nature of Discord can offer this promise of renown to those disaffected by other social media forms.
Excelling at video games can quickly gain the interest of those working in malicious activities, or those with a talent in computers could enter the sphere of their own interest. Taking part in hacking can advance someone’s online reputation while earning them money, an easy, validating win for teens spending a good chunk of their time online.
The National Crime Agency found that 40% of young offenders do not view their cyber-crimes as wrong, meaning that they do not understand the real-world consequences of their actions.
Why Play Fair?
The thing about cybersecurity and hacking is, though, that we do not actually want to fully deter young people from these skills. Rather, young people are not being directed appropriately to use these skills for good.
Little ethical options exist that offer the same type of prestige and money as hacking. A 17-year-old will make more money and gain more notoriety and validation from hacking online than working an apprenticeship, and can often do these on their own terms. Cyber-crime may offer a better route for self-expression, self-management, and independence that young people crave.
“When we fail to create visible, ethical pathways for curious young people with cybersecurity talent, some will take the wrong route, with life-changing consequences,” Kara Sprague, CEO of HackerOne, said.
“Around the world, outdated laws and a lack of awareness leave too many aspiring hackers without a clear pathway to an ethical outlet for their talent. This gap harms individuals and deprives us of the talent we need in today’s threat landscape.
“AI is raising the stakes. It’s lowering the barrier to entry for attackers while increasing complexity for defenders. Now more than ever, we need to meet the next generation of hackers where they are with programs, policies, and incentives that channel curiosity into contribution rather than criminal behaviour.
“Countries like Belgium and Australia are making progress. But in places like the UK, modernising legislation and expanding Safe Harbour protections are long overdue. If we want to grow a pipeline of ‘hackers for good,’ we must make that path visible and safe.”
Sprague points out several concerns and failures in the modern system that makes this issue more confounding and difficult to quell.
AI is lowering the entry barrier for young people to create more sophisticated and effective attacks.
Seeing promising young individuals use their skills and prowess to pull off impressive, and devastating, targeted cyber-attacks is terrifying, but punishment may not serve the UK industry best.
Creating a more visible path for those interested in hacking, in cyber-attacks, in computing, is necessary to attract young people away from crime and into long-term, stable career paths.
However, this would require quite a few overhauls to how the UK values young people.
Those under the age of 21 are legally allowed to be paid less than their older counterparts, even for the same work. This is a government-mandated system that devalues the work of younger people.
To be just as effective as cyber-criminal organisations in reaching young talent, apprenticeships need to be recruiting burgeoning video game stars on Discord, offering better pay, and equal social capital as the world of cyber-crime.
Will this be enough to reach out to disaffected youth in the UK?
Worldwide IT spending is expected to total $5.43 trillion in 2025, an increase of 7.9% from 2024, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.
“While there is a business pause on net-new spending due to a spike in global uncertainty, the effect is subsumed by ongoing AI and generative AI (GenAI) digitisation initiatives,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.
“For instance, both software and services spending growth in 2025 is expected to slow down due to this ‘uncertainty pause,’ but spending in AI-related infrastructure, such as data centre systems, continues to surge.”
“Data centres are experiencing a surge driven by GenAI, with spending on AI optimised servers, which was virtually non-existent in 2021, expected to triple that of traditional servers by 2027,” said Lovelock.
This aligns with a Gartner survey of 252 senior leaders across various industries in North America and Western Europe with enterprise-wide revenue of $500 million or more from March to May of 2025, where 62% of respondents identified AI as defining the future of competition for the next 10 years. Competitiveness is a primary reason why enterprises will invest in technology and business change (64%) in an eroding environment.
“With GenAI sliding towards the trough of disillusionment, more time and spending is being focused on delivered functionality from incumbent software providers,” said Lovelock. “CIOs are looking towards more ‘plug and play’ simple use cases as they are being sold GenAI functionality, but not necessarily buying the functionality.”
Starting early in the second quarter of 2025, there has been an “uncertainty pause,” encompassing a strategic suspension of net-new spending across various sectors, including IT. This pause is driven by heightened economic uncertainty and geopolitical risks. In response, the global corporate sector is exercising increased caution, as organisations seek to mitigate adverse impacts from these multifaceted challenges.
The same Gartner survey found that 61% of enterprises started 2025 in a better position than at the same time last year, but only 24% expect to end the year ahead of their 2025 plans. This sentiment was consistent across all sectors to varying degrees.
“This pause does not stem from budget cuts, as budgets remain fully allocated,” said Lovelock. “Rather, it is a strategic decision to delay new expenditures. The IT hardware and infrastructure sectors are particularly affected due to price increases and supply chain disruptions. In contrast, ongoing or recurring spending, such as cloud and managed services, is maintaining greater stability.”
Economic (41%) and geopolitical (32%) shocks present the greatest risk according to business leaders. Leaders believe they can handle pressure from customers, competition and regulation successfully.
The National Cyber Security Centre has put out a warning to organisations to upgrade their Windows systems ahead of Windows 10 nearing end-of-life date.
Windows 10 will become a legacy technology on 14 October 2025, but is still used by many organisations despite it being released over a decade ago.
The NCSC says that there are “significant” security risks to not upgrading, with out-of-date systems often being a prime target from cyber-criminals.
While many Windows 10 users have already updated their systems, many are unable to upgrade to Windows 11 due to hardware limitations. Windows 11 hardware requirements, such as TPM 2.0, UEFI, and support for secure boot were introduced, meaning that in order to upgrade, organisations may have to purchase new hardware.
Upgrading will improve security, the NCSC assures, as Windows 11 has improved secure-by-default design, with newer hardware required to use some existing security features that required manual activation in Windows 10.
Windows 11 also offers other security features like Native passkey management, as well as improvements to default behaviour features and Windows Hello.
“Devices that don’t meet Windows 11 hardware requirements – and are therefore unable to use the features that are needed to secure Windows – remain fundamentally vulnerable to attack,” device security researcher at NCSC, Josh D, wrote.
The NCSC cited two examples of out-of-date operating systems falling victim to cyber-criminals.
“We saw this when a vulnerability in IE 6-11 was exploited after Windows XP support ended on 8 April 2014, and before it was patched on 1 May 2014.
“And again in 2017, a vulnerability in unpatched versions of XP was exploited extensively by the WannaCry ransomware – an attack which resulted in huge costs and damage globally.”
This underscores the need to upgrade, even if it means purchasing new hardware.
Organisations can “consider it an opportunity to address security vulnerabilities in your devices rather than simply the nuisance of replacing old hardware,” the NCSC suggested.
New advances in 3D printed ‘smart’ plastics with unusual deformation properties could lead to a new generation of materials designed to monitor their own condition in real time.
An international team led by engineers from the University of Glasgow are behind the development, which could lead to applications in everything from medical implants to impact-resistant vehicle structures.
In a new paper published in Materials Horizons, the team report a breakthrough in developing and designing novel auxetic structures using high-performance engineering plastics. The research showcases how additive manufacturing can be used to create finely tuned, self-monitoring materials with programmable properties such as strength, stretchability, and strain sensitivity.
Auxetic materials behave very differently from ordinary materials. Most materials get thinner when stretched. Auxetic materials do the opposite, becoming wider when pulled. This unique behaviour, made possible by carefully engineered internal geometries, gives them extraordinary mechanical characteristics, such as enhanced energy absorption and improved damage tolerance.
The team explored how to exploit these counterintuitive properties using polyetheretherketone (PEEK), a tough, lightweight and biocompatible plastic already widely used in engineering and biomedical applications. By 3D printing intricate auxetic lattices from PEEK, the researchers could precisely control both mechanical and electrical behaviour.
“We’ve shown that it’s possible to design PEEK lattices that are not only auxetic but also capable of sensing strain and damage without the need for embedded electronics,” said Professor Shanmugam Kumar, corresponding author of the study and a materials and additive manufacturing expert at the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering. “This could enable new applications in smart orthopaedic implants, aerospace skins, or even wearable technologies.”
To develop the new materials, the researchers fabricated a family of 2D lattices from four types of PEEK-based feedstock, including three that were infused with carbon nanotubes. These nanotubes give the plastic electrical conductivity, allowing it to act like a sensor. As the lattices deform under mechanical strain, their internal electrical resistance changes in measurable ways. This phenomenon, called piezoresistivity. allows the materials to ‘self-sense’ how they are being stretched, compressed or impacted.
The designs were based on repeating units shaped like a double-ended ‘Y’, creating a distinctive branch-stem-branch layout. This framework enabled the researchers to realise a wider range of designs and to fine-tune the mechanical properties of each structure by changing parameters like thickness, angle, and spacing. The result was a catalogue of materials with varying levels of auxeticity, stiffness, strength, and sensitivity to strain and/or damage.
The team also created a powerful computational model that predicts how these materials behave under different loading conditions. Their predictive tool accurately captures how the lattices’ electrical resistance changes in response to mechanical stress, allowing researchers to optimise material behaviour in simulation before 3D printing a physical sample.
“By combining design, fabrication, and predictive modelling, we can now create materials that behave exactly as needed for a given application, whether that’s absorbing impact, sensing damage, or deforming in controlled ways,” said Professor Kumar. “That means we can move towards a ‘design for failure’ philosophy where materials are not only strong and lightweight, but also intelligent, able to monitor their own integrity over time.”
The current study builds on earlier work published in Additive Manufacturing by the same group, published last year, where they used another plastic, polylactic acid (PLA), infused with carbon black to create a library of 56 different auxetic lattice structures. PLA is biodegradable, making it ideal for short-term or disposable applications.
In that previous work, the team developed lattices that could stretch dramatically, sense tiny strains, or withstand high loads, all by tweaking their internal geometry. Like the PEEK lattices, the PLA-based structures could conduct electricity and respond to mechanical deformation through changes in piezoresistivity.
“The PLA-based designs are ideal for temporary applications like smart scaffolds in low-load biomedical implants, or disposable sensors embedded in sports gear,” added Professor Kumar. “The PEEK-based materials, on the other hand, open the door to permanent, load-bearing smart components in much more demanding environments.”
A key enabler in both studies is the development of in-house software tools that automate and accelerate the design and evaluation process. These digital tools help engineers explore the vast design space of architected materials more quickly and cost-effectively than ever before.
“We’re essentially giving designers a toolkit for building the next generation of multifunctional materials, ones that are as intelligent as they are strong,” said Professor Kumar. “We believe this could be transformative for several sectors, from personalised medicine to aerospace safety and structural health monitoring.”
The research, titled ‘Topology-Engineered Piezoresistive Lattices with Programmable Strain Sensing, Auxeticity, and Failure Modes’, was supported by funding from the Department of Science and Technology, India, the National Science Foundation (USA), and the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Collaborators included researchers from the Polytechnic University of Marche (Italy) and Texas A&M University (USA).
Worldwide PC shipments totalled more than 63 million units in the second quarter of 2025, a 4.4% increase from second quarter of 2024, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.
There were no major changes in the top five vendor rankings worldwide in the second quarter of 2025, Gartner found.
Lenovo saw the strongest growth in PC shipments among the top five vendors at 13.9% year-over-year.
“In the second quarter of 2025, enterprise demand outpaced consumer demand, underpinned by Windows 11 migrations and pandemic-era desktop renewals, while consumer refreshes slowed as buyers deferred purchases,” said Rishi Padhi, research principal at Gartner.
“PC shipments are forecast to rise 2.4% in 2025, propelled by a tariff-driven front-loaded inventory surge in the first half of 2025 in the U.S., and ongoing Windows 11 replacement cycles in the rest of the world. In the second half of 2025, shipment growth is expected to plateau as vendors draw down stock in response to demand, potentially creating excess inventory by year-end.
Gartner Data Snapshot: Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2Q25 (Thousands of Units)
“From a regional perspective, North America PC shipments declined 0.5% in the second quarter of 2025, compared to the same time last year,” said Padhi.
“The total PC market in APAC remained flat year-over-year, which is a slight improvement after consecutive quarters of decline. Meanwhile, the EMEA PC market grew 5.3% year-over-year. This illustrates signs of a modest recovery and stronger-than-usual seasonal demand.
“The Windows 11 refresh cycle remains a key driver, particularly for desktop replacements. However, the expected surge in new device purchases has been subdued, as many organisations opt to update existing PCs to Windows 11 rather than invest in new hardware.”
The UK Government-owned British Business Bank has announced a new £400 million Investor Pathways Capitol initiative to support diverse and emerging fund managers across the economy.
The initiative aims to make it easier for new entrants, particularly those from underrepresented groups, to break into venture capital.
Expected to launch in 2026, the initiative aims to capture the value of a more inclusive investment ecosystem.
The initiative will back more diverse fund managers through the Bank‘s Enterprise Capital Funds programme.
It will also invest in microfunds to support small, early-stage funds, as well as back partners investing smaller amounts in talented individuals to build a track record, giving them the opportunity to become investors.
The initative aims to reduce the significant gap in venture capital investment for underrepresented founders and investors due to industry biases, relance on closed networks, and limited diversity among investors.
It will target at least 50% of investment going to female fund managers.
Research shows that there is a correlation between female representation at venture capital firms and how much they invest in female-led businesses. Just 2p of every £1 invested in VC funding in the UK goes to female-founded businesses and only 13% of senior individuals on UK VC investment teams are women.
The 2025 Investing in Women Code report has found that investing in female and ethnic minority-led businesses could add 13% to the value of the UK equity market, underscoring the importance of backing diverse founders.
“To deliver the government’s growth mission it is critical that our most promising entrepreneurs can access the finance they need to grow their businesses, no matter who they are or what their background is,” Louis Tayler, chief executive officer, British Business Bank, said.
“The UK equity market currently experiences a significant funding gap for diverse founders, negatively impacting their ability to start a business.
“This new £400m Investor Pathways Capital initiative will support diverse and emerging fund managers across the UK, in turn supporting talented entrepreneurs currently underserved by the UK equity market. It has the potential to unlock the UK’s full commercial potential and boost the UK economy.”
The government announced a £63 million investment package to supercharge Britain’s electric vehicle infrastructure, driving down charging costs.
A pioneering £25 million scheme for local authorities will expand access to cheaper at-home charging. This will provide access to cheaper household rates, allowing consumers to save up to £1,500 a year compared to running a petrol or diesel car, transforming how thousands of households without driveways power up their electric cars
The innovative cross-pavement technology will allow cables to run safely beneath pavements, connecting homes directly to parked vehicles, enabling more families to tap into cheaper domestic electricity rates for as little as 2 pence per mile even if they don’t have a driveway.
The fund is the latest move to bolster the UK’s growing charging network which has reached a record 82,000 public chargepoints, with a further 100,000 expected to be installed as a result of the government’s Local EV Infrastructure Fund and £6 billion of private investment committed to 2030.
To ensure the savings the EV transition can bring are felt in the public sector too, the NHS in England is also receiving a major sustainability upgrade with an £8 million fund to power the electrification of ambulances and medical fleets across over 200 NHS sites, saving millions in costs which can be invested into patient care.
The government says that this latest investment is part of its major plan to support motorists, including a record £1.6 billion invested to tackle potholes and bring down the frozen fuel duty at 5p until Spring 2026, saving the average motorist £50 to £60 over the year.
“We are making it easier and cheaper to own an electric vehicle. We know access to charging is a barrier for people thinking of making the switch, so we are tackling that head on so that everyone – whether or not they have a driveway – can access the benefits of going electric,” transport secretary Heidi Alexander said.
“Our investment is about more than just charging points – it’s about charging up Britain’s economy. I’m proud that through this boost, we are helping deliver cheaper bills for families, massive savings for the NHS to reinvest in patient care, and thousands of new green jobs.
“This is what our Plan for Change mission to kickstart Britain’s economy looks like in practice. We’re not just boosting charging infrastructure, we’re building a fairer, cleaner future where every family can benefit from cheaper, greener transport, whilst creating thousands of good jobs across the country.”
The government is also modernising EV charging signage on major roads. EV charging hubs have more than doubled since the beginning of 2023 and immediate changes will allow larger V charging hubs to be signposted from major A-roads for the first time.
£400 million has been announced from the government to support charging infrastructure, including on the strategic road network.
Alongside the boosts for electric car drivers, the government is also launching a major new grant scheme to help businesses install charging points at depots nationwide.
The action follows recent updates to the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate to make it easier for the sector to switch to electric as part of government’s ongoing work to back British manufacturing.
With over 1.2 million people employed in the freight and logistics sector in the UK alone, today’s announcement is the latest move to keep industry at the forefront of international competition in the face of global economic headwinds.
Over 1,200 new charging sockets will deliver a more efficient, modern health system whilst generating millions in cost savings over the next two decades for the taxpayer on maintenance and fuel costs – valuable savings that can be prioritised for patient care and help rebuild the NHS.
Owning and buying an EV is becoming increasingly cheaper, with two in five of used electric cars sold at under £20,000 and 34 brand new electric cars are available from under £30,000.
The UK was also the largest EV market in Europe in 2024 and the third in the world with over 382,000 EVs sold – up a fifth on the previous year. There are now more than 82,000 public chargepoints in the UK – with one added every 30 minutes – ensuring that motorists are always a short drive from a socket.
A new £1 million programme backed with funding from Meta and lead by the UK Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology aims to bring the nation’s top AI experts into government to build cutting-edge AI tools.
Dubbed the Open-Source AI Fellowship, the programme has been funded by a grant from Meta to the Alan Turing Institute, with fellows set to join DSIT’s Incubator for AI, the team behind the bundle of AI tools meant to help civil servants dubbed ‘Humphrey’.
Fellows could join the government in building AI tools for high-security use cases across the public sector such as language translation in a national security context, and making use of construction planning data to speed up the approvals process and get more homes built.
They could also help expand ‘Humphrey’ and help take away the admin burdens involved in menial civil service tasks like summarising and taking notes.
Fellows will be focussed on using open-source AI models, which could reduce costs to the taxpayer when using AI widely, and help unlock up to £45 billion in productivity gains across the public sector.
“This Fellowship is the best of AI in action – open, practical, and built for public good. It’s about delivery, not just ideas – creating real tools that help government work better for people,” technology secretary Peter Kyle said.
“We’ve already seen the potential. Caddy – developed with Citizens Advice and now helping Cabinet Office teams – shows how open AI tools can boost productivity, improve decision-making, and support frontline staff.
“The Fellowship will help scale that kind of impact across government, and develop sovereign capabilities where the UK must lead, like national security and critical infrastructure.”
The followship comes alongside the news that ‘Caddy’, an AI assistant that helps call centre workers, has been open sources, meaning call centres across the world could benefit from the tech.
Having been tested in Citizen’s Advice to date, who built the technology in partnership with government, it is also now for the first time being used by central government – with a Cabinet Office team using it to quickly access expert guidance on grant decisions, improving speed, consistency, and value for money.
Caddy works for providing call handlers with key information from guidance documents. Currently being used across six Citizen’s Advice call centres, it helps experts answer calls on everything from managing debt to getting legal help or knowing your rights.
Early tests across 1,000 calls showed that it could halve response times. Results also showed that 80% of Caddy-generated responses were ready to use with no revisions, and advisors using Caddy were twice as confident in providing accurate answers.
Further, the government is also launching the next phase of the AI Knowledge Hub – a growing platform that shares real examples, tools, and tips to help teams use AI in the right way.
The Hub is designed to help departments learn from each other, avoid duplication, and move from small pilots to real results. As part of its next phase, new features will be added including a Prompt Library to help teams use AI to boost everyday productivity and deliver faster, better services.
TikTok has lost its first round of appeals against the UK Information Commissioner’s Office £12.7m fine issued in April 2023.
The fine was levied against the social media titan over concerns on its processing of personal data of under 13-year old children, finding that such processing was not in line with regulations in UK GDPR.
TikTok attempted to appeal the ruling, saying that its data processing was for artistic purposes, so ‘special provisions’ should be allowed under GDPR.
These special provivisions place additional restrictions of the ICO’s enforcement action where personal information is being processed for journalistic, artistic, academic, or literary purposes.
If special provisions were confirmed to apply, then the ICO would not have the remit to issue the fine to TikTok.
A ‘First-tier Tribunal’ has now confirmed that the ICO had the power to issue the fine.
The fine was issued for multiple breaches of UK GDPR, including Articles 8, 12, 13, and 5(1)(a).
The ICO found that in 2020, around 1.4 million children under 13 used TikTok, which was against the platform’s rules.
TikTok also did not ensure it gained parental consent before using the personal data of children to offer services, as well as not doing enough in the first place to check the age and identity of its users, and remove those under the age of 13 from the platform.
John Edwards, the UK Information Commissioner, welcomed the decision.
“It is a significant step forward in our being able to hold TikTok, and other similar platforms, to account for how they use people’s information, particularly children’s, when providing their online services.
“This isn’t just a successful outcome for the ICO – it’s a win for the public and allows us to continue to safeguard and protect children across the digital world.”
Still, TikTok does retain the right to apply for permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal on a point of law, which could drag the case out further. If that appeal fails as well, the TikTok may proceed to a full hearing.
Levied back in 2023, the landmark fines slow pace of action does draw into question the efficacy of such fines, which are typically a small drop in the water compared to big tech’s yearly earnings. In 2023, the year the fine was levied, TikTok’s revenue reached $16.1 billion (£11.88bn).
Worldwide end-user spending on generative AI models is projected to total $14.2 billion in 2025, according to Gartner, Inc.
End-user spending on specialised GenAI models, which include domain-specific language models (DSLMs), is estimated to total $1.1 billion in 2025.
Specialised GenAI models are trained or fine-tuned on industry or business process-specific data. The way DSLMs are developed and deployed results in an impact that exceeds the direct spending they generate.
Gartner predicts that by 2027, more than half of the GenAI models used by enterprises will be domain-specific – that is, specific to an industry or business function – up from 1% in 2024.
“Foundation GenAI models (including LLMs) are trained on vast amounts of data and used for many different tasks. They are the first models supporting GenAI and will continue to represent the largest area of spending by organisations in the coming years,” said Arunasree Cheparthi, Senior Principal Research Analyst at Gartner.
“However, organisations are also turning to more domain-specific or vertical GenAI models because they offer improved performance, cost, reliability and relevance in targeted enterprise use cases over foundation models.”
According to Gartner, end-user spending on genAI models in 2024 totalled just $5.719 billion, with just $302 million of this coming from specialised genAI models.
The $14.2 billion they expect to be spent by the end of this year represents a 148.3% growth, with a 297% growth in specialised genAI model spending, and 141% growth in foundation genAI model spend.
The analyst firm recently predicted that overall spending on genAI globally would amount to $644 bn in 2025, which would include spending on servers, services, and devices.
Adarma, an Edinburgh-headquartered cybersecurity firm, has reportedly entered a Notice of Intent to appoint an administrator.
The news was broken on LinkedIn by current client director Ross Lockerbie-Tyrrell, who expressed his heartbreak at the revelation.
Adarma has yet, however, to confirm the news, or to have created an announcement across its own socials or its webpage.
“Today, the business I’ve poured my heart into for the past two years has entered into a Notice of Intent to appoint an administrator – meaning there is still hope that a buyer can be found,” he wrote in a post, his profile picture now showing that he is open to work amid the uncertainty.
Adarma was founded in 2009, and was acquired in 2019 by Livingbridge, an indepdent private equity firm. From then, Adarma won a £2 million grant from Scottish Enterprise, aiming to drive job creation and boost its research and development.
The firm touts itself as the UK’s leading security operations specialist for modern global enterprises, providing cybersecurity consulting, technology, and managed security services to its clients.
The firm saw a change in leadership in September of 2024, with Chris Shaw coming in as CEO, and Ronnie McComb serving as Chairman.
Adarma has served organisations in a range of industries, including financial services, critical national infrastructure, and highly targeted organisations in the FTSE 350.
“It’s a sombre moment when a fellow UK cyber security firm closes its doors,” reflected Tim Anderson, chief commercial officer at CyberCX, on LinkedIn upon hearing the news.
Four people in the UK have been arrested in a National Crime Agency investigation into the cyber-attacks which hit Marks and Spencer, Co-op Group, and Harrods in April 2025.
Two men aged 19, one aged 17, and a woman aged 20, were taken into custody after being arrested at their respective homes in London, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands. The West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit and the East Midlands Special Operations Unit assisted in the operation.
Several electronic devices were also seized for forensic analysis, as the four were arrested as suspects for breaching the Computer Misuse Act of 1990, as well as committing blackmail, laundering money, and participating in organised crime.
“Since these attacks took place, specialist NCA cyber-crime investigators have been working at pace and the investigation remains one of the agency’s highest priorities,” said NCA National Cyber Crime Unit deputy director Paul Foster.
“Today’s arrests are a significant step in that investigation but our work continues, alongside partners in the UK and overseas, to ensure those responsible are identified and brought to justice.”
Further details of the arrests remain limited, as the investigation is ongoing and highly vulnerable.
No affiliation to a cyber-crime organisation has been officially made, though previously credit for the cyber-attacks has been often given to Scattered Spider.
Scattered Spider usually employees social engineering tactics to infiltrate systems and hold organisations ransom. Unlike many major cyber-crime organisations, Scattered Spider is usually made of young, native English speakers.
The attacks against UK retailers involved social engineering which may have targeted a third-party supplier, and resulted in disruption to operations and services. In the case of M&S, the fallout has lasted months, and the retailer as yet to make a full recovery.
“Hopefully, this signals to future victims the importance of seeking support and engaging with law enforcement as part of the reporting process. The NCA and policing are here to help,” Foster said.
Charities are working hard to balance significant financial pressures as the cost-of-living crisis continues to squeeze the sector, with 69% of charities saying their strained finances remain the biggest barrier to digital progress.
This is according to the Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 which surveyed 672 charities, finding tension between the charity sector’s reality and ambition with digital.
The systemic issues dating back to the report’s inception in 2017 still exist, including charities without a strategy (just 44% now operate with a digital strategy in place, down from 50% last year); inability to use data to inform decision making or strategy (52% say that they are fair at this and a quarter say that they are poor) and lack of basic digital skills.
Yet, despite the significant challenges, the sector is working hard to keep pace and adapt to accelerating technological change. It is positive that 63% of charities have still managed to make digital progress this year, and 75% continue to prioritise digital within their organisations.
Equally, digital is a priority (medium or high) for 74% of charities and they are feeling confident in using digital tools in everyday work, with 92% rating themselves as fair or excellent in this area.
The research also reveals substantial growth in AI adoption, with 76% of charities now using AI tools compared to 61% in 2024.
However, it is concerning that so many charities rate their CEO and board’s AI skills as poor, with many reporting that their AI governance is lacking.
This may well improve in 2026, with half (49%) of charities prioritising developing their strategy for digital, data and AI, 74% recognising that AI developments are relevant to them and 48% currently developing an AI policy (68% of large charities).
However, the findings show the charity sector is facing a leadership crisis. Just over a third of charities (36%) say that their CEO has poor AI skills, while 4 out of 10 (44%) state their board is also poor.
In addition to this, 64% of charities want their CEOs to develop a clear vision of what they could achieve with digital, a significant increase from 55% last year. Leaders must urgently prioritise digital upskilling, especially with AI adoption on the rise and ensure their charity’s vision is linked to the organisation’s strategy, mission and values.
Otherwise, how will charities have a clear idea of what success looks like? They need to be confident in how they can work towards success, making it easier to make decisions and plan next step, which includes adopting AI responsibly.
Upskilling on AI is not just a leadership problem. Over a third (35%) of charities say they are poor at using AI tools in everyday work, while 29% say they don’t do this.
This means that almost two-thirds (64%) of charities either struggle with or are not using these tools. Equally, 45% of charities want support with using AI tools to analyse their data, and 42% need help with storytelling with data.
Almost 4 out of 10 (39%) are poor at website and analytics data, an increase from 31% last year.
Half (50%) of charities are also struggling to use AI to keep up to date with emerging tech trends, either finding it a challenge or are not being across these trends. More than 4 in 10 (41%) are poor at this and 9% don’t do this.
Improving digital skills and data capabilities has always been important, but it is now business critical.
Otherwise, how are charities going to move forward? The risks of charities getting AI wrong are huge and will ultimately impact their ability to scale use of AI.
If you haven’t got the right skills, data, infrastructure and governance, how can AI or other positive trends be leveraged effectively? The lack of progress in improving data skills revealed in the report is also really worrying because it’s even more pressing now because of AI in terms of data security and governance.
With 23% seeing the need for good governance and data security a low priority, this means it will be much harder to move forward safely with AI and doing so without the right skills could be reputationally damaging.
“Funding for digital is more important than ever during the cost of living crisis, with squeezed organisational finances being the biggest barrier that 69% of charities now face when looking to progress digitally,” Zoe Amar, founder of Zoe Amar Digital and founder of the Charity Digital Skills Report, commented.
“We urge funders to consider how they might meet these needs and recognise that charities also need funding for core staff or cover staff time to spend on digital/data, a huge increase from 30% in 2024.”
Nissa Ramsay, co-author of the Charity Digital Skills Report, added: “This year’s report reveals a nuanced picture of digital progress. The gap between large and small charities continues to grow, with 68% of small charities at an early stage with digital, compared to 32% of large charities.
“However, small charities are finding an invaluable role for AI tools in bid writing, fundraising and communications. Black led charities are showing strong digital skills and progress, particularly with AI, diversity and inclusion in digital service design. Yet, like last year, 44% still say they cannot find a funder for their digital work, compared to 27% of all charities.
“Charities in Northern Ireland, the North of England and the Midlands are at an earlier stage with digital compared to other regions. For those with limited digital skills and capacity, only 30% accessed funding which covered digital costs, compared to 55% of those at the advancing stage. The report really demonstrates why we urgently need to find ways to make digital tools, skills, approaches and funding more accessible.”
AI seems to be actually breaking even on time saved, a report from Atlassian shows, with 68% of developers saving more than 10 hours a week thanks to AI, but half are also losing over 10 hours to organisational inefficiencies.
Atlassian’s report on the developer experience does show a marked improvement in AI efficiencies from last year, with more developers citing increases in time saved thanks to the technology.
Developers say that they are using this extra time to improve code, create new features, and document their work.
However, this is where the good news kind of ends as far as AI efficiency improvements, the research shows.
Many companies invested their massive AI budgets into AI coding assistants. While this can be beneficial, developers apparently only spend about 16% of their time coding, which is not typically a friction point.
This is where AI can, conversely “enhance developer experience without necessarily improving it,” Andrew Boyagi, head of DevOps Evangelism at Atlassian said.
While coding may be enhanced by AI assistants, developers are often losing time to non-coding tasks. While 50% are losing over ten hours, 90% lost over six hours due to organisational inefficiencies, the research shows.
Coding was actually not cited as a time water by developers in 2024 or 2025. Finding information, switching between tools, and adapting to new technology, however, were top time wasters, according to the survey.
Developers also cited communication and collaboration struggles, as well as poor instructions when it comes to projects.
Perhaps any AI is being treated as an all-around fix, as the empathy gap between leaders and developers appear to be widening.
More than three in five (63%) of developers say their leaders do not understand their struggles, a sharp rise from 44% in 2024.
Treating any AI as beneficial does not go nearly as far in improving worker well-being and efficiencies as simply talking to workers, Atlassian advices.
“We’ve seen evidence that AI can improve developer experience if it’s used to address developer pain points,” Boyagi said.
Speaking with developers to actually address friction points can make a bigger difference than simply plugging in an AI assistant.
Nvidia, the California headquartered GPU designer, has become the first company in the world to amass a market value of $4 trillion.
The chip-designer’s meteoric rise was rapid, as it only reached a market value of £1 trillion back in June 2023, continuing its swift climb ever since.
Nvidia’s share price rose by 2.4% to $164 (~£120) on Wednesday this week, as the surge in demand for AI has driven the value of Nvidia’s capable chips sky high.
Despite a slight dip in the company’s shares during the turbulent tariff war sparked by US President Donald Trump, the firm has clearly recovered with its record market value.
Nvidia outranks other tech giants including Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta – coincidentally the companies developing AI projects that typically rely on Nvidia’s AI chips.
The surging marking value of Nvidia highlights the market’s confidence in AI continuous growth as an era-defining technology, with Nvidia’s chips serving as a foundational building block of this revolutionary tech.
With its new value, Nvidia is now worth more than the combined value all of the publicly listed firms in the UK, and exceeds the combined worth of the Canadian and Mexican stock markets, according to data from LSEG.
Nvidia’s revenue in the first quarter of 2025 amounted to $44.1 billion, a 69% increase from last year. The firm projects a revenue of $45bn in the second quarter, plus or minus 2%.
While Nvidia continues to climb in the AI scramble, companies involved in creating AI models are facing the pressure to exhibit strong returns to investors which places high-value bets on the emerging technology.
Microsoft most recently cut thousands of jobs in an effort to save costs as it continues to turn its efforts – and money – towards AI.
While other chip designers and makers, such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), attempt to cash in on the AI hype, Nvidia appears largely untouched in the arena so far.
However, the launch of an AI model by Chinese-owned DeepSeek earlier in the year did challenge the current AI status quo, as it offered a cheaper, less compute-intensive version of capable generative AI.
Still, despite challengers and trade tribulations, Nvidia bounced back to a historic rise.
Europe’s top AI innovators combine tech expertise with sector-specific and ‘soft’ multidisciplinary skills – outperforming those reliant on only general tech and computing skills.
This is according to research from EIT Health and EIT Digital Health, both part of the EU’s European Institute of Innovation and Technology, which analysed the largest live dataset of AI startup talent in Europe, examining the skill profiles of over 23,000 professionals across 3,600 AI-focused startups.
While technical skills related to coding, programming and machine learning are common, AI startups that combine them with sector expertise – such as in healthcare, engineering or manufacturing – and broader soft skills like project management and communication are linked to stronger regional innovation output. In contrast, regions relying only on general IT skills are falling behind.
The findings are sourced using EIT Health’s SkillSync platform, a tool designed to benchmark and forecast the skills needed to drive Europe’s AI economy.
The report cross-references these skill profiles with the European Innovation Scoreboard to highlight which workforce capabilities are most strongly linked to innovation performance.
“Competence in general IT skills alone does not drive innovation. To truly unlock AI’s potential, we need to go beyond just digital skills and cultivate advanced, interdisciplinary capabilities that reflect the real-world needs and opportunities of each sector,” said Dr Magí Lluch-Ariet, Data Manager at EIT Health.
The report comes as the European Commission strengthens its AI leadership ambitions, with the AI Continent Action Plan launching a raft of AI-focused initiatives. In January, the UK government has launched its own AI Opportunities Action Plan with an emphasis on AI skills and talent.
The report suggests how local skills gaps could be addressed to drive innovation. For example, start-ups in Eastern Europe could benefit from a focus on multi-disciplinary ‘soft’ skills and sector-specific skills.
This would allow them to build on their extremely solid base of skills, such as in ICT, which are extremely prevalent in AI start-ups, even if not correlated with regional innovation output on their own.
Earth intelligence will significantly impact every industry as it rapidly moves from government to the private sector, with annual revenue to surpass $4.2bn in 2030, up from nearly $3.8bn in 2025, according to Gartner, Inc.
The cumulative Earth intelligence direct revenue opportunity for technology product and service providers will reach nearly $20 billion from 2025 to 2030.
This revenue forecast is for technology and service providers, and it focuses on direct revenue from Earth intelligence data, analysis services and software applications. It does not take into account the wider range of Earth intelligence value drivers, which can include productivity improvements and cost avoidance.
Gartner defines Earth intelligence as the application of AI to Earth observation data to deliver solutions specific to industries and business functions. It encompasses gathering and providing Earth observation data, fit-for-purpose transforming it, and then using it to produce actionable insights with domain-specific AI models, tools and applications.
“The future of Earth intelligence will be won by the vendors that move quickly to develop technologies that make sense of the oceans of raw data they collect,” said Bill Ray, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner.
“The value of Earth intelligence data is only now being realized. For example, vendors are leveraging satellites to pinpoint fallen trees blocking railroad tracks in a storm, monitor the temperature of every metal refinery to assess global production, count vehicles to analyse traffic patterns and consumer trends, and track sea cargo to evaluate shipping activity,” Ray said.
“These unprecedented insights are delivering immense value, and new use cases are being discovered daily as the AI vendor race intensifies with the ever-expanding volume of available data.”
Currently, the raw data that fuels Earth intelligence is primarily collected and analysed by governments. However, there is a shift taking place.
In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2030, enterprises will be spending more on Earth intelligence than governments and military bodies combined, accounting for more than 50% of total Earth intelligence, up from less than 15% in 2024.
“As private technology and service providers begin to dominate Earth intelligence, they have the opportunity to sell data, models and applications to companies that lack the resources to analyze data for themselves,” Ray said. “Earth intelligence will lead to new markets and offerings for data, models, stand-alone tools and applications as well as capabilities to embed within existing applications. This represents a massive business opportunity for technology product and service providers.
New economics are evolving because very low Earth orbit (VLEO) satellites are cheaper to build and launch, and these satellites are watching the earth in new ways.
Radar and hyperspectral techniques see things which used to be invisible, and revisit times can be an hour or less. Private companies are also experimenting with VLEO which can deliver a resolution as low as 10 cm. That is small enough to spot a mouse.
“This is driving, and will continue to drive, massive amounts of Earth observation data. Combining satellite data with ground observation data from sensors and drones further enhances Earth intelligence value,” said Ray.
“This is where AI plays a critical role. Unlike many domains, there is a plethora of data. But that data needs to be engineered into fit-for-purpose information to feed industry- and function-specific AI models.”
The responsibility for OT cybersecurity is consistently being upsold from CISO to the board level, research from Fortinet found.
The cybersecurity firm’s 2025 report sought to represent the current state of operational technology (OT) cybersecurity and highlight opportunities for continuous improvement for organisations to secure an ever-expanding IT/OT threat landscape.
In addition to trends and insights impacting OT organisations, the report offers best practices to help IT and OT security teams better secure their cyber-physical systems.
“The seventh instalment of the Fortinet State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report shows that organizations are taking OT security more seriously. We see this trend reflected in a notable increase in the assignment of responsibility for OT risk to the C-suite, alongside an uptick in organizations self-reporting increased rates of OT security maturity,” said Nirav Shah, senior vice president, Products and Solutions, at Fortinet.
“Alongside these trends, we’re seeing a decrease in the impact of intrusions in organizations that prioritize OT security. Everyone from the C-suite on down needs to commit to protecting sensitive OT systems and allocating the necessary resources to secure their critical operations.”
There has been a significant increase in the global trend of corporations planning to integrate cybersecurity under the CISO or other executives. As accountability continues to shift into executive leadership, OT security is elevated to a high-profile issue at the board level. The top internal leaders who influence OT cybersecurity decisions are now most likely to be the CISO or CSO by an increasingly wide margin.
Now more than half (52%) of organisations report that the CISO/CSO is responsible for OT, up from 16% in 2022. For all C-suite roles, this has spiked to 95%. Additionally, the number of organisations intending to move OT cybersecurity under CISO in the next 12 months has increased from 60% to 80% in 2025.
Self-reported OT security maturity has made notable progress this year. At the basic Level 1, 26% of organisations report establishing visibility and implementing segmentation, up from 20% in the previous year.
The largest number of organizations state their security maturity is at the Level 2 access and profiling phase. The report also found a correlation between maturity and attacks. Those organisations that report being more mature (higher of Levels 0–4) are seeing fewer attacks or indicate that they are better able to handle lower-sophistication tactics, such as phishing.
It’s worth noting that some tactics, such as advanced persistent threats (APT) and OT malware, are difficult to detect, and less mature organizations may not have the security solutions in place to determine they exist.
Overall, although nearly half of organisations experienced impacts, the impact of intrusions on organisations is declining, with a noteworthy reduction in operational outages that impacted revenue, which dropped from 52% to 42%.
In addition to the Levels of maturity affecting the impact of intrusions, it appears that adopting best practices such as implementing basic cyber hygiene and better training and awareness are having a real impact, including a significant drop in business email compromise.
Other best practices include incorporating threat intelligence, which spiked (49%) since 2024. Additionally, the report saw a significant decrease in the number of OT device vendors, which is a sign of maturity and operational efficiency.
More organizations (78%) are now using only one to four OT vendors, which indicates that many of these organisations are consolidating vendors as part of their best practices.
CGI is set to work in partnership with NHS Scotland to deliver a user-centred ‘Digital Front Door’ to be rolled out as an online service for selected specialities within NHS Lanarkshire.
The Digital Front Door (DFD) will act as a primary entry point for patients to access the health and care services they need.
BJSS, now a part of CGI, has secured the contract to be the delivery partner for the technology with NHS Education for Scotland, the national health board responsible for digital health development and education across Scotland.
Th DFD is part of a key commitment laid out in the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government, the First Minister’s statement on Renewal in January, and subsequent Operational Improvement Plan.
It will give people in Scotland straigthforward online access to personalised health and care information across primary, secondary, and social care, community mental health, screening and vaccinations, in addition to a range of other channels.
Following the DFD launch in Lanarkshire, dermatology outpatients will also be able to track their care and treatment progress online.
“We’re proud to be working with NES and NHS Lanarkshire to deliver the Digital Front Door—an important step towards more inclusive, person-centred care in Scotland,” said Lindsay McGranaghan, senior vice-president and Business Unit Lead for Scotland and Northern Ireland at CGI.
This is a bold example of digital innovation supporting better access, empowering people, and easing pressure on services—and we’re excited to help bring it to more communities across Scotland.”
Following the successful rollout of the first phase of the DFD in Lanarkshire, CGI will work with NES to evaluate feedback and insight. These insights will be used to inform a wider national launch across other health and care organisations in Scotland, in line with a national rollout plan being published later this year.
“The Digital Front Door will be a significant digital development in health and social care in Scotland and represents a major investment in reshaping how people interact with data and services. We have reiterated our commitment to delivering digital service options in our Programme for Government, recognising the potential for empowering people, improving access, and delivering capacity for our staff and our services,” said Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Neil Gray.
“In line with industry good practice, the new service will be tested and established in one area before being developed and rolled out across Scotland. Along with NES and CGI we are working closely with other organisations and will publish a national roll-out plan later in the summer.”
There is a widening disconnect between the drive to implement AI initiatives and the operational readiness required to execute them successfully.
This is according to a study from Akkodis, which drew on insights from 500 global chief technology officers, highlighting critical AI trends that shape enterprise transformation.
Although enterprise AI investment continues to accelerate, confidence in the strategies guiding this transformation is falling. C-suite confidence in AI strategy dropped from 69% in 2024 to just 58% in 2025.
The sharpest declines were reported by CTPS and CEOs, down 20% and 33% respectively, an indication of mounting concerns over AI scalability, implementation delays, and the tangible return on AI investments are yielding meaningful results.
CTOs also pointed to a leadership gap in AI understanding. Just over half (55%) believe their executive teams have the fluency needed to fully grasp the risks and opportunities associated with AI adoption. Among employees, that figure falls to 46%, signalling a wider AI trust gap that could hinder successful AI implementation and long-term success.
This lack of fluency is not simply a communications issues – it reflects limited technical understanding and inconsistent alignment at the leadership level. Without clear, informed leadership, organisations can risk stalling AI progress and weakening the credibility of AI-driven initiatives.
While technical expertise remains foundational, as half (51%) of CTOS cite specialist IT skills as the top capability gap, the report emphasises the broader, human-centric skills are becoming equally critical for effective AI integration.
The essential competencies include soft skills, such as creativity (44%), leadership (39%), and critical thinking (36%).
These skills are increasingly vital for interpreting AI outputs, driving innovation and adapting AI systems to diverse business context. As AI becomes embedded in daily operations, organisations require not only deep technical skills but also the cognitive and strategic agility to apply these tools effectively.
Despite growing investment in employee learning and development, many organisations still lack the infrastructure to ensure training is targeted and impactful.
Only 20% of CTOs report using data tools to assess current workforce skills or monitor learning progress. As a result, training often occurs in silos, disconnected from business goals or role-specific requirements.
The report recommends embedding capability development directly into enterprise systems—linking learning to operational workflows and performance objectives. This shift would enable continuous, in-context skill development that evolves alongside digital transformation goals.
While many enterprises continue to focus on external hiring to address capability gaps, the report cautions that this approach may fall short for scaling AI. External hires often lack the organisational knowledge and cross-functional relationships needed to implement AI at scale.
Leaders are encouraged to pursue a more balanced strategy: combining targeted recruitment with structured internal development pathways to build sustainable, enterprise-wide AI capabilities.
As organisations transition from AI experimentation to deep AI integration, CTOs are increasingly seen as pivotal enterprise transformation leaders. Their responsibilities now extend beyond infrastructure and operations to include cross-functional AI strategy, executive enablement, and systems design that supports both technical and human capacity.
By aligning skills strategy with enterprise architecture and fostering greater AI fluency across leadership teams, CTOs can help close the gap between AI ambition and execution—building organizations that are not just AI-ready, but AI-confident.
As internet usage soars to 97.8% of the UK population, the UK has established itself as the top tech ecosystem in Europe. However, ensuring that everyone benefits from these advances in tech remains a challenge, especially when it comes to broadband access.
This is according to Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA UK), which found that advances in gigabit broadband capabilities and reach can be a springboard for future UK tech success, but that these advancements are often not applied evenly across the country.
Still, support for upgrading telecoms infrastructure is supported by the majority (78%) of Britons, as broadband becomes a daily necessity of life, only surpassed by supermarkets, according to the report.
There has been marked improvements thanks to government initiatives and private investment, with 84% of residential and commercial properties now able to access gigabit-capable broadband, and 74% full-fibre broadband.
However, connecting all of Britain remains a problem.
“The current political and economic environment makes raising additional capital to carry out this essential work increasingly difficult,” Steve Leighton, chair of ISPA, wrote in the report.
“At the same time, ISPA UK members are being asked to shoulder greater responsibility for what actually happens online, whether that be affordability, online safety, digital skills, or fraud,” he added.
Most (72%) of the UK public view internet providers continuing to invest in infrastructure upgrades as important. Further, more than three in four (78%) of UK people believe that it is important for everyone in the UK to have access to fast, reliable internet.
Expanding broadband coverage is therefore politically a popular move, as well as economically beneficial.
A lack of broadband would negatively impact people – 44% say they would struggle to contact people, 40% would struggle to access essential services, and about a third (32%) would find it nearly impossible to study or work without a home broadband connection.
With nearly half (41%) of UK employers now permitting hybrid work, the importance of strong broadband connectivity is stronger than ever.
Further, most (62%) of the UK public believes in a level of sacrifice for overall better coverage, understanding that short term traffic disruption is a necessary trade-off to provide long-term improvements to broadband access.
The UK public would often forgo other products and services before broadband, with almost half (49%) willing to sacrifice the gym, 42% willing to forgo alcohol, and a quarter willing to ditch coffee or tea.
Broadband was considered more important than utilities like gas, water, and electricity, mobile network providers, and banks, in the eyes of the UK public.
The research also revealed regional distinctions in broadband prioritisation and rollout speed. While more and more Britains see access to connectivity a fundamental right, these figures were higher in Scotland (83%) than the national average (78%).
This is despite broadband rollout in Scotland being the slowest in the four nations – this likely reflects the real economic and social cost of a lack of broadband in Scotland’s more rural and remote regions, which emphasises the importance of the infrastructure.
When it comes to who bears the brunt of responsibility, the UK public reported a mixed bag: 41% think the national government should take the lead, while 40% think broadband providers should bear equal responsibility. Less than a quarter (23%) think the responsibility should be on local government.
Based on these findings, the ISPA is calling on the government to reaffirm its commitment to the rollout of future-proof digital infrastructure via Project Gigabit to connect more homes and businesses to gigabit-capable broadband to reach the government’s target of 99% of UK premises by 2032.
Scattered Spider, the prolific, sophisticated cyber gang, appears to have hundreds of phishing domains in apparent preparation for future attacks.
The ransomware group which relies on social engineering and phishing techniques to target industries – most recently retail and aviation – does apparently have some tell tale signs in their phishing domains.
In their investigations, researchers at Check Point discovered about 500 domains that follow the known naming conventions of Scattered Spider.
While some appear to target specific industries like retain, tech, and aviation companies, other domains appear to impersonate companies across a wide range of industries, from enterprise, finance, medical technology, manufacturing, and even restaurant chains.
Checkpoint shared examples such as:
chipotle-sso[.]com
gemini-servicedesk[.]com
hubspot-okta[.]com
These demonstrate not only the style of Scattered Spider’s phishing domains, but the range of industries it is prepared to target, highlighting the opportunistic nature of the gang.
Though Check Point could not confirm if all the identified domains were actively malicious, their relation to known tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) suggests that they are intended for future targeting.
The domains provided needed context for firms trying to stay ahead of the elusive and active cyber gang as it shifts its focus from retail to aviation.
Scattered Spider allegedly rattled the retail industry earlier this year, targeting M&S and Co-op in a string of attacks that left the online operations of M&S disrupted for weeks.
More recently, Scattered Spider has been linked to a number of cyber-attacks on airlines, including Hawaiian Airlines and Australian firm Qantas.
The group most typically employs social engineering techniques ranging from MFA manipulation to voice spoofing, SIM swapping, and SMS impersonation.
Scattered Spider has been active since at least 2022, and often uses remote access tools and malware for its intrusion efforts.
Check Point reported that Scattered Spider employs a range of remote access tools like Fleetdeck.io, TeamViewer, and ScreenConnect, and also uses BlackCat ransomware-as-a-service.
There’s a striking disconnect between the promise of AI and its measurable impact on UK business productivity, new research reveals.
The study from Qlik, based on insights from 250 business and IT leaders in the UK, shows that despite aggressive investment in AI, many organisations are still struggling to translate pilot projects into productivity gains, and even fewer can tie those gains to clear financial KPIs.
Everywhere, But Inconsistent
Despite widespread deployment, productivity gains for AI continue to be inconsistent. More than half of business and IT leaders report that fewer than 50% of their AI projects have delivered measurable improvements.
Even more concerning, only 11% of respondents say the majority of their initiatives (over 75%) have led to tangible gains.
This is compounded by a lack of financial clarity, with just 51% of organisations using KPIs tied directly to business performance to evaluate AI initiatives. 44% admit their teams’ perceptions of AI’s productivity gains don’t align with the actual outcomes.
“AI adoption is high, but impact remains patchy,” said James Fisher, chief strategy officer at Qlik. “This gap between hype and reality is a wake-up call. Businesses need to focus on measurement, alignment, and building the data infrastructure that enables AI to deliver at scale.”
Leading the Way or Lagging Behind?
Where AI is making a mark, it is largely in technical domains. IT and cybersecurity departments are the standout beneficiaries, with 81% of leaders reporting improvements in these areas. But other business functions aren’t seeing the same uplift.
However, HR and finance remain on the margins of AI success, with 37% and 30% of respondents respectively stating these departments have seen the least tangible benefit. This indicates that the full potential of AI is not being realised across the business, with innovation and investment still concentrated in siloes.
Operational Gap Are the Biggest Barriers
Only a quarter of respondents cited budget as a top-three barrier to AI success. Instead, the biggest challenges are operational, with nearly half (49%) of businesses saying they lack the internal skills to effectively integrate AI with their existing analytics and business intelligence systems.
Other top concerns include incompatible tools and platforms (36%) and a lack of real-time data integration (37%). These infrastructure and capability gaps are limiting the returns on AI investment, even in well-funded organisations.
The research also suggests that businesses are still operating in a proof-of-concept mindset. Nearly a quarter (23%) say that the majority of their AI use cases (75% or more) are still in the experimental phase. A further 11% report that virtually all of their initiatives are still in early-stage pilots.
This signals a major disconnect between perception and reality. Many businesses believe they are ready to scale, but remain stuck at the starting line when it comes to operationalising AI at scale.
Clearer KPIs and Better Tools Needed
Many businesses still struggle to measure AI success effectively. While 89% agree that a unified data strategy is key to assessing ROI, only half say they have the tools to connect AI outputs with business performance.
There’s also strong demand for better tools and transparency. 57% say improved data integration and analytics would help communicate AI’s business value to stakeholders, while 55% want more visibility into how AI models make decisions. Stronger collaboration between IT and other business units (49%) and clearer, outcome-focused KPIs (46%) are also seen as critical to moving from experimentation to impact.
“To realise AI’s full potential, businesses must move beyond experimentation and focus on execution,” said Fisher. “That means scalable tools, integrated strategies and collaboration across every function.”
Scottish sports tech startup Theo Health has raised £1.2 million and teamed up with Xander Schauffele – two-time major winner, Olympic gold medalist, and the world’s number three ranked golf player – as the company continues the development of a smart clothing platform designed to empower elite athletes and their strength and conditioning coaches with lab-grade data in real time.
Schauffele joins Theo Health as both an investor and one of the founding ‘Alpha Athletes’ in Theo’s testing programme that aims to support athletes around injury prevention and recovery.
Theo’s CEO and founder Jodie Sinclair had been scouted for a US soccer scholarship before rupturing her ACL the week before starting university, an injury that sidelined her for three years and ended her competitive sporting career.
Jodie Sinclair said: “There was no feedback during my recovery – I had no way of knowing if I was doing the right thing, or making it worse. Theo is the system I wish I had when I was injured, one that makes recovery measurable, progress visible, and elite performance possible again.”
“After a couple of years in stealth mode where we deliberately stayed under the radar, focusing on IP protection, product development, and building a world-class team, it’s great to now be back in the spotlight.”
Theo’s first product – the ‘Theo Alpha Shorts’ – embed inertial measurement units (IMUs) within high-performance compression wear to track every rep in real time: from depth and tempo to balance, symmetry, and knee alignment.
Each garment connects seamlessly to Theo’s modular “brain” – a compact, removable unit that delivers elite-level insights, all from simply putting on a pair of shorts. Fusing advanced biomechanics with wearable tech, it turns every rep into actionable feedback – with post-session reports to match. “The goal is simple”, says Sinclair, “fewer injuries, smarter training, and lasting recovery”.
After previewing Theo’s system, David Sundberg, personal trainer to Xander Schauffele, said: “It all makes sense – I didn’t expect it to be this easy to understand. These components help with form, others with strength, and others with speed. It’s simple for the athlete, but there’s so much information underneath.”
Theo is also tackling the gender data gap in sports. Female athletes are up to eight times more likely to suffer ACL injuries, yet less than 5% of injury studies focus on women. “Theo is the first smart-clothing system truly built with female physiology in mind – without compromising on performance,” says CEO Sinclair.
Dr. Cordelia Carter, Theo’s medical advisor and an Ivy League-trained orthopaedic sports surgeon, said: “I have treated many young athletes whose careers have been irrevocably changed — or ended — by injuries like an ACL tear. Offering a tool that empowers athletes to make data-based decisions regarding their training, performance, and injury prevention strategies is a true game changer. This is Theo’s mission.”
The company is on the countdown to its Alpha launch – an intensive testing phase with a hand-selected group of world-class athletes and their coaches – and preparing for Beta pilots with one of the world’s top European football clubs. After testing with elite athletes and teams, a mass market launch is expected by the summer of 2027.
CEO Jodie Sinclair added: “The Alpha Shorts are just the beginning – we’re building a product line designed to deliver full-body analysis.”
The Scottish AI Alliance has released its 2024/2025 Impact Report, demonstrating a transformative year of progress in promoting trustworthy, ethical, and inclusive artificial intelligence across Scotland.
The report highlights how the Scottish AI Alliance has turned strategy into tangible action, empowering people, supporting businesses, and helping shape Scotland’s AI policy landscape.
In its most impactful year to date, the Alliance has significantly expanded its reach, delivering national programmes that build public understanding and responsible adoption of AI.
The report found that over 1,500 individual learners were engaged through the flagship Living with AI course, with a 34% completion rate, which is nearly triple the industry average.
Further, 17 partner organisations were onboarded to host and license the course, including the Scottish Government, Glasgow School of Art, and Borders College.
Over 200 businesses were supported via the relaunch of the Scottish AI Playbook, including new tools like an AI Maturity Framework, AI Jargon Buster, and adoption case study library.
22 public sector AI use cases were registered on the Scottish AI Register, enhancing transparency and public feedback on government AI use.
Four regional AI Summits were held in Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, and Inverness, brining inclusive AI discussions to communities across the country.
The Scottish AI Alliance also launched a number of creative collaborations, such as the Creative AI Forum and How to Find the Soul of a Sailor exhibition, exploring AI through the lens of arts, memory, and climate.
“This impactful year has not only advanced public understanding of AI but has also set a benchmark for inclusive and responsible AI governance in Scotland” said Catriona Campbell, Chair of the Scottish AI Alliance.
Looking ahead, the Scottish AI Alliance hopes to expand its Living with AI programme into the private sector, launch a suite of micro courses tailored to industry needs, and deliver further events including a People’s Panel on AI in Health & Care and a regional summit in Dumfries.
A new permanent chief executive officer for Great British Energy has been appointed, bringing private sector experience to the publicly-owned company aiming to make the UK a clean energy superpower.
Dan McGrail will serve as the new CEO of Great British Energy; McGrail previously served as chief executive of RenewableUK and CEO of Siemens Engines.
Under his stewardship as interim CEO for the last four months, McGrail has helped set up the company. This includes announcing £1 billion for Great British Energy to invest in clean energy supply chains such as electric cables and floating offshore wind platforms to ensure the clean energy revolution is built here in Britain.
Meanwhile, Great British Energy investment in rooftop solar projects is set to benefit around 200 schools and 200 hospitals, which will install solar panels that could power classrooms and hospital operations. This could save hundreds of millions of pounds that could be reinvested.
The chief executive appointment follows the appointment in January of five new non-executive directors to join Chair Juergen Maier on the company’s start-up board, bringing a wide range of experience across different sectors, with knowledge on workplace rights, building UK supply chains and driving investment in clean energy.
“Dan has been a visionary leader as Great British Energy’s interim CEO, and will bring world-class private sector experience to our publicly-owned clean power company,” energy secretary Ed Miliband said.
“Great British Energy is at the heart of our clean power mission and Plan for Change and is investing in clean energy supply chains to create manufacturing jobs here in Britain.
“I look forward to working with Dan to unleash the benefits of clean energy, driving growth and new jobs in communities.”
Great British Energy CEO Dan McGrail said: “It is a privilege to take on the CEO role permanently and lead Great British Energy from our Aberdeen HQ at such a pivotal moment.
“We are already delivering for British people, with schools and hospitals set to benefit from cheaper energy bills.
“We will now focus on scaling up as Britain’s publicly owned energy company, making strategic investments that drive forward the government’s clean power mission and give people a stake in clean energy.”
McGrail will be based in Scotland, working from the Aberdeen headquarters, on a permanent contract with Great British Energy. He took up the post of interim CEO of Great British Energy in March on secondment from RenewableUK.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), often the backbone of innovation, employment, and local services, are increasingly vulnerable to business identity theft, a threat exacerbated by outdated and insecure verification systems.
This is based on a report from Umazi, a digital identity platform, revealing a growing crisis at the heart of the UK’s small business sector. The research exposes that outdated, paper-based processes are putting thousands of small businesses at risk of fraud, delays, and data misuse.
“The irony is painful. While we celebrate advances in AI, fintech, and digital innovation at the top end of the economy”, said Cindy van Niekerk, CEO and Founder of Umazi.
“Most SMEs are still relying on printed bank statements and scanned ID cards simply to prove their existence without key privacy and data protection measures in place. This is not a true digital economy—it’s a digital illusion.”
The Growing Risk and Its Impact on SMEs
Seven in ten (70%) of SMEs surveyed say they are worried their business data or identity could be stolen or copied. Many are already struggling with tax increases, inflation and rising administrative burdens, and the failure to modernise verification processes is making the situation worse.
“Unlike large corporations with established legal defences and brand recognition, SMEs lack the resources to fully protect themselves when bad actors attempt to impersonate or defraud them,” Neirkerk said.
“Instead, they face fragmented, manual verification processes that slow down legitimate operations and fail to prevent fraud.”
Nearly half (45%) of SMEs say new technologies to reduce identity fraud would significantly support their operations. Yet most remain locked in repetitive, manual processes that waste time, drain resources, and expose sensitive data.
“When SMEs are locked out of growth, the effects cascade across the entire economy,” Van Niekerk added.
“From retail to education, from hospitality to healthcare, small businesses provide vital, community-anchored services. If they’re starved of capital or forced to waste weeks on verification admin, the whole country loses—through fewer services, less competition, and higher prices.”
Apple is appealing a landmark fine of €500 million from the EU Commission which found the tech giant in breach of the EU’s Digital Markets Act for its App Store practices.
The European Commission handed out the fine in April, when it said that Apple had restricted app developers using the App Store of informing their customers of alternative payment options outside of the Apple App Store which might be cheaper.
In its appeal, Apple deemed the fine “unprecedented”, going further to say that the charge was “far beyond what the law requires”.
The appeal from Apple targets two key areas of the Commission’s charge and remedy suggestion.
Apple contends that the EU is consistently moving the goal posts when it comes to compliance, saying that the EU has expanded the DMA’s definition of ‘steering’.
Apple argues that the EU now includes in-app promotions and alternative payment services as steering, which it claims is a departure from the DMA’s original intent.
It also pushed back on the Commission’s insistence that the Apple App Store provide links to alternative sites.
Further, the proposed tiered system of offerings to App Store developers is “confusing for developers and bad for users,” Apple said.
The EU is already assessing if Apple’s current changes to the App Store are enough to bring it under compliance.
Apple was one of two major tech companies to be issued the first fines under the DMA. Meta also received a fine under the regulatory law for its ‘pay or consent’ advertising model.
Meta also announced its intentions to challenge the EU’s fine, also claiming that it was being treated unfairly by the EU regulator.
Apple’s App Store continually comes under fire for anti-competitive behaviour, and has even been fined before for anti-steering techniques uses on music apps back in 2024.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are proving they can go toe-to-toe with corporate giants when it comes to sustainability reporting, especially in tackling the environmental impact of their tech stack.
Recent findings from Wasabi make it clear: Almost two-thirds of SMEs with up to 499 employees (62%) believe they can provide accurate information about the emissions of their technology infrastructure, compared to 74% of larger companies.
Behind every click on a website, file download and upload lies an often-overlooked climate cost. Emissions from a company’s tech infrastructure and cloud computing fall under Scope 3, the indirect emissions across the value chain that can make up as much as 75% of a business’s total carbon footprint.
That means every digital decision, from data centres to software stacks, carries weight in the race to net zero. In the UK, where 99.9% of all businesses are SMEs, these firms aren’t just participants; they’re pivotal.
As the backbone of the British economy, their tech choices will shape the nation’s sustainability story.
While the initial focus is on larger organisations, the evolving regulatory landscape, combined with growing expectations from investors and supply chains, means SMEs will soon face stronger demands to disclose their environmental and social impacts.
SMEs aren’t taking any chances: more than half (57%) already feel confident in the accuracy of their emissions data for on-premises and private cloud tech.
And when it comes to Scope 3 emissions from public cloud services, often the most complex to track, nearly half (44%) are certain they have reliable figures, with another third (39%) relatively certain.
Lack of Trust in Tech Providers
Despite their optimism, small and medium-sized businesses are struggling to get the support they need for accurate reporting. Half (50%) say their tech partners and vendors aren’t giving them a clear or reliable picture, while nearly a third (29%) blame the sheer number of vendors they work with for muddying the waters.
It’s a data dilemma and it highlights the key needs for SMEs reporting on sustainability. Nearly half of companies (47%) say their technology providers need to do more to improve access to emissions data.
And in today’s tech landscape, it’s more important than ever to read the data nutrition label: 49% say they need to trust that the data coming from their vendors is accurate and high quality.
Inaccurate emissions reporting is eroding trust and clouding decision making across businesses, but the impact isn’t felt equally.
Nearly half of SMEs (45%) say it shakes confidence in their sustainability efforts, while the figure rises to 51% for larger firms.
And when it comes to planning future tech investments, poor data is a major roadblock for both groups, with roughly the same amount (42% of SMEs vs 43% of big businesses) struggling to make informed decisions.
“SMEs are the unsung heroes of sustainability; quietly, but powerfully driving progress toward broader environmental goals,” says Kevin Dunn, vice president and general manager of EMEA at Wasabi.
“To keep that momentum going, they need real support from their technology partners. Right now, the environmental impact of digital infrastructure is hidden in a black box.
“Without clear, trustworthy emissions data from tech providers, SMEs are flying blind, and that puts them at real risk. With the right transparency and backing, these businesses can become an even greater force for sustainable change than they already are.”
The proposal – set out in a call for views on how the ICO applies regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) – aim to support innovation by enabling new advertising models that respect user privacy while maintaining revenue streams.
Regulation 6 revolves around the processing involved in storing or accessing stored information in user devices as it applies to GDPR.
The ICO is exploring how publishers could deliver privacy-preserving advertising to users who have not given consent, where the risks are demonstratably low.
“Currently, publishers deploying online advertising technologies must secure people’s consent. This is because online advertising involves storage of, or access to, information on people’s devices. Storage and access technologies for online advertising purposes do not meet any of the exceptions to regulation 6 requirements,” the ICO said.
“We are exploring whether a risk-based approach to enforcing PECR could allow publishers to deliver online advertising to users who have not granted consent, where there is a low risk to their privacy.”
The regulator will continue to enforce consent requirements for the collection of personal information for targeted advertising during this exploration.
“Online advertising doesn’t have to come at the expense of privacy. We want to see industry develop new models that put users in control while supporting publishers and platforms to thrive,” Stephen Almond, director of regulator risk at the ICO said.
“Our role isn’t to dictate how that’s done – it’s to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers and open the door to responsible innovation.”
The ICO has also launched an updated consultation on its Storage and Access Technologies (SATs) guidance, revised to reflect changes introduced by the new Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. The Act permits consent-free use of cookies for certain low-risk functions, such as statistical analysis and website improvement.
The regulator believes that there may be commercially viable ways to deliver online advertising that do not require the intensive processing often undertaken with behavioural advertising.
“A new approach to regulation can create opportunities to unlock business growth through innovation, while safeguarding people’s privacy and improving user experience,” the regulator contends.
“Provided users have a clear understanding that services appearing to be ‘free’ are funded by advertising, they may accept some storage and access of information for functions to deliver that advertising. However, they may not accept the scale and granularity of processing often currently undertaken when they grant consent,” the ICO says.
The ICO is also commissioning further user research to better understand public attitudes to online tracking and consent, ensuring its regulatory approach is aligned with real-world expectations.
The call for views on the ICO’s enforcement approach closes on Friday 29 August, while the SATs guidance consultation closes on Friday 26 September. Responses will inform the ICO’s final guidance and a formal statement on its updated enforcement approach, due in early 2026.
The Ada Lovelace Institute is calling for a Parliamentary inquiry into the confluence of private industry and public sector AI integration to weed out conflicts of interest and revolving door dynamics.
The Institute continues to investigate the public’s perception of AI’s rapid rise and adoption, especially amid the public sector and public services.
While politicians tout ambitions to make the UK an AI superpower, the public is still behind when it comes to AI trust.
Ada Lovelace Institute’s research found that the public view of AI is nuanced, and often context dependent, and are often influenced by a person’s individual experiences and characteristics.
However, the Institute did find that the public is concerned about AI transparency, the regulatory powers meant to keep them in check, and the increased potential for personal data access when private companies and their technologies partner with public services.
The public want clear evidence and explainability when it comes to AI, with justification for why AI tools are being integrated into public services. People affected by public services want to be involved in the proposed integration of AI in these services.
The public is also increasing their calls for stronger governance when it comes to AI, with transparent appeals and redress processes for potential faults. The Institute found that the public are “not convinced” that existing regulations are enough to ensure that AI works for the public, supporting overall public welfare, and supports people over profit.
The Ada Lovelace Institute therefore recommends that the UK Parliament initiates an inquiry into the private sector’s involvement in shaping government policy when it comes to AI, with a review of procurement decisions related to public sector AI.
The review should not only investigate the role of the private sector in providing advice on government use of AI in the public sector, but the role of tech companies in shaping AI policy as well as the media narrative they generate when it comes to touting AI’s benefits.
The Institute also suggests that the UK Parliament must reassess measures that aim to tackle conflicts of interest and the ‘revolving door’ dynamics between the tech sector and the government.
“At a time when AI is being offered as a solution to a wide range of public sector problems, the public are concerned about the motivations of private sector involvement,” the report, titled License to Build, said.
“The public expect transparency and that public sector AI prioritises people over profit. This is especially important given that public awareness of AI in the public sector is low.”
Google is facing an antitrust complaint in the UK and the EU over its AI Overview from the Independent Publishers Alliance.
First reported by Reuters, the complaint by the group of publishers alleges that Google has misused web content for their AI Overviews which now appear automatically as part of Google Search.
These overviews “have caused, and continue to cause, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership, and revenue loss,” the complaint states.
Publishers are stuck, however, saying that unless they hide their work and platforms entirely from Google Search they cannot opt out of their work being used in Google’s AI overviews.
Google, however, told Reuters that claims about web traffic may be based on skewed and incomplete data, and that web traffic fluctuates for a number of reasons.
The complaint, which was received by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and the European Commission, was also signed by The Movement for an Open Web, a group of digital advertisers and publishers, as well as Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company, a UK non-profit focused on fairness in the tech sphere.
While Google’s AI Overview was introduced to Google Search last May, it is not the first move by the tech giant which keeps people on the Google Search page rather than selecting a different website.
Google often provides fast facts and Wikipedia previews, as well as questions asked by other users with short form answers, when a user submits a search. These methods make Google content and platforms often the top search result on Google Search, with The Markup finding that 41% of Google’s first page of search results dedicated to Google content and products in their 2020 investigation.
The Google AI Overview has also come under fire from users as Google has not created an option for users to disable the AI search output.
Further, early research into the environmental consequences of Google’s AI Overviews found that the automatically generated AI answer to simple queries uses about 10 times more energy than a traditional Google Search.
APIs have become the backbone of modern applications, enabling seamless data exchange and integration, but increased reliance on APIs has also made them a prime target for cyber-criminals.
This is according to research by Raidiam, which found that API security vulnerabilities are becoming more advanced, more frequent, and more dangerous than ever before.
For technology leaders, this is not just a technical issue, but a strategic business threat.
Most enterprises appear unprepared for the rising threat, Raidiam found.
The data sharing firm found that 84% of security professionals experienced an API security incident in just the past year, with 92% of organisations using APIs suffering a breach in the same time span. This is costing organisations up to $87 billion a year.
In Raidiam’s API Security report, which surveyed 68 organisations, the vast majority handle sensitive data, but only one out of 68 organisations had adequate protections that were strong enough for the data they manage.
Static API keys and long-lived tokens are exposing high-value data, and most firms lack appropriate monitoring of API activity, often leaving them blind to misuse.
In a rating system by Raidiam, most (84%) of surveyed companies fell into the ‘act urgently’ category when it came to their API defences, meaning that the vast majority of organisation have a lot of work to do to develop adequate API security measures.
About 15% landed in the ‘start planning’ category, indicating some level of security though at an insufficient level, while only one organisations achieved the ‘you’re good’ designation.
“The trend is clear: most organisations are behind the curve on API security hardening, even as their reliance on APIs has grown,” the report noted.
Some of the most common vulnerabilities to watch for include credential theft, token interception, supply chain vulnerabilities, data exposure, and business logic abuse.
APIs reply on credentials and tokens for authentication, while the increasing interconnections in modern business means that third-party API security is just as vital as in-house defences.
Flaws in security measures can expose data, while API business logic flaws can be manipulated by threat actors to bypass security controls.
To combat these threats, Raidiam suggests organisations follow leaders already adopting Financial-grade API (FAPI) security, which has become the gold standard in open banking and relies on a framework of authentication with extra cryptography with mTLS.
Raidiam also suggests making mTLS, or mutual transport layer security, the standard for all API integration. MTLS requires mutual authentication between both a server and a client with two-way identity verification.
The firm also calls for organisations to abandon their API keys – a static, symmetric security solution, in favour of asymmetric, short-lived credentials that are certificate-backed, and tokens that are bound to identities.
Glasgow City Council has said that so far, investigations into the cyber-attack the organisation discovered on the 19th July has not found any evidence of stolen data.
The cyber-attack was discovered by the Council’s ICT supplier CGI, which found malicious activity on servers that were managed by a third-party supplier.
The servers were quicky isolated from the Council’s wider network and taken offline, which disrupted some of the Council’s day-to-day online services.
While so far no evidence of data being stolen was found, the Council admitted that “until forensic examination of the affected servers is complete, we will continue to work on the presumption that data may have been lost – and that this may include customer data.”
However, no council financial systems were affected in the attack, and no payment or bank account details processed by these systems were compromised.
The Council is continuing its investigation into the cyber incident, working with Police Scotland, the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre, and the National Cyber Security Centre.
In their work to recover affected services, the Council have so far restored public Freedom of Information requests as well as pension services.
“We are sorry that this incident will have caused real anxiety to people who have used our online services – and frustration for those unable to access those services now,” the Council said in a statement.
The Council did warn constituents that “If you are contacted by someone claiming to have your data, you should contact Police Scotland on 101.”
As the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) increases, the strain on cloud infrastructure is becoming impossible to ignore.
According to a recent survey, 9 out of 10 IT leaders report having to make difficult trade-offs to support and maintain the use of AI in the cloud, often having to compromise balancing performance, cost, sustainability and compliance.
The key question for organisations is: how can they embrace AI innovation without undermining their environmental commitments and meeting regulatory demands?
The environmental trade-off of AI innovation
AI is revolutionising how businesses operate, driving smarter decisions, automating complex tasks and unlocking new efficiencies. Yet, behind the promise of AI lies a growing environmental cost.
The energy required to train and run large-scale models is extensive, posing a direct challenge to corporate sustainability goals. In fact, a single public data centre can consume as much electricity as 50,000 homes. As organisations race to integrate AI into their operations, they must also confront the carbon footprint that comes with it.
GreenOps: A step towards sustainable AI
To address the environmental impact of cloud-based AI, organisations have started to embrace GreenOps, a practice focused on reducing the carbon footprint of cloud operations through smarter resource management. This approach is gaining momentum, especially as regulatory frameworks like the European Sustainability Reporting Standards and Germany’s Energy Efficiency Act push for greater accountability and measurable progress regarding emission reductions.
Despite its promise, GreenOps faces a fundamental limitation: the lack of consistent, standardised sustainability metrics. Without a unified framework for measuring environmental impact, efforts to reduce carbon emissions in cloud operations remain fragmented. Key contributors such as global network infrastructure and undersea cables often go unmeasured, making it impossible for organisations to make informed decisions that balance cost, performance and sustainability.
GreenOps can only reach its full potential when supported by standardised sustainability metrics. The only way that these metrics can exist? – If AI reaches a level where it can provide predictive insights based on real-time data collected from sensor networks in data centres and infrastructures.
This evolution isn’t just about enhancing ESG reporting; it’s about making sure the growth of cloud computing is grounded in responsibility and transparency. To make GreenOps a reality, the industry must come together to define and adopt shared standards, laying the groundwork for a more accountable and environmentally conscious digital future.
Data sovereignty in a fragmented AI landscape
Organisations who aspire to build more sustainable AI strategies must also confront the challenge of data sovereignty. With the use of AI becoming more distributed and data-intensive, the question of where data is stored – and who has jurisdiction over it – has become a strategic concern.
Recent research among UK IT leaders shows a clear shift in mindset. Over 60% now view data sovereignty as a top organisational priority. This reflects the growing concern over the legal and operational risks associated with cross-border data movement, especially when dealing with sensitive or regulated information.
Although global AI platforms offer scalability and rapid deployment, they can also introduce significant compliance risks. From the EU’s GDPR to the US CLOUD Act, as well as a growing number of established national data localisation laws, the global regulatory environment is becoming increasingly fragmented.
This patchwork of legal frameworks creates a regulatory minefield which reduces innovation, leads to increased compliance costs and exposes businesses to legal uncertainty. To remain competitive and resilient, organisations must maintain control over where data is stored and processed to stay agile in the face of evolving regulatory demands.
As AI becomes more deeply embedded in enterprise operations, organisations must rethink how they design and manage the infrastructure that supports it. Striking the right balance between innovation, sustainability and sovereignty requires a strategic approach built on three key pillars:
1. Energy-efficient infrastructure design
With the right workload orchestration, AI workloads can be intelligently allocated to the most energy-efficient environments. Using real-time monitoring and predictive analytics enhances efficiency, minimises energy waste, reduces operational costs and aligns with broader sustainability objectives.
2. Localise data processing
By processing data at the edge or within regional data centres, organisations can cut down energy-intensive data transfers. This approach not only supports compliance with data residency regulations but also optimises performance and reduces latency which is crucial for real-time AI applications in sectors such as healthcare, finance and manufacturing.
3. Embed data sovereignty into AI architecture
Data sovereignty must be considered when designing AI systems. This means embedding sovereignty into the architecture through automated policy enforcement, strong encryption protocols and transparent audit capabilities. These measures ensure compliance with local regulations and reinforce trust with stakeholders.
Building responsible AI – made manageable
As organisations scale their use of AI, aligning innovation with sustainability and data sovereignty doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By deploying a management platform that orchestrates both traditional and AI cloud operations, these goals become achievable and streamlined.
With the right and intelligent orchestration, performance, sustainability, and compliance no longer need to compete – they can work together as integrated pillars of responsible AI progress.
A third of UK businesses have reported revenue losses of up to £4 million annually due to network outages and poor performance, a new IDC InfoBrief commissioned by Expreo found.
With another 18% facing losses exceeding £4 million, these findings highlight the growing impact of network instability on business operations.
Following a wave of high-profile IT disruptions over the past year—including cybersecurity breaches and connectivity failures—50% of UK businesses have urgently re-evaluated their technology infrastructure.
As a result, networking and connectivity have risen sharply on the C-suite agenda, with 40% of businesses now prioritizing investment in these areas over the next 12 months, surpassing even AI, which falls to third place (35%).
The urgency around networks is underscored by the fact that 27% of organisations say inadequate network performance threatens their growth plans, while 49% report network limitations are holding back their ability to support large-scale data and AI initiatives. Yet only 5% feel their networks are fully prepared to support AI without barriers.
Networks are increasingly seen as the bottleneck limiting AI adoption, with scalability, flexibility, and performance cited as critical challenges.
Cybersecurity remains a major concern alongside networking. The report finds that 44% of organisations struggle to recruit or retain cybersecurity professionals, closely followed by a 40% shortage in networking skills. To address this, 40% of UK businesses plan to increase their reliance on external partners such as managed service providers.
Andy Ward SVP International Absolute Security commented: “It’s clear UK businesses are feeling the cost of fragile networks, and while it’s positive to see more investment in cybersecurity, tools alone aren’t enough. Organisations need a cyber resilience strategy built on real-time visibility, proactive threat detection, and self-healing capabilities to maintain continuity in the face of disruption.”
“With rising AI and data demands, security and network performance go hand in hand, and the growing cyber skills gap only makes resilience harder. Investing in both people and technology is key to staying secure and operational. An organisation is only as strong as its weakest link, whether that’s an undertrained employee or an unsecured endpoint.”
Scottish farmers could soon benefit from a two-fold solution to rural connectivity challenges and precision agriculture through the development of 5G-connected robots.
Through portable 5G private networks, the robots will perform precision farming tasks, from assessing soil conditions and crop health, to the targeted application of fertiliser.
Modern agriculture faces critical barriers, from labour shortages to rising costs. The industry also needs to balance increased pressure on food production with environmental regulations and impact. The 5-G robotic systems aim to address these struggles with improved connectivity and more precise resource allocation.
The 5G connection enables the different robotic devices to communicate in real time, sharing information about the soil, crops, and growing conditions, to better enable farmers to make appropriate and informed decisions on resource allocation.
A major win of the project is its ability to breakthrough rural connectivity barriers. Operations relying on real-time data connections often struggle in rural environments, such as agricultural areas, due to a lack of mobile broadband speed and network coverage.
By working with portable 5G private networks, the robots can provide low-latency, high-speed connection that is essential to real-time data sharing.
The robots are also equipped with cameras to stream videos in high definition, which can be used to generate accurate field maps. Visual recognition systems are also currently under development which could have the potential to stop disease, infections, and even dehydration in plants faster than traditional methods.
Previously, farmers would have relied on expensive, specialised equipment and perfect weather conditions to gather the same information.
Advancing agricultural technologies is becoming more essential, as farmers are tasked with a food production demand expected to increase by over 50% by 2050, while balancing environmental and sustainability concerns.
The £22 billion Scottish agricultural sector is therefore positioned with this partnership to lead in and benefit from the global push for more precision farming tools that are practical and address real-world problems.
“What’s exciting about this project is seeing the technology develop from initial concept to working demonstration,” Ruth Plant, project manager at The National Robotarium, said.
“We’ve successfully shown that portable 5G networks can provide the connectivity needed for real-time robotic operations in agricultural settings. The integration of these technologies creates opportunities for precision farming that weren’t previously possible in areas with limited connectivity.
“This partnership demonstrates exactly what the National Robotarium was designed to achieve – bringing together leading academic research, innovative companies, and industry expertise to develop practical solutions to real-world challenges.
“Our facility provides the collaborative environment where these breakthrough technologies can be developed, tested, and demonstrated to the partners and stakeholders who can help bring them to market.”
Meta has issued a statement against the European Commission’s ruling regarding the legality of its pay-or-consent model under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The company said in a post that the EU’s decision was “incorrect and unlawful”, intending to appeal it.
“Meta is the only company in Europe unable to offer both a subscription-based and a free ad-supported service,” Meta said. “Instead, Meta is required to offer a free, reduced-ad service – less personalised ads – that leads to poorer outcomes for users, advertisers and platforms.”
In reality, Meta’s model for Facebook would require users to pay a subscription to stop Meta from using their personal data to sell to advertisers for personalised ads. Under the DMA, Meta could still run advertisements, or offer an ad-free service, but that is not what the pay-or-consent model does. Users are not just consenting to ads, they are opted to give up their personal data to data brokers and advertisers for targeted ads, or pay a price to avoid any ads at all.
The EU Commission did not approve of this system under the DMA, and issued Meta a €200 million fine in April.
Meta said “The decision mandates the Meta must offer a less personalised ads service for free, disregarding cost, impact, or effectiveness, and imposes a potentially unviable business model.”
“This overlooks the commercial reality that, in a market economy, Meta deserves fair compensation for the valuable and innovative services that users choose to use – a principle essential to sustaining innovation and economic growth,” Meta argued.
Users typically use Meta’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, to connect with other users or view content, not typically to view targeted ads from third parties.
Meta also sites a 2023 ruling by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice which did say that users can be charged “a fee if appropriate” to opt out of their personal data being used for some of Meta’s operations, but the ruling also said that these uses must be legitimate.
However, Meta does admit that this ruling came before Article 5 of the DMA was introduced, which has explicit restrictions for ‘gatekeepers’ when it comes to data processing for advertisers, of which Meta is categorised.
Meta may be fined up to 5% of its revenue daily if the European Commission continues to find it in breach of the DMA ruling, the EU Commission warned.
The tech giant did issue marginal changes to its pay-or-consent model after the EU’s initial ruling, but the EU was still investigating if these changes would clear Meta when the tech giant announced its intention to appeal the decision.
Conscious or unconscious bias as well as structural barriers are holding tech diversity back, new research from the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology reveals.
Despite being a growing, dynamic industry in the UK, tech continues to struggle with diversity, inclusion, and skills gaps in a rapidly changing technical landscape and an evolving global ethos.
While recruitment along entry-level positions has been more diverse, this tends to dissipate when it comes to mid-career and leadership levels, the research shows.
The UK government report cited a Kapor Center study which found that the most frequently cited reason for US tech workers exiting the industry was unfair treatment (37%). This was more commonly cited by men of colour, women of all backgrounds, and the LGBT community, the study found.
Gender
Gender diversity in the UK tech sector remains low, as women comprise only 21% of the tech industry. In some subsects of tech, this is even mor stark – 21% of data centres, for instance, have no women operating in a technical function at all.
The UK government cited a Fawcett Society 2023 report that found a fifth of men in tech believe women to be innately less suited for tech roles. Additionally, a ‘tech bro’ culture was sited, which creates a more exclusionary culture, and perpetuates stereotypes.
Coupling this with structural barriers, such as a lack of workplace flexibility, were sited as leading to higher attrition rates among women, caregivers, and those requiring adaptations in their work structure.
However, these commonly cited contributors to a lack of gender diversity in tech often ring flat. If just over 50% of UK doctors are women, why are women leaving tech over a lack of flexible work when more tech roles offer work from home options than the medical field? A 2021 UK-wide study of women doctors found that 91% reported sexism at work, but despite this, they now make up a majority of the sector.
In the UK, only 21% of IT specialists identify as Black, Asian, or as an other ethnic minority, where as the workforce as a whole reported at 15%. At the senior level, this drops to just 10%.
Industry reports also show that BAME individuals were more likely to work in non-permanent roles than their white counterparts, which could also contribute to a lack of retention.
Unemployment rates among BAME IT specialists was also more than three times higher than that of their white counterparts, and made up 44% of all unemployed IT specialists in 2023.
While efforts to improve ethnic diversity among all companies increased due to pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement, as governments shifted and priorities changed, more and more tech companies dissolved their Diversity, Ethnic, and Inclusion initiatives either to cut costs or appease conservative leaders.
While disability representation in the tech sector has grown, reaching 14%, disclosure remains and issue as people doubt the supportiveness of their environments. The same rings true for Neurodivergent people, as only 25% of neurodiverse tech workers thing their company celebrates neurodiversity.
With limited tracking on disabled and neurodivergent people in the tech industry, is it difficult to track progress, the report admitted.
LBTQI+
Representation remains “limited” for LGBTQI+ people in the tech industry, the report said. DSIT cited a fear of harassment and discrimination contributing to lower disclosure rates. The UK Supreme Court’s decision to discern people’s gender by biological sex assigned at birth may also be contributing to an overarching fear among the transgender community in the UK, which could affect reporting figures.
“While the UK tech industry has progressed, a more strategic and unified approach is required to dismantle deeply embedded barriers to inclusion,” the report said.
“Through accountability, structural change, and a commitment to fostering a genuinely inclusive culture, the tech industry can not only enhance diversity but also foster innovation, ensuring that the UK remains competitive in the global tech landscape.”
Plans for a national hub for the development of advanced semiconductor packaging are now underway, following the announcement of a £160 million investment from the UK Government in Glasgow City Region Innovation Zone (GCRIZ) projects.
Led by the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS), the new centre will form part of the University of Strathclyde’s Advanced Net Zero Innovation Centre (ANZIC) in Renfrewshire.
It will support UK and international customers with lab-to-scale packaging of semiconductor components for critical applications.
The National Advanced Semiconductor Packaging and Integration Centre (NASPIC) builds on a previous £8 million grant from Innovate UK for advanced packaging in power electronics.
It responds to the accelerating need for semiconductor innovation to support next-generation technologies, from AI to photonics, as packaging capabilities struggle to keep pace with demand.
“The development of the National Advanced Semiconductor Packaging and Integration Centre reflects Strathclyde’s scientific and technological strengths and our longstanding commitment to industrial innovation and research that delivers real-world impact,” Professor sir Jim McDonald, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Strathclyde and chair of the NMIS board.
“This is a strategically important capability for the UK, enhancing our competitiveness, strengthening supply chains, and opening up new opportunities in high-growth sectors such as AI, quantum, and photonics.
“Through NMIS and our close collaboration with government and industry, we are helping to build the skills, infrastructure, and expertise required to secure the UK’s future as a global leader in advanced manufacturing.”
As the world embraces transformative technologies such as AI, quantum computing, photonics, and integrated sensing, the demand for semiconductors, and the advanced packaging they require, is growing rapidly.
A potential £29 million investment from GCRIZ will fund new facilities to deliver complex, high-value solutions that are in short supply.
Today, many wafer manufacturers are forced to offshore semiconductor packaging, resulting in long lead times and limited supply chain resilience.
In a first for Europe, the new facility will enable faster development of semiconductor devices, reducing packaging lead times from months to days, while keeping production within the UK and helping to mitigate geopolitical risk.
State-of-the-art equipment will allow partners to prepare and dice wafers, mount and connect devices, conduct testing, and seal devices in the final package.
The investment will also see the current cleanroom double in size, enabling further research and scale-up in critical areas such as AI, quantum computing, photonics, and advanced Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductors (CMOS), adding to NMIS’s existing capability in power electronics.
The centre is expected to create 300 new jobs and unlock an estimated £800 million in additional revenue for UK and international businesses.
“We are building a world-class capability here in Glasgow, positioning the region at the forefront of advanced semiconductor development,” Professor Matt Boyle, director of electrification at NMIS, said.
“Our ambition is to serve the global market for semiconductor packaging. As part of this, we also intend to develop skills programmes that will fuel the sector’s expansion both locally and nationally.
“This latest funding boost underlines NMIS’s commitment to becoming a world-leading centre for advanced manufacturing in these critical technologies. NASPIC will support companies looking to bring manufacturing in-house and reduce their reliance on overseas supply chains. With access to the broader expertise at the University of Strathclyde, the centre will offer a wafer-to-systems integration capability.
“There is no other facility in the UK that offers the level of support and access to technology we are planning. This new national resource will be key to enhancing the UK’s position in a growing global market, nurturing businesses and enabling them to scale.
“This is a very exciting moment. Scotland has long been at the forefront of semiconductor innovation. Now, with fresh momentum and investment, we have the opportunity to put Scotland back on the global map for advanced packaging, underpinned by targeted skills development.”
Tech giant Microsoft is laying off 9,000 workers in the company’s latest round of mass job cuts amounting to 4% of its global workforce.
This is the company’s largest round of job cuts since 2023, though Microsoft has continually cut workers throughout 2024, and even had a round of cuts in earlier in 2025. In May, the company laid off around 6,000 workers.
While exact details are still emerging regarding which departments will be most hard hit by the current cuts, Bloomberg reported in June that sales would be targeted.
On the other hand, staff at Xbox are expected to be impacted, according to Windows Central. Reuters confirmed that Microsoft’s gaming division will be impacted by the cuts, though it is uncertain to what degree.
As Microsoft invests heavily in AI – the tech giant pledged $80bn to AI in the 2025 fiscal year – it said it plans on streamlining its organisation, trimming it managerial roles in an effort to optimise its procedures and products.
Its AI investments also includes funding for data centres to train its models, though the tech giant has faced challenges in marketing its own AI assistant, Copilot, which competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Despite being a major shareholder and investor in OpenAI, tension continues to mount in the upper echelons of frontier AI.
Meta has reportedly been poaching AI talent from top companies in an effort to bolster its own efforts, and Amazon’s head Andy Jassy has said that he expects AI to directly replace some roles at his company.
The most recent round of tech layoffs appears to be continually driven by hefty AI investment, which requires its own intensive energy, infrastructure, and talent before companies can begin to see a solid return on investment.
Professor Calum Semple OBE has been appointed the Scottish Government’s next Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA), who will take up the position on the 5th of August on an initial three-year term.
Professor Semple is a Consultant in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and became Professor of Outbreak Medicine and Child Health at the University of Liverpool in 2018.
He has held key advisory roles during public health emergencies, serving as a UK Government adviser during the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic, on the World Health Organisation Scientific Advisory Committee during the Ebola Emergency and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies during the Covid pandemic.
The role of CSA includes providing Scottish Government Ministers independent scientific advice on issues of strategic importance, as well as championing Scotland’s science and research base and the role of science in the economy and society.
The CSA will also inspire the next generation of scientists and encourage diversity in the STEM workforce.
“Science is the bedrock of our society and economy and at the heart of government decision making. From health to the economy to the environment and everything in between, it is a fundamental part of our everyday lives,” business minister Richard Lochhead said.
“I am delighted to welcome Professor Semple to the role of Chief Scientific Adviser and look forward to his valuable insight and advice as the Scottish Government continues to work with our world leading science sector to highlight Scotland’s strengths as a science nation and ensure it is front and centre of everything we do.”
Professor Semple said: “I am thrilled to have this opportunity to work for the people and government of Scotland, providing evidence and scientific advice to support our policymakers.
“I particularly look forward to collaborating with Scotland’s vibrant communities of scientists and engineers in our schools, universities and industries, who inspire and drive the innovation essential for future economic growth. I will ensure that science and evidence remain at the heart of how we shape a fairer, greener, and more prosperous Scotland.
“I would like to thank my wife, friends, and colleagues at the University of Liverpool and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital who support my career and enabled this important appointment. Their encouragement and collaboration have been vital to my journey.”
The past five years have seen Google’s data centre electricity consumption increase by 124.9%, with carbon emissions increasing 51% in the same time span.
From 2023 to 2024 alone, Google’s data centres consumed 27% more electricity, though it saw carbon emissions from this sector drop 12%. This is according to Google’s 2025 Environmental Report, which is a self-reported effort towards transparency from the tech giant.
The report shows that Google’s data centres use 84% less energy than the industry average, despite this figure still increasing year-over-year.
The AI boom has certainly contributed to the boom in electricity consumption in data centres across the globe, with alarm bells ringing about what this will mean concerning greenhouse gas emissions and climate devastation.
Figures show that AI will drive energy consumption even further, with the tech set to consume the same amount of energy as Japan – a population of around 124.5 million – by 2030.
Emissions from AI companies are up by 150% since 2020, research from the UN showed. While Google says it drove emissions down, it does not necessarily makes its 27% jump in electricity consumption sustainable.
The reduction in emissions pairing with this energy consumption is an important figure to note – Google says they have achieved this 12% year-on-year reduction by opting for more clean energy sources and improving the efficiency of their data centres.
Google measured its own data centres’ Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which dropped to 1.09 in 2024, close to the ideal level of 1. These results, which were independently audited by Earnest and Young, indicate that the energy efficiency of Google’s data centres is improving dramatically.
The company also credited its 25 clean energy products as contributing to its emissions reductions.
Interesting, when Google breaks down their own data, it does show AI contributing to a bump emissions.
While scope 1 emissions, which involve direct emissions from Google-owned buildings and vehicles, decreased by 8%, and scope 2 emissions, which revolve around purchased energy for data centres and buildings, dropped by 11% year-on-year, supply chain energy emissions showed a different story.
Scope 3 energy emissions, which are classified as indirect emissions from other sources in the supply chain such as manufacturing and transportation, increased by 22% year-on-year. Google says this was largely driven by increased data centre capacity, manufacturing requirements for AI, construction, and logistics.
So, when considering the vast supply chain involved in Google’s AI and data centre advancement, Google did not reduce its emissions year on year. In reality, emissions saw a net increase of 3% when considering the supply chain.
While Google reduced direct operational emissions from data centres by 11% year-on-year, data centres were a top contributor to Scope 3 emissions.
Emissions from data centre construction increased by 54% year-on-year, while upstream emissions from the manufacturing and assembly of the technical material for data centres, like servers, rose by 38%. Transportation involved in these data centre projects also jumped 49.7%.
The UK government has launched a new NHS ‘innovator passport’ in a bid to accelerate access to new technology across different NHS organisations and boards.
The new passport will be introduced over the next two years, and will allow new technology that has been robustly assessed by one NHS organisation to be easily rolled out to others.
With the innovator passport, organisations will be able to join up with the NHS more quickly to push through tested technology across different NHS boards.
The passport converts the NHS system into a ‘one-stop-shop’ – as a thorough check from the NHS will now allow businesses to get to work as quickly as possible and deliver on what matters most to patients across the country.
The UK government says that this will mean more effective treatments and faster support for NHS patients as the NHS will make the most of its finite assessment resource, all while businesses are given a boost through the government’s industrial strategy.
Treatments including special wound dressings—already reducing surgical site infections by 38% at Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals—could be adopted more widely, benefiting patients across the country.
The new passport will eliminate multiple compliance assessments, reducing duplication across the health service. It will be delivered through MedTech Compass, a digital platform developed by DHSC to make effective technologies more visible and widely available.
“For too long, Britain’s leading scientific minds have been held back by needless admin that means suppliers are repeatedly asked for the same data in different formats by different trusts – this is bad for the NHS, patients and bad for business,” Wes Streeting, secretary of state for health and social care, said.
“These innovator passports will save time and reduce duplication, meaning our life sciences sector – a central part of our 10 Year Health Plan – can work hand in hand with the health service and make Britain a powerhouse for medical technology.
“Frustrated patients will no longer have to face a postcode lottery for lifesaving products to be introduced in their area and companies will be able to get their technology used across the NHS more easily, creating a health service fit for future under the Plan for Change.”
It also forms an important element of the industrial strategy through the upcoming Life Sciences Sector Plan, which will turbocharge Britain’s life sciences sector and cement the UK’s position as a global innovation leader.
MedTech Compass helps speed up decision-making in trusts, allowing technology to scale faster – making it easier for trusts across the country to find, assess, and adopt proven technologies that improve and speed up patient care.
The passports mean that once a healthcare tool has been assessed by one NHS organisation, further NHS organisations will not be able to insist on repeated assessments.
The digital system will act as a dynamic best buyer’s guide, making it easier for trusts to compare products side-by-side in one place.
Scottish shoppers are being urged to stay alert ahead of Amazon Prime Day as fraudsters use artificial intelligence to craft increasingly convincing scams.
Advice Direct Scotland, which runs the national consumer advice service consumeradvice.scot, says criminals are exploiting AI to create realistic phishing emails and automated calls that make it harder to spot fraud.
With Amazon Prime Day running from Tuesday, July 8, to Friday, July 11, the charity warns scammers will target bargain hunters looking for deals during the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
Its advisers have recently handled cases including fake messages about Prime membership renewals, bogus refund offers, and calls claiming Amazon accounts have been hacked.
The warning comes after Advice Direct Scotland revealed that Scots have lost at least £860,000 to cyber criminals in the past year amid a tenfold surge in online scams.
Scammers often claim shoppers have ordered expensive items like iPhones and demand personal or banking details to cancel payments.
Others use robocalls warning that Prime membership will renew at a discounted rate unless a button is pressed immediately. This tactic is designed to panic people into handing over sensitive information.
Fraudsters also try to trick people into downloading software that gives them remote access to devices, exposing bank details.
Advice Direct Scotland stresses that Amazon will never call to ask for remote access or to install apps.
If you receive suspicious calls, texts, or emails asking for personal information or payments, do not respond.
The charity advises people to stay vigilant and, if a call appears suspicious or raises concern, to hang up immediately and contact your bank or card issuer directly.
Scots are also being urged to avoid impulse buying and check prices to make sure they are getting good value.
Consumers should be aware of Amazon’s guidance on returning faulty goods and claiming refunds to protect themselves if a purchase goes wrong.
Free and impartial advice is available across Scotland from Advice Direct Scotland’s consumeradvice.scot service.
Help can be accessed by freephone on 0808 164 6000 or online via web chat and email at www.consumeradvice.scot.
The ScamWatch Quick Reporting Tool is also available to report suspected scams at www.scamwatch.scot.
“With households across Scotland still facing huge financial pressures because of the cost of living and energy crises, it is understandable that people will be hunting for genuine Prime Day deals,” Hazel Knowles, senior project lead for Advice Direct Scotland, said.
“But criminals are also looking for opportunities and now they have AI to help them sound more believable than ever.
“It can be easy to get caught out, especially if a call or email seems urgent and official. But the best advice is to take a moment, trust your instincts, and check before you buy or click.
“Amazon will never ask for remote access to your device or for payment details over the phone or email. If something feels suspicious, it probably is, and our expert team is here to help if you are unsure.
“Anyone who is caught out by a scam or spots a suspected scam should report it using our free ScamWatch tool at www.scamwatch.scot.”
Figures published by Advice Direct Scotland in June show digital scams have surged by over 1,000 per cent since 2021, with reported losses totalling £861,384 in the past year.
Cases include romance scams, cryptocurrency fraud, phishing emails with fake deals, and false social media adverts pressuring victims to hand over money, bank details or personal information.
Advice Direct Scotland has issued tips for staying safe this Prime Day, including:
Never share your Amazon password with anyone
Be wary of unexpected emails, calls, or texts about your account
Always check purchases directly on Amazon’s website or app — don’t click suspicious links
Amazon will never ask you to install software
Enable two-step verification for extra security
Keep your device and apps updated
Compare prices to make sure a deal really is a bargain
Only buy what you need — don’t get caught out by flashy offers
Eighty percent of enterprises software and applications will be multimodal by 2030, up from less than 10% in 2024, according to Gartner, Inc.
“The shift to multimodal enterprise software is a fundamental transformation in business operations and innovation,” said Roberta Cozza, senior director analyst at Gartner.
“Multimodal generative AI (GenAI) will revolutioniaw enterprise applications by adding previously unattainable features and functionalities, impacting sectors like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. By enhancing domain-specific language models, it will improve accuracy, automate operations, and drive contextual decision intelligence, enabling AI to take proactive actions across tasks.”
Product leaders will have to make critical decisions on investing in these emerging GenAI technologies to enable customers to reach new heights of value in their business, Gartner said.
The analysis firm predicts that multimodal genAI models will create a mass impact within one to thee years, as generative AI expands and multimodal capabilities hit more of the mainstream.
Multimodal GenAI provides the ability to use multiple types of data inputs and outputs, such as images, videos, audio (speech), text and numerical data, within a single generative model.
Multimodality augments the usability of GenAI by allowing models to interact with and create outputs across data in various modalities.
Today, many multimodal models offer processing across two or three modalities, such as text-to-video or speech-to-image. This will increase over the next few years to include more diverse and new modalities, Gartner predicts.
“Enterprises should focus on integrating multimodal capabilities into their software to enhance user experiences and operational efficiency. By leveraging the diverse data inputs and outputs that multimodal GenAI offers, businesses can unlock new levels of productivity and innovation,” said Cozza.
Australian airline Qantas faced a data breach that potentially exposed the personal information of six million customers after it detected “unusual activity” on a system used by its contact centre.
Once detected, Qantas said it took “immediate steps” to contain the affected system. It has assured customers that the “system is now contained.”
A third-party platform used by the airline company’s call centre was affected, but Qantas says that all of its systems remain secure.
“The incident occurred when a cyber criminal targeted a call centre and gained access to a third-party customer servicing platform,” Qantas said in a statement.
A proportion of data has been stolen, Qantas confirms, including names, email addresses, and phone numbers of customers.
Qantas is continuing its investigation into the extent of the data breach, but expects it to be “significant.”
Payment, password, and passport details, as well as frequent flyer numbers, were not contained on the compromised system.
The company’s other platforms have not faced interruptions and those flying with Qantas can still access flight details via the company’s app or websites.
Qantas is contacting effected customers, and is working with government agencies and cybersecurity experts to support their investigation.
Customers concerned about their data can call a dedicated helpline, Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson informed customers.
“We sincerely apologise to our customers and we recognise the uncertainty this will cause,” she said.
The data breach comes just days after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning about alleged action from infamous ransomware group Scattered Spider targeting the aviation industry, though recent attacks have been contained to North American firms.
Hawaiian Airlines, based in the US, and WestJet, based in Canada, faced cyber-attacks in the past two weeks, with similar patterns.
Google Cloud Mandiant also issued a warning about Scattered Spider targeting the aviation industry, with both the FBI and the security firm pointing to contact centres and third parties as particular vulnerabilities.
While these cyber incidents have yet to be officially affiliated with any cyber group or threat actor, patterns point to Scattered Spider.
The prolific ransomware group which targeted UK retail giants including M&S and Co-op earlier this year, is known to use social engineering techniques, often targeting third-parties and contact centres. The gang, mainly made of young, native-English speakers, is also known to target various companies in the same industry over a number of weeks.
“While investigations continue, some indicators suggest this incident may align with recent FBI warnings about the Scattered Spider group, known for targeting SaaS platforms and cloud environments through social engineering and extortion attacks,” Darren Argyle, former groups CISO for Qantas, said in a LinkedIn post.
“No organisation is immune from the evolving threat landscape, particularly when sophisticated groups like Scattered Spider target critical industries.”
These attacks may also be strategically timed to lessen trust in airline system security during the busy summer travel season.
Software engineering leaders must capitalise on these trends to accelerate innovation with AI and implement future-ready engineering practices, according to Gartner, Inc.
The analysis firm announced the top strategic trends in software engineering for 2025 and beyond, which can enable organisations to accelerate innovation through AI-driven automation and adopt efficient, future-ready engineering practices
“AI-enabled tools and technologies are fundamentally changing how software is built and delivered,” said Joachim Herschmann, VP analyst at Gartner.
“Gartner’s top trends offer leaders a roadmap to harness AI-driven automation, optimise talent strategies and adopt sustainable, AI-native engineering practices. Software engineering leaders who act on these trends now will position their organisations for long-term success.”
As organisations develop their strategic roadmap for 2025 and beyond, they must prioritise investments that align with six strategic trends in software engineering, Gartner suggests.
AI-Native Software Engineering
AI-native software engineering is transforming the software development life cycle (SDLC) by embedding AI into every phase, from design to deployment. These practices enable AI to autonomously or semi-autonomously handle a significant share of tasks across SDLC.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants, up from less than 14% in early 2024. The role of developers will shift from implementation to orchestration, focusing on problem solving and system design, and ensuring AI tools deliver high-quality outcomes. To succeed, teams must balance automation with human oversight, considering business criticality, risk and workflow complexity.
Building LLM-Based Applications and Agents
Large language models (LLMs) are transforming software engineering by enabling applications to interact intelligently and autonomously, similar to human interactions. Gartner predicts that by 2027, at least 55% of software engineering teams will be actively building LLM-based features.
“Successfully building LLM-based applications and agents requires software engineering leaders to rethink their strategies,” said Herschmann. “This means investing in upskilling, experimenting with generative AI (GenAI) outputs and implementing strong guardrails to manage risks.”
GenAI Platform Engineering
GenAI platform engineering leverages established platform engineering approaches to help developers easily discover, integrate and securely use GenAI capabilities within their applications. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 70% of organisations with platform teams will include GenAI capabilities in their internal developer platforms.
By making AI capabilities easily discoverable through self-service developer portals, prioritsing features based on developer needs and embedding robust governance and security practices, leaders can ensure their teams build innovative applications that comply with organisational standards.
Maximising Talent Density
Talent density—the concentration of highly skilled professionals within teams—has become a key differentiator for high-performing engineering organisations. When supported by the right culture and technology strategies, talent-dense teams can operate with greater efficiency and adaptability, delivering increased customer value.
“To remain competitive, organisations must move beyond traditional hiring practices and focus on building teams with high talent density,” said Herschmann. “Leaders should cultivate a culture of continuous learning and collaboration to attract and retain skilled professionals who can adapt and grow with evolving business needs.”
Open GenAI models are reshaping the enterprise AI landscape by offering greater flexibility, lower costs and freedom from vendor lock-in.
Unlike proprietary models, open GenAI models enable organisations to customise, fine-tune and deploy AI solutions tailored to their specific needs, whether on-premises or on-cloud. This shift is making advanced AI capabilities more accessible and cost-effective for a wider range of teams and use cases.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 30% of total global enterprise spend on GenAI technologies will be on open GenAI models tuned for domain-specific use cases.
Green Software Engineering
Green software engineering is the discipline of building sustainable software that is carbon-efficient and carbon-aware. This approach shifts the mindset from treating the environmental impact of software as an afterthought to incorporating green practices from the start, in every stage from planning to production.
“As organisations build and buy more software as part of digital initiatives, the increase in carbon footprint from compute-intensive workloads can be at odds with their sustainability targets,” said Herschmann. “Building intelligent applications with GenAI is energy intensive, making green software engineering practices essential.”
The International Criminal Court disclosed that it had detected a “new, sophisticated and targeted cybersecurity incident” which has since been contained.
The ICC is an intergovernmental organisation that handles international crimes such as genocide and war crimes, based in the Netherlands, and faced the incident last week.
The incident was “swiftly” dealt with and contained through the Court’s alert and response mechanisms. The Court is also carrying out steps to mitigate affects of the incident, and is conducting a Court-wide impact analysis.
The Court is calling for “continued support” in the face of the incident.
“Such support ensures the Court’s capacity to implement its critical mandate of justice and accountability, which is a shared responsibility of all States Parties,” the ICC said.
The ICC also said that the new incident was “the second of this type” the court faced, alluding to a cybersecurity incident that took place in 2023.
In this instance, the ICC confirmed that the “targeted and sophisticated attack” had the “objective of espionage.” The ICC has yet to make the same claim about the recent cyber incident that took place last week.
The 2023 incident still has yet to be attributed to any group or nation.
The ICC’s high international profile does make it an obvious target for the several nations and leaders facing investigations or convictions.
Among these include an ongoing investigation into Russia over alleged war crimes in its continued invasion of Ukraine, an arrest warrant against President Vladimir Putin, as well as an arrest warrant for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of its investigations into Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The ICC is also investigation several other nations and leaders across the globe, and dealing with allegations of war crimes. It amasses a high volume of sensitive data, making it a prime target for nation-state threat actors and ransomware gangs alike.
Thirteen companies will start preparing their products and solutions to public sector challenges for market following the conclusion of this year’s Scottish Government’s CivTech programme.
Having delivered successful pitches at the end of the year-long programme, the companies have now entered the pre-commercialisation stage. They have the opportunity to access up to £7 million in funding to further develop their products and solutions for the public sector, which range from reducing teacher workload to improving firefighter safety.
Since the programme began in 2016, around 100 businesses have progressed through CivTech, with just over £25 million of public sector funding leveraging a further £125 million of private funding.
Many are already driving enhancements across the public sector. CivTech 4 participant Tape4Trees has delivered a revolutionary tree germination and planting system which is saving Forestry and Land Scotland millions of pounds a year while CivTech 9 business Netcompany is developing an innovative digital communication channel which, when fully operational, could save the public sector an estimated £100 million per year.
More start-ups than ever before applied to take part in CivTech 10, which invited business solutions to 12 public sector challenges. Two specific challenges aimed at harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) were included for the first time.
“I want Scotland to be a global digital technology leader. Properly harnessed, we have an opportunity to unlock unprecedented benefits that will have a profound, positive impact on our society and our economy,” business minister Richard Lochhead said.
“CivTech is recognised internationally as the world’s first successful public sector-focused innovation Accelerator, and as a leader in the rapidly expanding GovTech sector – set to be a trillion-dollar worldwide market.
“Through CivTech we are not only driving economic growth and stimulating the high-growth start-up community, but unlocking solutions that are already delivering benefits and millions of pounds of savings across Scotland’s public sector.”
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) sponsored two CivTech 10 challenges and will continue to work alongside companies in the next phase of product development. UK company Rowden is developing software to improve real-time risk monitoring of incidents while FireHazResearch has set up in Scotland to take forward its software identifying and measuring firefighter exposure to contaminants.
“SFRS have found the CivTech programme hugely beneficial in allowing us to consider and begin to develop innovative solutions for two difficult problems we have been facing,” dead of governance, strategy and performance at SFRS Richard Whetton said.
“Both of our challenges are now progressing towards the pre-commercial stage and we are excited to work with our challenge companies to develop minimum viable products intended to enhance firefighter safety and benefit communities of Scotland.
“The CivTech programme team have been exceptional in supporting SFRS to achieve these positive outcomes and we look forward to continuing our work on this innovative programme.”
Scattered Spider appears to have turned its fangs to the aviation sector, as multiple airlines report data breaches, as security experts at Google Mandiant and the FBI point their fingers at the infamous cyber gang.
Scattered Spider made headlines for its prolific attacks against UK retail giants, M&S, Co Op, and Harrods, but now appears to be targeting airlines.
Research from Google Cloud Mandiant suggested that the multiple incidents targeting the airline and transportation sector “resemble the operations of UNC3944 or Scattered Spider,” Charles Carmakal, CTO and board adviser or Google Cloud Mandiant wrote on LinkedIn.
In close conjunction with the report warning and report from Mandiant, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that it “has recently observed the cyber-criminal group Scatted Spider expanding its targeting to include the airline sector,” in a LinkedIn post from 27 June.
The warnings and report comes after several reports of cyber incidents targeting airline companies operating in North America. This includes WestJet Airlines, a Canadian company that responded to a cyber incident on 13 June, and Hawaiian Airlines, that said on 26 June its IT systems had been affected by a cyber event.
Despite these incidents, flight operations were not affected.
It remains uncertain if ransomware was involved in the incidents, or if the incidents are actually linked to Scattered Spider.
The initial linkage to Scattered Spider is not surprising however, as the cyber-gang often targets whole industries at the same time, hence their recent tirade against UK retailers.
The cyber group has been known to be made up of mostly young, native English speakers, relying on social engineering tactics to infiltrate systems.
Both the FBI and Google Cloud Mandiant issued warnings to all organisations, even those outside of targeted industries, to be mindful of social engineering tactics. This was especially emphasised when it comes to IT help desks, where Scattered Spider has been known to attempt breaches or steal credentials.
The FBI also warned that trusted vendors and third parties are also at risk from attacks aimed at the airline industry. ss
In a promising sign of business optimism, almost every region in the UK saw an increase in the number of new businesses launched in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Barclays Regional Investment Map.
The bank identified a total of 213k new incorporations in their Map, which provides insight into UK company funding and growth. Scotland contributed 10,757 to this total, a 22.7% increase from Q4 2024.
Meanwhile, UK high-growth businesses procured £165bn in bank loans and overdrafts between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025 as financial institutions step up to support businesses, according to the analysis from Barclays Eagle Labs, and private company data source Beauhurst.
While the increase in corporations – typically seen in the first quarter of the year – is slightly lower than the 247k registered in Q1 2024, it reflects a similar growth rate to Q1 2023 (220k) and Q1 (210k), showing that early year optimism maintained against an uncertain economic environment.
Equity Investment Dips
Despite the upsurge in new firms, Q1 2025 saw a falling-off in equity investment activity across the UK, with a -7.27% averag decrease in investment value from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025. However, some regions, including Scotland, bucked this trend.
In the first quarter of 2025, Scotland saw £160m in investment, up by 64.8% from Q4 2024.
Wales, Yorkshire, and Humber also saw increases in the amount of equity funding they saw.
New Businesses
All UK regions saw an increase in the number of new businesses in Q1, with the exception of Northern Ireland, which fell slightly, down -2.07%. The largest percentage increase in new incorporations came in the North East, with 5,230 new ventures registered – a 24.40% rise. This was followed by Scotland (+22.70%), Yorkshire and the Humber (+19.70%) and the North West (+19.20%).
London had the largest increase in total company population, up 4.89% (72k), with the Capital’s 1,545,771 corporations making up 28.40 per cent of all UK firms.
A potential reason for London having the highest company population growth, but not the most new businesses, may be driven by lower closure rates and the continued appeal of the region as a base for registered offices.
With the overall number of registered companies up by 221K since Q4, there are now 5.45m companies registered with Companies House.
The majority of UK regions also saw grant funding decline over the quarter, with a 15.40 per cent drop, representing £16.8m less funding across the country than Q4.
Scotland joined this trend, seeing a 63.3% dip in grant funding from the previous quarter, amassing to just £3.27m.
“Q1 often sees a seasonal rise in new businesses opening, fuelled by new year ambitions. Nevertheless, these figures are a positive sign that entrepreneurs continue to have the confidence to take risks and start new ventures in the UK,” Abdul Qureshi, MD, business banking at Barclays, said.
“Whilst our data suggests equity investment and grant funding is declining, Barclays remains open to lending. Through our £22bn Business Prosperity Fund, we can help businesses of all sizes access the finance and expertise to support their prosperity and future growth.”
The UK government is seeking ways to update the nation’s energy grid to keep up with the demands of its AI ambitions.
The AI Energy Council gathered to discuss the future energy needs of the wider AI sector, meeting with Ofgem, the National Energy System Operator, energy providers, and tech companies to discuss how the grid deliver a twenty-fold increase in compute capacity over the next five years.
The meeting was also set to cover which sectors are likely to quickly adopt AI, and how this could drive significant shifts in energy demand. Discussions aimed to focus on what assumptions need to be made to accurately forecast that demand, ensuring the energy system is prepared for AI.
Compute power is a keystone element of AI development – without proper support, AI deployments and advancements will fall flat, and the UK could risk falling behind in the AI race. By increasing the UK’s capacity, it will give scientists and AI companies from across the UK access to the systems they need for their AI systems.
“Giving our researchers and innovators access to the processing power they need will not only maintain our standing as the world’s third-biggest AI power, but put British expertise at the heart of the AI breakthroughs which will improve our lives, modernise our public services, and spark the economic growth which is the cornerstone of our Plan for Change,” secretary of state for science, innovation, and technology, Peter Kyle, said.
“We are clear-eyed though on the need to make sure we can power this golden era for British AI through responsible, sustainable energy sources. Today’s talks will help us drive forward that mission, delivering AI infrastructure which will benefit communities up and down the country for generations to come without ever compromising on our clean energy superpower ambitions.”
Previously, the AI Energy Council met to discuss how the government could support AI development while upholding sustainability commitments.
“We are making the UK a clean energy superpower, building the homegrown energy this country needs to get bills down for good and create new jobs as part of our Plan for Change,” secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Ed Miliband, said.
“Bringing together the biggest players in AI and energy will help us discuss the role AI can play an important role in building a new era of clean electricity for our country, and meeting the power demands of new technology as we build a clean power system for families and businesses.”
UK financial institutions are stepping up their fight against money laundering and fraud, but the threat is evolving fast.
According to BioCatch’s inaugural Dark Economy Survey, 65% of UK fraud and compliance leaders believe criminal enterprises are now more sophisticated at laundering money than the banks trying to catch them.
The report, “Insights into the Invisible: Perspectives on Evolving Fraud and AML Challenges”, draws on responses from 800 financial crime professionals across 17 countries, including the UK, and reveals mounting concern about the Dark Economy—criminal networks that exploit the global financial system to move illicit funds tied to human trafficking, drug crime, and terrorism.
“The Dark Economy is a real phenomenon; it poses a significant threat to banks and their customers,” said Jonathan Frost, Director of Global Advisory for EMEA at BioCatch. “Combatting that threat necessitates that banks embrace behaviour to identify risk.” “However, the fight is far from over; countering organised crime requires that we organise ourselves in a way that enables innovative, real-time collaboration”.
UK financial institutions stand out globally for their investment in behaviour-based detection technologies. Over four in five (84%) respondents say their organisations already use behaviour-based analytics to detect fraud, significantly above the global average (76%).
More than half (57%) expect to increase their technology spend in the next year, with many calling for stronger tools to address the top challenges of data privacy (39%), cybersecurity (36%), and complex regulations (31%).
Despite these investments, nearly half (44%) of UK respondents say their organisations incur annual fraud losses between £8 million and £20 million, notably higher than the global average of 26% for that range. Additionally, 11% of UK respondents cite losses of £20 million to £40 million, while 2% report losses exceeding £40 million. Globally, the most frequent fraud loss bracket is £4 million to £8 million, reported by 27% of respondents.
A staggering 89% of respondents agree that combatting money laundering on a larger scale requires more regulatory intervention, while only 13% say individual bad actors are more likely to perpetrate fraud than criminal groups. According to Nasdaq’s Global Financial Crime Report, $3.1 trillion in illicit funds moved through the world’s financial system in 2023 alone. That estimate might be conservative.
The survey also found that around two thirds (65%) of UK respondents say that criminal groups are more sophisticated than financial institutions when it comes to fraud.
Alarmingly, less than a fifth (19%) of UK professionals report involving law enforcement in over half of suspected cases.
Less than half (46%) of UK respondents share intelligence with other banks weekly but barriers remain in privacy rules (28%), data breach concerns (25%), and risk of information misuse (25%).
About three quarters (77%) of respondents believe global banks are winning the fight against financial crime, but only 55% feel their organisations is making an impact.
The research also found that only 18% of global respondents feel confident in identifying money mule accounts.
Overall, 84% of all respondents say tackling the Dark Economy is critical to financial crime prevention.
Developers are dissatisfied and embarrassed about the poor states of the tech stacks they work with, according to research from Storyblok.
Th CMS firm surveyed 200 senior developers at medium-large businesses on a range of issues including the performance of their tech stack, hurdles they face in their day-to-day work, and the actions businesses could take to retain their services.
An overwhelming number of participants said their tech stack is negatively impacting their job, 47.5% say it made them consider quitting in the past year.
One in three (31%) said they regularly thought about quitting in the past month.
When asked what made them most unhappy in their day-to-day jobs, the chief culprit was fixing bugs and maintaining legacy systems (27.5%), followed by dealing with stakeholders who do not understand technical limitations (21.5%), and a lack of clear requirements as well as constantly shifting priorities (14%).
Delving into issues around tech stacks, developers said the main problem is a lack of key functionality (51%), 47% said its the difficulty of maintaining it, and one in three (31%) said it’s an absence of compatibility with the latest innovations, such as AI.
Developers were also asked if there are any aspects of their tech stack that they found embarrassing – 24.5% said it was the use of legacy systems, followed by excessive technical debt and workarounds (22.5%), and outdated frameworks and libraries (18%). Only 14% of respondents said they are not embarrassed by their tech stack.
The influence of tech stacks on developer job satisfaction was further illustrated when Storyblok asked how directly it tied to their professional identities – 74% said it was a ‘significant’ influence, with 19.5% stating it ‘defined’ them. Only 2.5% said it didn’t matter to them.
To improve tech stacks, developers suggested that companies provide resources and leadership to drive modernisation. 37.5% said that a ‘clear modernisation roadmap with actual resource allocation’ should be a top priority, while an equal percentage prioritise a leadership team that values technical excellence in a tech stack at the same level that they value the features it contains.
Interestingly, when asked how their tech stack compares to their competitors, about half (49.5%) said they were industry leaders and 41.5% said they were ‘on par.’ This means that despite most developers recognising that their tech stack is not fit for purpose, they recognise it as better or in line with the rest of the industry.
Outdated content management systems are a particular focus of developer dissatisfaction with 67.5% saying their company’s CMS is holding them back from doing their best work – with nearly half of those respondents saying it’s a ‘constant’ hindrance to them. 29.5% would replace their CMS with a platform that offered a better developer experience, 23.5% said they would like modern tech stack integration capabilities, 17.5% cited performance and scalability, and 12.5% said functionality such as AI integration is a priority. Only 4% said their CMS was ‘perfect’.
AI is also dominating how developers code – the majority (89.5%) of respondents said they use AI to code frequently or constantly. Ranking the reasons why, the top was ‘increasing efficiency’ at 30%, followed by automating routine tasks (23%), and improving skillset at 22%.
“The message to businesses is clear – outdated tech stacks are making your developers unhappy to the point of quitting,” Alexander Feiglstorfer, CTO and co-founder of Storyblok, said.
“Rectifying this problem means either paying developers more to stay or investing in updating legacy systems. Pay rises are a short-term fix as our research shows how closely developers tie their professional identity and happiness to the quality of the tech stack they use.
“If you want to bring joy back into your development team, and consequently improve performance and productivity, you need to commit to a modernization roadmap. Not only will this reduce developer team churn, but it will open the door to your business being able to more effectively leverage the latest innovations within AI and composable tech.”
Using large language models like ChatGPT consistently can decrease brain activity and neural connectivity, research from MIT found.
As LLMs become more commonly used, researchers are curious to see how relying on AI can impact brain function and critical thinking.
To test this, researchers at MIT had study participants engage in a series of essay writing tasks, with some relying purely on their brain, some able to use search engines, and some using OpenAI’s LLM ChatGPT.
In the three rounds of essays, researches noticed that LLM users offered ‘low effort’ outputs in the third round, relying almost entirely in a copy-past answer of the ChatGPT answer.
Using electroencephalography (EEG) to record participant’s brain activity, researchers discovered significantly different patterns in neural connectivity and cognitive strategies between the various groups.
Those consistently using LLMs had the weakest level of neural connectivity, as well as the weakest level of neural network engagement. Those that used their brain exhibited better memory recall, as well as visual processing node activations.
LLM users also struggled to report ownership of their essays, with many unable to quote any of the essays they produced just minutes before.
When LLM users were later asked to rely purely on their brain power to produce another essay, “they showed weaker neural connectivity and under-engagement of alpha and beta networks; and the Brain-to-LLM participants demonstrated higher memory recall, and re‑engagement of widespread occipito-parietal and prefrontal nodes, likely supporting the visual processing.”
Though Brain-only participants had a greater cognitive load, they exhibited higher levels of neural connectively and internal content generation, which correlated with stronger memory, greater semantic accuracy, and firmer ownership of written work. This all contributed to deeper learning outcomes.
The search engine groups exhibited potentially the best balance of effort and outcome, as their ability to search for facts enabled them to answer essays with greater accuracy, though still relying on their own creativity and cognition to develop an essay.
While ChatGPT offered greater efficiency, the LLM groups had overall weaker memory traces, reduced levels of self-monitoring, and worse ownership creditability.
While these are just pre-publication results and the study has yet to be peer reviewed, the study exhibits some of educators worst fears when it comes to an over-reliance on AI.
From green steel and recycled plastics to turning waste into new materials and using AI to boost productivity, four hubs funded by UKRI will tackle UK manufacturing challenges.
Backed by £44 million through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), their work will cut carbon, create high-value jobs and boost regional economies.
The new Manufacturing Research Hubs for a Sustainable Future will bring together world-class researchers with over 180 industry and civic partners to drive practical, sustainable innovation across the UK.
The four hubs have attracted a total of £38.8 million in direct and indirect contributions from partners.
Each hub will focus on a critical area of manufacturing, from creating net zero supply chains and resilient production systems to transforming waste and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
Their work will support businesses of all sizes, deliver impact in regional economies and provide workers with new skills in areas including AI, sustainability, and engineering biology.
Carbon-Loop Hub
One of the hubs will be located at The University of Edinburgh. Led by Professor Stephen Wallace, the Carbon-Loop Hub, will develop engineering microbes capable of converting industrial waste into high-value, sustainable chemicals and materials.
The hub will also launch the UK’s first ‘BioFactory’, a national platform for scaling up bioprocessing innovations that cut emissions, reduce landfill, and help build a fossil-free manufacturing base.
Over 45 partners, including UK and global companies from across seven industry sectors are involved in the hub.
EPSRC’s £11 million investment will enable these hubs to work with partners across industry, academia, local government and the public, creating new supply chains, upskilling the UK workforce, and supporting job creation in high-value industrial sectors.
“Amid a growing population, diminishing natural resources, and a changing climate, there is now an urgent environmental, industrial and political imperative to rapidly harness engineering biology technologies to defossilise manufacturing and accelerate the UK’s path to net-zero,” Prof Stephen Wallace said.
“C-Loop brings together diverse expertise from across academic disciplines, industrial sectors, and the entire value-chain to drive the growth and scale-up of this emerging technology, unlocking its full climate and economic potential.”
Swansea University will host the IGNITE Hub, led by Professor Cameron Pleydell-Pearce, which aims to deliver environmental and economic resilience for key areas of the UK manufacturing economy, with an emphasis on green steel production.
The Co-AIMS hub will focus on using regenerative, AI-powered, people-centric manufacturing ecosystems that eliminate waste, empower workers, and enhance autonomy, hosted at the University of Birmingham.
The University of Warwick will host the EPSRC Manufacturing Research Hub in Sustainable Engineering Plastics, collaborating with researchers from The University of Manchester and University College London, to improve the way durable plastics are created, reused, and recycled.
An additional six projects will also be funded to the tune of nearly £7.5m, focusing on the evolution of manufacturing technologies.
Around 13% of the cybersecurity workforce considers themselves neurodivergent, according to a study from ISC2, the cybersecurity training non-profit.
Neurodivergence – when someone’s brain processes, learns, or reacts differently from what is considered ‘neurotypical’ – can be difficult to get a diagnosis for. Ranging from ADHD to Autism, awareness for neurodivergence is expanding, especially in the tech sphere.
While not representing a large proportion in ISC2’s study, participants identifying as neurodivergent hold roles in some specialised areas of cybersecurity at higher rates than ‘neurotypical’ people.
The research found that 6% of neurodivergent respondents work in data protection and privacy, compared to 5% of the overall respondent base. Meanwhile, 5% of neurodivergent participants deal with cyber threat intelligence compared to just 3% of the entire respondent base.
The research found a similar pattern for those working in cryptography and communications security roles – 3% of neurodivergent participants, compared to 2% of all survey participants.
ISC2 also found that fewer neurodivergent people work in secure operations roles compared to the overall average (5% vs 7%), and are less likely to be in cybersecurity management roles (12% vs 14%).
When looking at job satisfaction, we see more of a divergence, however.
Neurodivergent workers expressed lower levels of job satisfaction (60%) compared to those who did not consider themselves neurodivergent (68%), and lower than the overall average (66%).
Neurodivergent people also said they struggle more to be authentic at work, or present as their full self in their jobs (44%), compared to those who are not neurodivergent (31%).
For neurodivergent and neurotypicals, being yourself at work was a major factor in job satisfaction, with satisfaction levels 19% higher for those who felt like they could be themselves at work.
People who considered themselves neurodivergent did however, note positive perceptions of the cybersecurity field. Nearly three in four (73%) neurodivergent respondents agreed that cybersecurity is a well-suited field for them.
Similarly, 68% of neurodivergent people agreed that cybersecurity was welcoming to them. However, non-neurodivergent respondents perceive cybersecurity to be less supportive of neurodivergent people, with less than half (45%) saying it was well suited to neurodivergent workers, and 49% saying it was welcoming.
Overall, 74% said than an inclusive environment is essential for their team to succeed.
ISC2 also provided some recommendations to support neurodiverse staff in cybersecurity.
This includes educating all staff about neurodiversity, offering mentoring and support opportunities, providing flexible work options, and adapting workspaces to sensory needs and assistive technologies.
Facilitating choices when it comes to learning and communication styles can also promote a more inclusive workforce, as well as encouraging open communication around neurodiversity.
AI is now responsible for more than half (51%) of all malicious and spam emails, research from Barracuda found, in a collaborative study with Colombia University and the University of Chicago.
Analysing a dataset of spam emails detected from February 2022 to April 2025, trained detectors from Barracuda determined if malicious or spam emails were made using AI.
From November 2022 to early 2024, the researchers identified a continual increase in the number of spam emails that were generated using AI.
November 2022, of course, was the month that ChatGPT was launched, bringing advanced AI technology to the public’s finger tips, for better or for worse.
Following this, March 2024 saw AI-generated spam emails shoot up, then undulate since July 2024. By April 2025, more than half of all unsolicited emails were AI-generated, the research found.
Business email compromise, however, saw a different, much less dramatic pattern following the advent of ChatGPT.
These emails saw a spike in AI-generation in July 2023, but only just above a tenth. By April 2025, AI was responsible for just 14% of all business email compromise attempts detected by Barracuda.
This trend makes sense within context – while AI may be highly effective in churning out spam, targeted attacks requiring impersonation or more tactical social engineering will require finesse that may still require a human touch.
However, the research found that AI-generated emails have less grammatical or spelling errors, and were more formal and sophisticated compared to those written by humans.
This often makes AI-generated emails more difficult to spot than traditional spam or phishing emails, as tell-tale signs traditionally included bad grammar and spelling. They can also help the AI emails bypass detection systems often offered by security vendors and email platforms.
AI is also being used as testing grounds to see which wording variations are more effective in evading detection and garnering clicks from targets.
However, researchers found that AI emails tended to stress the same level of urgency as those written by humans, meaning that, while AI may improve plausibility, tactics have remained largely unchained.
People are turning away from traditional news sources and toward social media, video platforms, and podcasts to get their news, research from The Reuters Institute said.
Their global study of the news economy revealed intriguing but ultimately unsurprising figures, showing that TV and print – traditional news vectors – have gone down in popularity in favour of social media and podcasts, which are less regulated.
In the UK, however, this appears to have taken over less so, the research showed, and was more consistently a trend in the US and some Latin American countries.
The UK saw news audiences for TV (down from 79% to 48%) and print (down from 59% to 12%) fall over the past 12 years, culminating in an online and mobile-first news landscape.
UK news media, while battling the affects of addicting social media and alternative news sources, are also contending with a range of challenges from AI, which has become their main strategic priority, according to the research.
In the US, however, more people get their news from podcasts than papers, as social media has become the top news source for the first time in the country.
Half of those surveyed in the US get their news from TV, while over half (54%) get their news from social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and X.
The global trends are troubling, as the UK media struggles in their own right.
Brands are experimenting with tri-fold systems of subscriptions, advertisements, and other revenue sources to make ends meet.
The BBC, the largest UK-based news media group, has faced rounds of layoffs and closures, and Sky News, another major broadcaster, announced a strategic review to grow its audience.
Main providers of TV and radio continue to see their audiences dissipate in the UK, though a relative newcomer, GB News, has seen its position grow for broadcast and online in Reuter’s weekly usage rankings.
Trust in the media is at 35%, down from the 51% seen ten years ago, and only marginally higher than the 28% seen in 2020.
A deal between public and private institutions will invest £1 billion in offshore wind supply chains across Scotland, Teesside, South Wales, and East Anglia.
The government and Great British Energy have joined forces with industry and the Crown Estate for the investment to help secure Britain’s energy supply chain through manufacturing facilities and skilled jobs.
Investment comes after the Spending Review confirmed the biggest programme of investment in homegrown energy in history, according to the government, and forms part of the UK government’s Industrial Strategy.
The Crown Estate has pledged £400m to support new infrastructure for offshore wind, including in ports, supply chain manufacturing, research, and testing facilities. This is in addition to the £300m of funding from Great British Energy.
Industry has matched this funding with a further £300m, aiming to deliver investment to supply chain supporting advanced turbine technology and foundations and substructures.
“This is an unprecedented collaboration between public and private investors with Great British Energy crowding in millions of private sector investment from industry and The Crown Estate, to ensure that British companies and workers win the global race for clean energy,” energy secretary Ed Miliband said.
“We are witnessing the coming of age of Britain’s green industrial revolution as we build this new era of clean energy abundance, helping deliver new jobs, energy security and lower household’s bills through our Plan for Change.”
The overall investment will back the manufacturing of turbines, floating platforms, HVDC cables, and cutting-edge technologies, alongside upgrading vital port infrastructure from Leith and Teesside to Great Yarmouth and Port Talbot.
“Today’s announcement highlights the unique role Great British Energy can play in the market,” Great British Energy chief executive Dan McGrail said.
“By providing state-backed, catalytic investment, we can deliver on our remit to crowd-in investment, giving much needed certainty to developers and investors in the clean energy sector. GBE will continue to support domestic supply chains, driving sustainable economic growth for all corners of the UK.”
Great British Energy will bring together the National Wealth Fund, The Scottish National Investment Bank, The Crown Estate, Crown Estate Scotland and The Development Bank of Wales, agreeing to develop a unified public finance ‘ecosystem’ to build Britain’s offshore wind supply chains.
The government will also allocate up to £544 million from its Clean Industry Bonus, which provides funding to offshore wind developers for prioritising their investment into some of Britain’s most deprived communities, and in cleaner supply chains.
A Canadian-based quantum computing firm is investing over £25 million a new quantum research and development facility in the UK.
Over the next three years, Photonic will open a new quantum R&D facility in the UK, creating over 30 high-paying jobs and investing more than £25m following a deal between the UK and Canada to strengthen their compute infrastructure development collaboration.
The Canadian company develops commercial-scale quantum computers and quantum networks, and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.
The firm, founded in 2016, has been backed by London VC groups Amadeus Capital partners.
The funding and new jobs accompanying the R&D facility will be a boost to the UK’s quantum sector, supporting the UK’s National Quantum Strategy which sets out the nation’s plans to be a leader in quantum technologies, emphasising the importance of international cooperation.
“Our expansion into the UK is a win-win—strengthening our ability to scale globally while reinforcing Canada’s position as a leader in secure, scalable quantum technologies” said Dr. Stephanie Simmons, founder and chief quantum officer at Photonic.
“Ever since earning my doctorate in quantum computing at the University of Oxford, I’ve admired the UK’s trailblazing approach to quantum. I am really excited by the ambition laid out in the next phase of the UK Government’s National Quantum Strategy, and we are looking forward to supporting the government in delivery of its Quantum Missions.
“Quantum has enormous potential to drive societal impact and economic growth—and Photonic is committed to unleashing that potential through deep, collaborative partnerships between our two countries.”
UK science minister Lord Vallance said: “Photonic’s decision to expand their presence in the UK is a clear vote of confidence in the UK’s fast-growing quantum sector, which is leading advances on everything from sensing for healthcare to quantum computing.
“This £25m investment will create jobs and generate economic growth, while deepening collaboration between the UK and Canada on this vital technology.”
