Apple, Google and Meta are set to be investigated by the EU for potential breaches of the new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which came into effect just this month.
The regulation aims to put bigger scrutiny on what the EU defines as ‘market gatekeepers’, including Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company).
These companies hold strong market dominance across a number of fields, including search engines, online retail, social media, and messaging apps.
Less than a month after the DMA came into effect on 7 March, three of the six ‘gatekeepers’ will face investigations for breaches in the law meant to stifle the continued growth of monopolies and safeguard fairer market competition.
In total, the EU will open five investigations levied against Apple, Google, and Meta
The Investigations
The EU Commission has taken issue with Alphabet’s and Apple’s implementation of anti-steering obligations as set out in the DMA.
Anti-steering obligations mean that gatekeepers cannot restrict businesses from informing users within an app about cheaper options outside of the gatekeeper’s ecosystem.
Both Apple and Alphabet have been found to still charge recurring fees and are limiting steering by businesses whose apps can be found on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.
The EU will therefore open two investigations relating to the company’s anti-steering provisions, and if these fees and limitations limit consumer choice.
Apple will face a further investigation, delving into if their web browser choices and ability to uninstall apps is not offering users a fair and free choice.
Google will also face an investigation into self-preferencing its own content on Google Search results.
Further to these five investigations, the EU plans to probe how Apple will price alternative app stores on its devices, and if Amazon’s ranking practices on its marketplace are unfair to competing vendors.
The EU plans to conclude the investigation in a year.
The UK government is expected today to link the 2021 cyber-attacks against the Electoral Commission to threat actors in China.
The attacks took place in August 2021, but the specifics were only revealed to the public last year, detailing how the personal details of millions of UK voters was accessed.
In the attack, threat actors accessed electoral registers, as well the Electoral Commission’s email and control systems. It stipulated, however, that the attacks did not impact any elections or anyone’s voting registration.
In parliament, the deputy prime minister is expected to link the attack to China, as several ministers who were critical of the Chinese government were thought to also be targeted in cyber-attacks.
The link comes after the UK government has continually cracked down on Chinese investment in UK infrastructure over the recent years, citing national security concerns.
Among the electoral commission attack, the deputy PM is also expected to claim that Beijing is behind a wave of recent attacks levied against parliamentary members and peers.
Three MPS are expected to be given briefs on their risk status: Ian Duncan Smith and Tim Laughton of the Conservatives, as well as Stewart McDonald of the SNP.
Their membership to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and continued critique of Beijing, has potentially put them at a heightened risk of being targeted.
China’s ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson Lin Jian rebuffed the allegations, saying that the UK government was “smearing without factual basis,” as reported by Sky.
“We hope that all parties will stop spreading false information, and effectively adopt a responsible attitude to jointly maintain peace and security in cyber space,” he said.
With global elections looming this year across the UK, US, and India, governments are likely to take a second look at their relationship with China following their links to cyber-crime.
With 62.78% of affirmative votes from SMS shareholders, the deal was declared unconditional, with SMS shareholders set to receive 955p each per share.
The deal was first announced in December by a newly-formed company owned by KKR-advised funds.
Andrew Furze and Yimei Luo of KKR are expected to be appointed to the SMS board as non-executive directors.
It is expected that current independent non-executive directors, including Ruth Leak, James Richards, Mike Winkel, and chair Mariam Greenwood, on the board will resign and the board’s committee will disband.
SMS will also not pay the third and fourth quarter dividend instalments which were previously expected in April and July. No further dividends will be paid until further notice.
SMS’s founder Steve Timoney and former chief executive Alan Foy opposed the takeover, at the time stating that they were disappointed with the offer price. Timoney will stand to make £51m from the deal.
The Glasgow-based company was previously awarded a deal to install 200,000 smart meters across UK homes, in an effort to improve energy efficiency and lower energy prices amid the cost-of-living and energy crisis.
Energy companies have lagged in their smart meter rollout targets, causing the government to issue a major fine to large gas and electric companies in 2023.
The Scottish Government has commissioned an externally-led review into the use of mobile messaging apps and non-corporate devices for government purposes.
The review likely follows backlash the government’s former first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, faced for her use of WhatsApp, the Meta-owned messaging platform, for government purposes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Commissioned by current first minister Humza Yousaf, the review will be conducted by former Channel Islands data protection commissioner Emma Martins.
The audit will investigate if the use of apps is relevant in a government setting, as well as where and how relevant data should be stored and retained.
Martins will also look into the value of messaging apps to ministers in emergency situations.
The inquiry directly references the ongoing UK Covid-19 inquiry which is assessing both the UK and Scottish government responses to the pandemic. The inquiry has adopted the view that all texts and mobile messages are potentially relevant to its investigation, including messages on private apps like WhatsApp.
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has come under fire for deleting WhatsApp messages that may have concerned the government’s pandemic response, but has said that these messages were deleted following government data protocol.
The audit will therefore investigate if changes will need to be made to the definition of “corporate value” in relation to the use of mobile messages and texts in governmental contexts.
The UK Covid-19 inquiry was shown messages between Scottish government officials discussing policy matters, as well as exchanges reminding them that their messages could be subject to Freedom of Information requests, urging them to delete relevant texts.
The former first minister did admit to deleting messages, but claimed that these were informal exchanges deleted on official advice, and that any significant details were recorded.
The Scottish government audit will concern itself with corporate and non-corporate technology, and aims to review the implications of app usage on data security and sovereignty, as well as wider national security.
“I am grateful for this opportunity to support the Scottish Government as they reflect on recent events and seek to learn from them,” Martins said. “In delivering this external review, I will look carefully at the current practices of government with the objective of producing appropriate, meaningful and deliverable recommendations for them going forward.”
The National Cyber Security Council (NCSC) has released guidance for CEOs to navigate cyber incidents in an effort to ensure organisations are better managing breaches and cyber-attacks as the number of cybersecurity threats rise.
The immediate aftermath of a cyber-attack can be challenging for organisations, large and small.
Businesses will have to be strategic to minimise the impact cyber-attacks have on their organisations, but information on specific processes to take can be confusing and complex.
Organisational Steps
First steps organisations can take to improve their cybersecurity posture is appointing a separate Senior Responsible Office (SRO) or to use a broader governance command structure to assign overall responsibility for the cyber-incident.
Organisations should ensure structures are in place to take into account the incident’s full impact across the whole organisation, and make it easy for those managing the response to regularly meet.
Further, senior-decisions makers should be informed and empowered in this process, by explaining how technical issues impact them.
This all boils down to allowing a robust response to the varied demands of the incident, including internal and external communications, collaborating with regulators and insurers, and providing updates to the board.
External Support
In addition to these organisational steps, the NCSC recommends companies bring in trusted and accredited external support. Using a cyber incident response (CIR) company can help recovery, and the NCSC has a number of assured CIR companies.
Insurers should also be informed of any incidents, as they may have in-house CIRs.
Data Breach Impact and Public Messaging
Key to responsible response and recovery is the consideration of a cyber incident’s impact on users.
It is critical that any risks to data is communicated to the data owners, and that regulatory requirements are considered.
The Information Commissioner’s Office offers specific guidance on responding to personal data breaches, and states that notifiable breaches must be reported “without undue delay.”
Companies should also have effective and transparent communication to reassure employees and protect their public reputation.
While information should be honest and not downplay an incident, varying degrees of detail is to be expected for different stakeholders.
Ransomware
The continued rise of ransomware threats requires specific advice and guidance. The NCSC made clear that they and UK law enforcement “don’t encourage, endorse, or condone the payment of ransom demands.”
They warn that making a payment is no guarantee that an organisation will get their data back. Further, it may make them more susceptible to targeting in the future.
Team Resilience and Welfare
The NCSC advises that organisations put their staff’s welfare and moral at the top of their response plan, as cyber crises will raise stress and uncertainty across the company.
“Incidents often start with an intense period of activity, but many also have a ‘long tail’ with the impact lasting for months,” the NCSC said.
“The team will need to make important decisions throughout, but particularly when you are working out how to rebuild and prevent future incidents. It’s important to make sure that staff aren’t exhausted.”
Key to mitigating future stress is learning from the cyber incidents so that better structures can be put in place to de-risk an organisation.
Whether it’s fighting financial fraud or human trafficking, AI is enabling fintech to make a positive impact in crime prevention.
Where it could be argued that many industries are still wading through onerous self-assessment to find where genAI fits – because, after all, it has to fit somewhere – finance is one area where the technology has been put to work in a way that seems intuitive.
Fintech technology enables real-time monitoring of financial and investment risks, monetary changes, as well as detecting fraud. Its harnessing of big data analytics is already transforming the financial industry.
The writing’s always been on the wall for these kinds of use-cases of AI in fintech. Where things become a bit murkier is the dichotomy of the technology’s ability to empower fintech to net social benefits (fighting human trafficking and financial fraud) to the other end of the spectrum, where it has lowered the bar for entry, exponentially in some areas, when it comes to participation in crime.
AI has revolutionised fraud – as the burgeoning technology becomes more easily accessible, fraudsters are better able to add sophistication to their illicit ploys, and unsuspecting consumers are less able to detect social engineering campaigns. AI can write malware, phishing emails, and can even evade detection by other AI.
But when it comes to fraud detection and prevention, Jamie Hutton, CTO of Quantexa, the AI fintech firm, sticking to the basics is more important than integrating new AI developments.
Back to Basics: A Foundation in Data
“Of course things like ChatGPT and large language models and other such things have really brought [AI] to the fore, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals,” Hutton said.
“And the fundamental challenge is around having the data ready for AI.”
Hutton truly takes it back to basics: “It’s that old adage of garbage in, garbage out. If you don’t have a good data foundation when building your analytics model or your decisioning model on top of, then the machine’s not going to do a very good job because it just doesn’t understand your business or what you’re trying to solve.”
Quantexa has been in utilising AI since its founding back in 2016, and has tracked how the technology and machine learning capabilities have transformed since then, especially in the eyes of the public.
“Whilst AI has changed, the need for a solid data foundation has absolutely not.”
Applying AI to fraud and crime prevention tactics can allow more data points to be harvested and analysed faster, enabling real-time monitoring and alerts. But with data, quantity does not also equate to greater quality.
According to Hutton, traditional fraud and money laundering alert systems run at 99% false positives rates.
This is largely because these, as well as AI systems, only search for anomalies in transactions, without taking into account life circumstances.
What causes these systems to be so highly inaccurate is a lack of contextual data – banks and financial institutions often know some details about their customers, but do not use other data to place their customers within a relationship network – be it their relationship with other people, bank accounts, or businesses.
“Rather than just looking at customer behaviour as a very simple thing, we try to understand who the customer truly is,” Hutton said.
“That’s not so easy,” Hutton admitted. “And of course, if you’re going to solve the fraud of financial crime, knowing where the money flows, is really, really important.”
By harnessing a more varied array of external data, the analytical framework has a better idea of how the real world works – something as simple as connecting with data from Company House to establish that a company is reputable, or connecting a business account to a personal account, can decrease the likelihood of a false positive.
It also allows a better understanding of the customer’s ‘normal’ behaviour, allowing for more in-depth assessments of potential fraud.
“The context allows the analytics to understand the real world better. And if the analytics understands the real world, it has a much better chance of being able to detect and prevent fraud,” Hutton said.
“What our system is trying to do is mirror your best investigator,” Hutton explained.
By harnessing data to create contextual networks, what Hutton and the team at Quantexa calls entity resolution and network context, the analytics can be inputted into large language models that can then relay risk assessments in digestible language.
This is where large language models come into play, which are of course, taking the world by storm.
New Isn’t Always Better
“But where they struggle is with your own internal data,” Hutton conceded. “You need to combine a large language model with your internal data.”
By combining a robust and varied data network with the processing of large language models, fraud detecting systems can better mimic the processes, and results, of the best investigators, at great speed and efficiency.
However, as AI comes more into the general foray, so do concerns around its ethical and secure use.
While AI can be used for fraud detection, how does it mitigate against hallucination, aka when AI generates something with no basis in data or fact, bias, and unexplainable outputs?
The model Quantexa relies on is transparent and explainable, unlike more recent generative AI algorithms in the foray.
The philosophy is not so much about finding a new way of doing machine learning, but about inputting better data into a machine learning model.
The transparency and explainability of the model allows Quantexa to harness data under compliance for fraud and crime detection, mitigate bias, and figure out ways to consistently improve their data input and their algorithm.
The data-driven process has allowed Quentexa to quell some of the more recent fears surrounding AI, and also has enabled it to utilise its model for other applications outside of financial fraud.
Crime-fighting FinTech
Partnering with the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII), Quatenxa is applying its Decision Intelligence to the prevention and detection of human trafficking in the US.
To combat this heinous and pervasive crime, the Initiative will deploy Quantexa’s decision making technology as well as its AI-driven crime prevention and detection capabilities through training and joint industry engagement.
The technology essentially works in the same way, but helps not just to detect financial fraud, but illegal financial activity related to human trafficking.
Clark Frogley, North American Head of Financial Crime Solutions at Quantexa. “Human trafficking is often enabled by illegal financial activity and Quantexa’s deep experience helping organizations to monitor, detect, and investigate financial crimes makes us the ideal partner to support ATII’s mission. This partnership will aid organizations to reinforce their ESG and anti-money laundering (AML) efforts which are critical to stopping human trafficking.”
In the UK, Quantexa has been helping the Cabinet Office detect fraud, using their AI platform to detect fraudulent businesses taking advantage of the government’s COVID-19 business loan scheme.
For this, Hutton explains the importance of going the extra step to identify fraudulent businesses, harnessing public data and making logical decisions, just as an investigator might.
“It’s not about just knowing who the people are. You’ve got to look at the corporate structures,” Hutton.
By understanding the corporate layout and history of an organisation, Quantexa is helping the cabinet office better detect fraudulent business owners and fake businesses taking advantage of COVID-19 support.
Recently, Quantexa has expanded their partnership with the Cabinet Office, offering its support to investigate organised crime and sanctions evasions.
FinTech’s AI Future
Quantexa has been in the AI game since its founding in 2016, and has seen how AI advancements have shifted security trends and challenges in financial services.
“It’s so funny how it shifts over time,” Hutton said, “ I’ve seen huge waves of different types of fraud coming up and down over the time. Obviously one of the biggest ones happening at the moment is things like the scams.
“There’s certainly a challenge around people leveraging AI to convince people to part with their money,” Hutton added.
AI is allowing people to enhance their scamming techniques, and increases the sophistication of phishing emails. While AI is used defensively, it is increasingly being employed by threat actors.
“You’ve got sort of this adversarial relationship between the detection systems and the criminals, and both are leveraging. AI is going to be a bit of an arms race in many cases,” Hutton predicted.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed in a statement that it is looking into a reported data breach concerning the medical records of Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales.
The data protection watchdog issued a statement which read: ““We can confirm that we have received a breach report and are assessing the information provided.”
Several media outlets have reported that staff at the London Clinic tried to access Middleton’s medical records during her stay following her reported abdominal surgery.
Rumours surrounding the Princess have caused mass speculation since her surgery, with members of the public also drawing attention to the images the Crown has shared of the Princess which appear to be digitally altered.
The Crown has not provided any more specifics on the abdominal surgery, and there has been speculation that the Princess is distancing herself from the Royal Family.
The Mirror reported that potentially three staff are being investigated by the London Clinic, a private hospital that serves the Royal Family.
The ICO’s investigation could lead to an unlimited fine, not just to the staff members that attempted to access the records, but on the London Clinic itself it if is found to have not put in place proper data protection safeguards.
If issued, the fine could be expected to be large as the case concerns a member of the British Royal Family.
The London Clinic has attempted to reassure its patients by saying that they have appropriate systems set up to manage protect patient information.
“Everyone at The London Clinic is acutely aware of our individual, professional, ethical and legal duties with regards to patient confidentiality,” Al Russel, The London Clinic CEO, told NBC News.
Scotland’s reputation as a beacon of manufacturing and engineering innovation has been strenghtened with the launch of an industry scale, fully digitally enabled, forging research platform at the University of Strathclyde’s Advance Forging Research Centre (AFRC), part of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS).
The new facility, FutureForge, aims to put the country at the forefront of modernising and future-proofing the $75 billion global forging sector.
Based in Renfrewshire, FutureForge is a new platform that will see the 100-strong AFRC team of engineers and researchers work directly with the biggest forging companies around the world, thanks to the facility’s digital and connectivity capabilities.
“With the largest hot forging press of its kind, dedicated solely to research and innovation, unparalleled connectivity capabilities, and over a decade of experience in materials science, the Advanced Forming Research Centre is in a unique position to help the forging industry embrace net-zero, unlock energy savings, accelerate productivity and ultimately transform this vitally important industry for future generations,” Professor Brad Wynne, director of the advanced forming research centre, said.
“The 2,000 tonne press, multiple furnaces, ground-breaking smart manipulator and fully connected, data-driven, control room, that make up FutureForge, provide the sector with the industry-scale test bed it requires to help de-risk investment in innovation around materials, process improvements and energy utilisation.”
Forging is a traditional manufacturing process dating back thousands of years and is vital to nationally important such as aerospace, defence, marine and energy.
The multi-million-pound investment has been supported by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), High Value Manufacturing Catapult and Scottish Enterprise.
Chris Courtney, CEO of NMIS, said: “FutureForge, is the latest addition to a growing suite of Industry 4.0 research and development capabilities within the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland. Through this novel platform, companies from around the world can access, not only, the world leading materials science and forging capabilities of the Advanced Forming Research Centre but also the digitally focused skills and expertise of the rest of the NMIS Group.
“It gives the teams the opportunity to work with, and help, major businesses around the world and to act as a magnet for potential inward investors attracted to the idea of establishing production facilities within the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland in order to be closer to the R&D talent and skilled workforce here in Scotland.”
Speaking at the opening of FutureForge, Professor Sir Jim McDonald, principal and vice-chancelor of the University of Strathclyde, chair of the NMIS Board and President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: “With the launch of FutureForge, the Advanced Forming Research Centre and the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland continue to go from strength to strength.
“By growing its unique research facilities and opportunities for industry and academia to collaborate and innovate, NMIS is cementing its status as a global centre of research and innovation excellence and an invaluable asset to Scotland’s advanced manufacturing sector.
“This is a clear example of the national and local economic benefits that flow from strategic collaboration and co-investment across partners in the private, public and academia, all of which is built on outstanding talent and world class research capability.”
While the NHS system is now running as normal, and Gray assured the public that “there has been minimal impact on patient services.”
“I’m very grateful to everyone who is working to ensure people still receive the best possible care while we work at pace to ensure a return to normal working practices,” Gray said.
However, the secretary also noted how high-stakes the situation was: a significant amount of sensitive data belonging to patients and staff could have been compromised.
Gray reassured Labour MSP Colin Smith that the government would monitor and review the attack and its consequences in an effort to strengthen the cyber-resilience of the sector.
However, Gray was not able at the time to offer much reassurance on what confidential data the hackers were able to access, as it was difficult to contact patients directly.
Gray also said that some members of staff were having to change their working practices in the short term, despite saying operations were mostly normal.
The health board chief executive, Jeff Ace, said that they were treating the matter seriously and had been working with partner agencies – including Police Scotland, the National Cyber Security Centre, and the Scottish government – to secure the existing systems and assess the risks to any accessed data.
“It must be noted that this is a live criminal investigation, and we are very limited in what we can say,” he said. “In addition, a great deal of work is required in order to say with assurance what data may have been obtained, and we are not yet in that position.”
A new report has claimed that Scotland’s 2030 climate goals – some of the most ambitious in the world – are no longer credible.
The Scottish Parliament’s climate change plans are more demanding than the rest of the UK, committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. With this benchmark, the nation aims to reach net zero emissions by 2045.
Now, continued delays to the updated climate change plan and further slippage in promised policies mean that the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent body formulated to help guide the UK’s climate policy, no longer believes the Scottish Government will meet its goals.
“There is no comprehensive strategy for Scotland to decarbonise towards Net Zero,” a statement from CCC read.
The Scottish Government delayed its draft Climate Change Plan last year despite the looming 2030 target, now only six years away.
The CCC says this slip up has left a significant period without sufficient actions or policies to reach the target; the required acceleration in emissions reduction in Scotland is now beyond what is credible.
“Scotland has laudable ambitions to decarbonise, but it isn’t enough to set a target; the Government must act. There are risks in all reviewed areas, including those with significant policy powers devolved to the Scottish Government,” Professor Piers Forster, interim Chair of the CCC said.
“Scotland’s Climate Change Plan needs to be published urgently, so we can assess it. We need to see actions that will deliver on its future targets.”
Scotland missed its annual target for 2021, marking the eight time in the past 12 years the nation has missed a climate target.
The only sectors to reduce emissions in 2021 were electricity supply and industry. However, most key indicators of delivery progress, such as tree planting, peatland restoration rates, and heat pump installations are currently off track.
The CCC says there is hope despite these missed targets, but is urging the Scottish Government to take stronger action. Key industries needing to lesson their carbon emissions include the transport and buildings sector.
The 2020 CCPu requires emissions from heating buildings to decrease by 71% by 2030, meaning the annual emissions reduction rate must increase by almost a factor of ten. While there are some bold proposals, these must be delivered in practice or the 2030 goals will not be met.
For transport, the current plan required emissions to decrease by 44% by 2030, meaning that the annual emissions reduction rate must increase by nearly a factor of four.
While Scotland has an ambitious target for car reduction, its strategy for this is lacking.
Aside from these, agriculture and land use must also decrease by 11% by 2030, meaning a reversal of recent emissions increases is required. Scotland also needs to double its woodland creation rate, and triple its peatland restoration rate.
Further, Scotland’s Acorn carbon capture cluster programme needs its deployment potential reassessed to see if it is capable of meeting the Government’s goals.
“This is a crucial time for Net Zero in Scotland,” the CCC warned.
“The handling of plans to close the Grangemouth refinery underlines the risk of omitting meaningful dialogue between communities, industry and government and the important role for the Scottish Government in ensuring a just transition towards Net Zero.”
The Grangemouth refinery, located on the Firth of Forth, is one of the last six remaining oil refineries in Scotland, and is set to be closed in 2025.
“Further delay to the Scottish Government’s draft Climate Change Plan will prevent further progress on these strategic issues.”
Greggs, the baked goods purveyor made famous for their sausage rolls, have reportedly shut down across the country due to an ongoing IT issue.
After facing card payment issues, stores across the UK were forced to shut down or to go cash only.
A statement from Greggs said: “We are currently experiencing issues accepting payments in our shops,” adding: “We are working to resolve this as soon as possible.”
This follows recent card payment outages across some of the UK’s top grocers, including Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s, as well as an outage affecting McDonald’s franchises across the globe.
Users took to X to show their lament, and the pattern of recent IT outages appears to not be lost on the public.
It is currently unclear how far the IT problem has travelled, but so far Cardiff, Manchester, Newcastle, and London have all experienced either closures or cash-only tills at Greggs.
Following the recent IT outages, Ilkka Turunen, Field CTO, Sonatype, gave DIGIT some insight into the potential causes.
“This type of failure is a common occurrence in the world of IT – an update failing and leaving things in an unmanaged state is something everyone with a botched computer update stuck on a loop can relate to,” he said.
“It’s hard to know what exactly went wrong here but underscores the importance of managing your organisation’s software supply chain in an optimised way. The reality is a lot of this type of work on critical systems is done manually and relies on experienced hero individuals over the weekend.
“This case shows what can happen when not enough attention is paid to effectively managing updates and should be a valuable lesson to all. When combined with the fact critical updates at an industry scale have a low uptake, it underscores the need for organisations to really pay attention and rethink parts of this process. Incidents happen despite any process though and the supermarkets all handled the repercussions pretty swiftly.”
Over half (55%) of IT leaders feel pressure from their organisation’s leadership to implement new AI technology, a new study has revealed.
Asana Inc, a work management platform, has released new data from its State of IT Leaders report, which surveyed 1,255 IT professionals across the US and UK.
The report delved into the challenges IT leaders face today, offering insights for navigating intelligent transformation – demonstrating how to leverage AI to drive business outcomes and increase ROI (Return on Investment).
As AI Becomes a Bigger Focus for Businesses, IT Leaders Play a More Strategic Role
As AI quickly becomes a critical tool helping enterprises work smarter, IT leaders are no longer back office service providers but strategic decision-makers moving organisations forward.
As mentioned, over half of IT professionals have been pressured to implement AI. Yet, a quarter (25%) of IT professionals report they regret investing in AI too quickly, showing that business pressure means AI implementation isn’t as thoughtful as it could be.
The vast majority (90%) of IT leaders say that investing in AI technology will be crucial to navigating future business challenges, emphasising the importance of getting implementation right.
IT leaders are taking more advisory roles and technology becomes evermore critical to growth.
Over half (53%) of IT professionals report advising on their organisation’s AI strategy more often, with 37% advising on operations more often, and 35% advising on their organisation’s strategic planning more often than six months ago.
As AI technologies such as chatbots and virtual assistants become integral to business operations, a new spectrum of managerial responsibilities emerges.
78% of IT executives and 72% of managers in IT functions anticipate their roles expanding to include the management of AI functions.
82% are asked to advice on their organisation’s strategy at least once a month, and 31% of these are being asked to advice multiple times a week, or even daily.
More AI, More Challenges
As IT leaders transition from leading traditional IT operations to becoming strategic drivers of business innovation and growth, they faces increased challenges.
A unique stressor for IT leaders is the implementation of AI-driven automation, with IT professionals citing it as one of the top three biggest concerns.
45% of IT leaders also reported feeling stress around it at least once a week.
Further, resource constraints have hampered some development. While AI remains a top priority for enterprises, only 37% of IT leaders say their organisation has allocated a separate budget for AI investments.
While AI boasts efficiency, adopting new technologies can sometimes overcomplicate processes. Nearly a quarter (24%) of IT executives say streamlining their organisation’s technology stack is one of their top three priorities in the next six months.
Significantly, however, 44% of IT executives also report that they regret making too many new software investments in the last six months.
And adopting new technology often adds little benefit without a solid foundation. AI’s promise hinges on the quality of its data, yet confidence in the readiness of internal data for AI applications is startingly low, with only 39% of IT leaders expressing a high degree of confidence.
While leaders are keen to tap into AI’s potential, their urgency isn’t currently matched by their teams’, highlighting the need to create internal guidance and thoughtful roll-out plans for AI.
Over half (53%) of IT leaders report that investing in AI/ML technologies is highly important, whereas only 35% of individual contributors felt the same.
Around a third (31%) of IT leaders report implementing AI technology effectively as a priority in the next six months, compared with only 18% of individual contributors.
Implementing AI-driven automation is a top challenge among 28% of IT leaders, but only 16% of IT professionals agree.
“With the rapid evolution of AI, the role of the CIO and IT executives has fundamentally changed,” says Saket Srivastava, Asana CIO.
“Today’s IT leaders are responsible for intelligent transformation – ensuring that data is connected across technology investments to build the right foundation to deploy AI safely.
“To maximise impact at every level of the enterprise, IT leaders must invest in the AI technologies that help drive ROI, while maintaining security and control. At Asana, we’re enthusiastic about helping the world’s leading enterprises work smarter and improve business outcomes through our latest AI innovations.”
Despite the uncertainty generated by changing macroeconomic conditions, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) remains a priority, new research shows, with technology playing a critical role.
Focused on understanding the motivations, activities, and progress behind DEI, Workday, Inc, surveyed 2,600 global business leaders, including UKI CEOs and leaders from HR, finance, IT and sales.
The survey revealed that 87% of UKI respondents had increased DEI as a priority in the past year, with 83% of organisations having a budget for DEI.
Commitment to DEI remains high for the majority of UKI organisations. 59% of respondents said that the main source of pressure for implementing DEI initiatives is internal, while 46% said business leaders and employees are equally driving EDI initiatives.
Top reasons for supporting DEI included positively impacting business success and results (45%), improved employee engagement (41%) and staff well-being (44%), and attracting and recruiting a diverse workforce (52%).
“The results of the survey are encouraging for DEI efforts in 2024,” commented Daniela Porr, principal solutions marketing lead at Workday. “However, if UKI businesses are to develop a more mature approach, there is still work to be done in forming nuanced DEI strategies and recognising the impact of AI on these goals.”
AI and ML Technologies Are Having an Impact
Technology is playing a vital role in enabling DEI initiatives, with the research showing a strong correlation between strategic maturity, technology adoption, and a robust DEI programme.
The areas that have seen the biggest positive impact for UKI respondents are sentiment survey and promotion discussions, with 95% and 91% of respondents respectively, reporting that AI and other technologies have improved results across the board.
AI and ML can therefore play a positive role in the success of DEI initiatives with organisations turning to the technology to help paint a more nuanced picture of the employee experience and development.
AI is also boosting the ability for businesses to understand the skills and capabilities of their entire workforce, which can both drive employee mobility and diversify talent pools.
“Wider adoption of skills-based hiring can play a big role in addressing the digital skills gap that the UK faces. There are large numbers of people intrinsically well suited for digital roles who are being overlooked. The combination of skills-based hiring, and rapid skilling initiatives such as skills bootcamps, could help fill hundreds of thousands of hard-to-recruit for roles across the UK, whilst also improving diversity and widening access,” added Michael Houlihan, CEO, Generation UK&I.
“AI tools can play a big role here, both to improve and accelerate peoples’ learning journey, as well as helping employers roll out skills-based hiring in a coherent, impactful, and business-improving way.”
The research shows a huge opportunity for UKI companies to use data and technology to enhance their DEI commitment. Just over three in five (62%) have made progress, or as using a strategic approach to DEI currently, and 40% haven’t started yet, indicated we have some way to go to achieve strategic maturity.
There is good reason to suspect the ability to implement such an effective approach to DEI hinges on an organisation’s capability to foster joint responsibility and model DEI goals from the top down.
“When leveraging these technologies, organisations must consciously find ways to build trust in their workplace so employees know how any AI-powered technologies will be used, and ultimately, how they will benefit from them,” noted Ashleigh Ainsley, co-founder, Colorintech. “Only once trust is built can the positive impact of AI be realised.”
YouTube, the video streaming platform owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has released new guidelines on labelling AI-generated and synthetic content.
The platform will now require creators to disclose to viewers when realistic content – defined as content a viewer could easily mistake for a real person, place, or event – is made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI.
Users can accomplish this using a new tool in YouTube’s Creator Studio, and the disclosures will appear as labels in the expanded description or on the front of the video player.
“Generative AI is transforming the ways creators express themselves – from storyboarding ideas to experimenting with tools that enhance the creative process,” YouTube said is a statement. “But viewers increasingly want more transparency about whether the content they’re seeing is altered or synthetic.”
YouTube is not requiring creators to disclose content that it deems as “clearly” unrealistic, animated, includes special effects, or has used generative AI for production assistance.
Examples of content that will require an AI label include: using the likeness of a realistic person, altering footage of real events or places, or generating realistic scenes.
The move comes after YouTube announced in November that it would require users to flag AI-generated content.
Just a week ago, Google announced that it would crack down on AI-generated content transparency in an effort to safeguard the upcoming elections in 2024 – their AI chatbot, Gemini, will not answer questions relating to the elections taking place in India, and will also restrict answers regarding elections in the UK and the US taking place later this year.
YouTube will not require users to label content that it deems clearly unrealistic, nor will creators have to flag adjustments to colour or light, special effects like background blur, or beauty filters.
For videos with more sensitive subjects – like news, health, elections, or finance – a more prominent label will be shown if it contains synthetically-generated material that needs to be flagged under the policy.
YouTube says that these tools and labels will be rolled out in the coming weeks, starting with mobile apps.
The company also says they are working on a system for people to request the removal of AI-generated or altered content which simulates an identifiable individual.
Since the rise of advanced AI, the public has been understandably concerned about the rise of disinformation and the use of deepfakes – altered videos and images that using people’s likeness to realistically depict them in fake scenarios.
With 969 million registered voters in India alone, 2024’s elections can dramatically shift global politics, and it appears that companies are starting to understand the potential fallout of unregulated advanced AI.
“We can only build a prosperous future if we start from secure foundations,” CEO of Microsoft UK, Clare Barclay said in Microsoft’s new report on the intersections of AI and cybersecurity.
According to the tech giant, UK organisations risk losing out on the benefits of AI if they do not invest in a robust and steadfast cybersecurity infrastructure.
Just as businesses and governments are keen to tap into AI’s potential as the defining technology of our time, so are bad actors posing a threat to our personal and national security. Traditional add-on security solutions can no long keep pace with the threats posed by cybercriminals.
To lead in AI, trust in the technology is integral. Secure foundations will be critical for AI adoption.
Despite steps to integrate safety into AI adoption, bad acts are already leveraging AI to execute a higher number of more sophisticated and rapid attacks, according to the report.
The risk level is only going to increase, Microsoft claims, and British organisations need to be ready to fight fire with fire.
The report, Mission Critical: Unlocking the UK AI Opportunity Through Cybersecurity, created in collaboration with Dr Chris Brauer at Goldsmiths, University of London, claims that in order for the UK to reach its ambition of becoming an AI superpower, it must first cement its position as a ‘cybersecurity superpower’.
According to the report, 89% of UK organisations are vulnerable to cyber-attacks, including 39% deemed as high risk.
But while AI poses threats, it also poses opportunities.
Fighting Fire with Fire
AI-powered cyber-attacks can threaten critical infrastructure, leak sensitive data, and commit fraud. But AI can also be used to fight these increasingly sophisticated attacks.
AI’s ability to harness larger datasets can allow it to respond rapidly and smartly to potential threats, and it can even offer automatic responses.
Yet, the report shows that about a quarter (27%) of UK organisations are currently employing AI to strengthen their cybersecurity posture, with the rest missing out on a critical technology to bolster their defence.
“Cyber-criminals, some armed with the resources of a nation state, are ‘tooling up’ with AI to increase the sophistication and intensity of their attacks,” says Paul Kelly, director of the security business group at Microsoft UK.
“This research outlines 52 billion reasons for organisational leaders to ‘fight fire with fire’. The same AI technologies can help leaders better secure their organisation and tip the balance back in their favour. AI has the potential to make your business and data more secure, but also, if a cyberattack were to occur, to lessen the impact on your bottom line.”
These 52 reasons are monetary – Microsoft estimates that stronger cybersecurity could potentially save the UK economy £52 billion a year.
Cyber-attacks currently cost the UK an estimated £87 billion per year, with such attacks increasing in number and complexity.
Businesses that incorporate AI into their security strategy might suffer 20% lower financial losses after a successful attack as well.
The global AI cybersecurity market is set to hit $135bn (£105bn) by 2030, meaning that the 73% of UK organisations neglecting to adopt AI in their cyber defences could be hurting the UK’s chances to benefit from this burgeoning industry.
Becoming an AI Superpower
With the AI leadership race in full swing, the UK needs to be quick out the gate.
69% of the decision-makers who contributed to the report said that the UK urgently needs stronger cybersecurity defences to become a global AI leader.
With that being said, Microsoft has released a blueprint to uphold cyber and AI success.
Supporting the widespread adoption of AI in cybersecurity is paramount – rather than turning away from the tech in fear, organisations must embrace it – fast – to keep up with emerging threats.
Fostering research and knowledge sharing, as well as simple and safe adoption, is critical to ensure that AI is adopted safely to minimise risk, ensuring it benefits organisations rather than endangering them.
“The UK has phenomenal potential to lead the world in the use of AI – an unprecedented opportunity to supercharge our economy and transform our public services,” Dr Chris Brauer said. “But that future must be built on secure foundations. To become an AI superpower, the UK must maintain its position as a cybersecurity superpower. With so many organisations shown to be vulnerable to cybercrime, our research surfaces both the urgency of the issue, and useful actions that leaders can take to boost the country’s cyber resilience.”
New data-driven digital health technology is set to be piloted across Moray, which could prove vital in efforts to address ‘unprecedented pressure’ on frontline health and social care services and delivering better outcomes for patients throughout Scotland.
Health and social care leaders say services across Scotland face ‘serious challenges’ amid a perfect storm of declining health and mental wellbeing made worse by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis; reduced budgets and unsalvageable staffing levels; and longer life expectancy in sections of society.
They warn these factors coupled with declining numbers of people entering health and social care professions have left services at a ‘tipping point’. The situation means current delivery models – such as on demand face-to-face GP and hospital appointments – as ‘unsustainable’, with innovative approaches and solutions the only option available to address chronic shortages of suitable staff.
Simon Bokor Ingram, chief officer for the Moray Health and Social Care Partnership, said: “Make no mistake, we are facing serious challenges in the delivery of health and social care in Scotland – and it’s not unique to this country. We need genuine innovation and radical new approaches if we are to continue meeting the needs of the public, and that’s where this new approach will be essential.”
The £5 million UK Government funded Rural Centre of Excellence for Digital Health and Care Innovation (RCE) – a health and social care focused research and development project launched in 2021 as part of the Moray Growth Deal- has been set up to identify and deliver digital tech innovations that aim to improve the delivery of health and social care by making services more accessible, equitable, and person-centric.
The project is led by Scotland’s Digital Health and Innovation Centre (DHI), a collaboration hosted by the University of Strathclyde in collaboration with The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and financed by the Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council.
The project aims to drive a fundamental change in approach to health and social care that will see the public taking proactive responsibility for their own health and wellbeing through control and sharing of relevant linked data across all aspects of their lives.
The approach will shift the balance of care to utilise self-management and community services in the first instance to deliver more efficient and targeted care while relieving pressure on frontline services as the population continues to age (more than 22% of the population in Moray are over 65).
Health and social care partners involved in the project say possible applications of technology include the use of a data cloud to securely store patients’ personal data and create more streamlined and efficient access to integrated services such as GP appointments, routine blood tests, or referrals.
The tech would also make it easier for unpaid carers – often relatives with sole care responsibilities – to help loved ones living with health conditions to access the services they need when they need them.
Moray’s rural setting makes it a perfect test bed for the new digital applications, which are also aimed at mitigating the impact of ‘rural poverty’ on access to health and social care services.
“Elgin is a long way from Raigmore, Aberdeen, and the Central Belt, and rural poverty – primarily around transport and proximity – is a real issue. Progressing the digital agenda can become a solution,” Ingram said.
Members of the public across the region are being recruited to participate in ‘living labs’ allowing their voice to be heard and to measure and prove the effectiveness of new approaches. If successful, the aim is then to roll out the tech out across other regions in Scotland and potentially beyond.
A series of four public events will be held later this month with the aim of encouraging more patients and carers to join the pilot and help test the new approach.
Dr Malcolm Simmons is a Forres-based GP partner and GP clinical lead for Moray, and has been involved in the RCE project. He acknowledged that GP services are under more pressure than they ever have – and highlighted the potential for new digital approaches to help address the situation.
”Our frustrations are our patient’s frustrations,” Dr Simmons said. “We want our patients to be able to access our services easily and have timely access to hospital and secondary care tests and treatments, and we don’t want their health to deteriorate whilst waiting on NHS waiting lists.
“We want to provide as much access as possible and offer a range of services in a variety of different ways, but our capacity is finite and there has been under-investment in GP services, infrastructure, and premises over many years.”
He added: “The development of the personal data store has the potential to overcome several significant practical difficulties patients, families, GPs, carers, and other professionals face when trying to share information that is used to optimise the care provided to an individual. With the person controlling who has access to their information, the individual can choose to share their information with everyone who is important to them, thereby allowing health and care teams to communicate more effectively, improving care for the individual at the centre of this model.
“This will also allow the individual to communicate more easily and effectively with those involved in their care, access information about their health; test results and treatment; and access information online and in their local area that helps support their health and wellbeing. In the future, everyone could have access to this technology, allowing phone or tablet real time access to results, health information and advice with up to date information about local resources and services that might help deal with health problems or encourage a healthier lifestyle.”
Janette Hughes, director of planning & performance, DHI, said: “This is about real-world testing of digital applications that could make a massive difference in the delivery of health and social care in rural settings. It’s a huge opportunity for Moray and the North of Scotland to put a pin in the map allowing citizens’ voices to be heard, and in turn build a strong research platform, which will attract industry and with it the potential for new jobs and investment.”
Citizen Ticket, the Scottish ticketing and bookings platform, has announced a number of new international and UK client wins, including with a major sporting team in the US.
Recent wins range from various large-scale events, venues, and visitor attractions, including Giants Enterprise the events arm of the San Francisco Giants, a California baseball team.
The team has appointed Citizen Ticket to enhance their ticketing experience and streamline access for their clients’ events. This collaboration is set to bring the company’s technology to Oracle Park, a stadium with the capacity for 42,300 viewers.
Founded in 2013, the Edinburgh-headquartered company provides a ticketing and booking platform for events, venues and visitor attractions.
The company’s cloud-based self-service software enables its clients to generate online payments for ticket sales, manage customers, and capture important data. As well as handling customer service, Citizen Ticket also provides on-site support to clients and assists them with event advertising and marketing.
Other deals include Hammersmith and Fulham Council and Foxlake, who are utilising the company’s premium software to consolidate their ticketing operations.
The international expansion represents the next stage in Citizen Ticket’s growth strategy, to focus on enterprise-level clients both home and abroad.
“Citizen Ticket continues to innovate and solve complex ticketing problems for events, venues & visitor attractions,” Colin Palmer, chief technology officer of Citizen Ticket.
“These client wins are testament to the power of our platform and we are looking forward to our onward journey, tackling fundamental ticketing challenges for enterprise-level clients globally.”
Closer to home, Foxlake, an adventure sports company operating in East Lothian, has selected Citizen Ticket to manage ticketing and bookings, with plans to roll out across the full Wild Shore portfolio of visitor attractions later this year.
Callum Marks, CEO of Wild Shore Holdings added, “We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Citizen Ticket, a dynamic ticketing solution that perfectly aligns with our vision for providing seamless and efficient booking experiences for our diverse range of adventure sports activities.
“As we continue to expand our footprint across the UK and prepare to open up a number of new sites, we are confident that Citizen Ticket’s versatility will contribute significantly to our success.”
The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham will work with GC Live, an events planning service based in Bathgate, and Citizen Ticket to deliver their annual eco-friendly fireworks event in London.
The company’s platform includes secure digital ticketing, bookings management, CRM, Membership, EPOS and Data Insight tools.
Philip Shaw Stewart, COO & co-founder of Citizen Ticket said, “We are thrilled to announce our new international software offering and welcome these fantastic clients to the Citizen Ticket platform. These partnerships not only validate our commitment to delivering fundamental ticketing software to our clients, but also inspire us to continue pushing the boundaries of what our technology can achieve.”
MPs on Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee will begin an inquiry into the progress of £6.2 billion worth of funding provided to boost regional economic growth in Scotland.
City Region and Regional Growth Deals are two types of funding packages that cover every part of Scotland, and involve both the Scottish and UK governments, as well as local councils.
Currently 12 such deals exist across the nation, and are typically bolstered by business investment.
Last year, Audit Scotland reported that the pandemic, war in Ukraine, and high UK inflation put pressure on Scottish councils, warning that without additional funding, there is a real risk that these deals will not stretch as far as expected, and that partner funding from businesses may not materialise as a result.
The inquiry therefore aims to take stock of the City Region and Regional Growth Deals across Scotland to examine their delivery so far, and barriers to their success.
“City Region and Regional Growth Deals have the potential to provide fantastic economic opportunities for local economies across Scotland,” Committee chair Pete Wishart MP said.
“But given the challenging economic circumstances, are these plans achieving what Holyrood and Westminster intended?
“It is hugely important that deals agreed by the UK and Scottish Governments, with earmarked funding for Scottish regions, are delivered as effectively and efficiently as possible. As a Committee, we will examine their progress so far and identify whether they are delivering what they intended – ensuring that City Region and Regional Growth Deals deliver for the people of Scotland.”
The deals range between cities and regions to meet specific needs, and are designed to encourage economic growth and create jobs.
Often, these involve working with local partners on long-term infrastructure schemes, but are also often involved in launching educational and tech initiatives.
For instance, improved broadband and mobile coverage is one priority of the Inverness and Highland deal, while Tay Cities, the newest deal, includes a commitment of £25 million biomedical sector investment.
The committee is seeking information on the contribution of City Region Deals and Regional Growth Deals to their respective economies, as well as the key challenges these deals are expecting to face in the coming years.
They will also more specifically ask what action these Deals have taken to implement the recommendations in the 2020 Audit Scotland report.
Children first see violent online content while still at primary school, and describe it as an inevitable part of being online, according to new research commissioned by Ofcom.
All children who took part in the research came across violent content online, mostly via social media, video-sharing and messaging sites and apps.
According to Ofcom, many of these children have seen violent content before they have reached the minimum age requirement to use these online services.
Children cited commonly coming across violent 18+ gaming content, verbal discrimination and fighting content. For many children, the videos of local schools and street fights were also normalised online.
For some, this is because of a desire to build online status among peers and followers, but others confessed they participated in sharing or viewing violent content to fit in.
Teenage boys appeared most susceptible to this social pressure to share and view violent content online, as well as pressure to find the material ‘funny’.
Older children, those aged above 14, were already found to be desensitised to violent content, and less likely to share it online or with peers.
Albeit less frequently, some children did mention seeing extremely graphic violence, including gang related content. While the children were aware of the dark web, and its associated violent content, none Ofcom had spoken to accessed this side of the internet.
Most children say they happen upon violent content unintentionally via group chats, posts from strangers on their social media newsfeed, or through recommender systems.
Sadly, most children feel they have no control over the violent content suggested to them, making them feel upset, anxious, guilty, and even fearful.
Adult professionals that spoke to Ofcom observed that cumulative exposure to violent content contributes to some children becoming socially and physically withdrawn in the real world.
Lack of Trust and Confidence in Reporting
A recurring theme in the study, carried out by Family, Kids, and Youth, is children’s lack of trust and confidence in the flagging and reporting process.
They worry that dwelling on harmful content in order to report it could lead to it being recommended more on their feed, so many choose to scroll past it instead. Other children describe their experience of reports getting lost in the system, and only receiving generic messages in reply to their report.
They also express concerns about the complexity of reporting processes, how approaches vary widely between platforms and feared a lack of anonymity.
Protecting Children From Harm Under the Online Safety Act
Ofcom said that the children taking part in their surveys are pleading with tech firms to take responsibility to keep them safer online.
In response, the regulator says that user-to-user services must put in place specific measures designed to prevent children from encountering ‘Primary Priority Content’ – pornography and material which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for suicide, deliberate self-harm, and eating disorders.
Platforms must also protect children from other ‘Priority’ harms, including violent content and cyberbullying.
Ofcom says it will be using this study, as well as others, as part of its evidence base to inform its draft Protection of Children Codes of Practice, which will be published for consultation later in spring. These Codes aim to set out recommended practical steps tech firms can take to meet their requirements to protect children under the new laws.
The programme aims to help Ukrainian citizens access training and opportunities to continue professional development despite disruption caused by Russia’s invasion.
Launched this January, the TechBridge provides a connection to both UK and Ukrainian to access skills, business opportunities, and technological advancements as Ukraine’s tech sector continues its resistance.
“The training programmes offered through TechBridge will directly support Ukrainians’ continued professional growth,” Leo Docherty, minister for Europe, said. “This training will strengthen a key sector and provide Ukrainians with more economic resilience, a strong foundation for continued recovery.”
Training offered by Oracle, Cisco, Salesforce, and Amazon Web Services can be accessed through the UK-Ukraine TechBridge website.
In addition to its training package, Oracle will offer formal certifications for up to 8000 participants in an in-kind donation worth £2m. This is an opportunity for Ukrainians to gain globally recognised professional qualifications as well as job placement assistance.
Ukrainian citizens, including those displaced by conflict, will be able to enrol in programmes that support both entry-level and experienced individuals.
This will particularly support women entering the tech sector for the first time, as well as veterans returning from active conflict.
The tech sector in Ukraine has shown remarkable resilience despite the challenges of Russia’s full-scale invasion, continuing to grow year on year.
“The UK continues to stand with Ukraine and, through programmes such as the UK-Ukraine TechBridge and UK-Ukraine Infrastructure Taskforce which I co-chair alongside Deputy Prime Minister Kubrakov, is doing all we can to support their economy,” Nusrat Ghani, minister for industry and economic security said.
“The remarkable resilience of Ukraine’s tech sector sees their companies continue to grow despite Russia’s illegal invasion. The UK’s training offer will help tackle digital skills shortages and enable a more agile workforce in Ukraine as it rebuilds.”
British semiconductor researchers and businesses now have enhanced access to research funding backed by the UK government and Horizon Europe, now the UK has joined the EU’s ‘Chips Joint Undertaking’.
The move provides the UK semconductor sector enhanced access to a €1.3 billion (£1.11bn) pot of funds set aside from Horizon Europe to support research in semiconductor technologies up to 2027.
Access to one of the Chips Joint Undertaking’s funds is being backed by an initial ££5m this year from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and delivered by Innovate UK. An additional £30 million is due to support UK participation in further research between 2025 and 2027.
By joining the fund and contributing in the same way as all other countries who take part, the UK sector has enhanced access to bid for funding support from the €1.3 billion pot, funded by Horizon Europe.
Announcing the move at a conference of global semiconductor leaders in London, technology Minister Saqib Bhatti said: “Our membership of the Chips Joint Undertaking will boost Britain’s strengths in semiconductor science and research to secure our position in the global chip supply chain.
“This underscores our unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of technology and cements our important role in shaping the future of semiconductor technologies around the world.”
This follows the UK joining Horizon Europe through a bespoke new agreement with the EU last year. The programme is giving UK companies and research institutions opportunities to participate in global work to develop new technologies and research projects, in areas from health to AI.
Tens of thousands of UK companies are now eligible for Horizon Europe grants, which are worth £450,000 to a business on average.
UK firms already benefitting from Horizon funding include Nova Innovation, whose consortium won over £17 million to develop tidal energy in Orkney, and South Yorkshire tech firm The Floow who are part of a project awarded just under £3 million, looking into road safety.
Jari Kinaret, Chips JU executive director, said: “We are very happy to welcome the UK to the Chips Joint Undertaking as a participating state. We are looking forward to working with the UK partners to develop the European industrial ecosystem in microelectronics and its applications, contributing to the continent’s scientific excellence and innovation leadership in semiconductor technologies and related fields.”
This year, the Chips Joint Undertaking fund has been aligned to UK research expertise. In 2024, it includes two focussed calls for funding bids on semiconductors for cars and other vehicles, as well as RISC-V, an open-source architecture that aims to accelerate semiconductor innovation by lowering the cost of chip design.
It also provides more open opportunities for scientists and firms to bid for research support.
Sean Redmond, managing partner at SiliconCatalyst, said: “UK Semiconductor startups have a rich history of collaboration with the European Union. Our semiconductor research base is the fourth largest in the world.
“Commercialising these inventions with the help of the EU Chips Joint Undertaking will significantly increase their probability of success, mitigating risks by local collaborations that provide a clear path from lab to fab.”
Jalal Bagherli, Chairman, PTSL, Chair, Williams advanced engineering and co-chair of UK Semiconductor Advisory Panel, said: “As the UK Semiconductor Strategy ramps up its implementation phase in support of a thriving industry, I believe this initiative is the next major step enabling engagement with our global partners to advance the state of the art in chip development and innovative packaging technologies in the UK.”
The UK has joined the initiative as a ‘participating state’, allowing the country to collaborate more closely with European partners on semiconductor innovation.
As a participating state, the UK will have a role in setting research priorities and funding decisions as the fund evolves in the years ahead.
This includes the opportunity for the UK to be a part of a new funding opportunity with the Republic of Korea to research ways to combine semiconductor chips to improve performance through advanced packaging – which the UK-Republic of Korea Semiconductor Framework, signed in November last year.
British research has elsewhere contributed to global efforts to push semiconductor technology forward in fields like “silicon photonics”, which creates faster chips by using light instead of electricity, and compound semiconductors, which enable improved performance over silicon in key applications such as power transmission and radiofrequency communications.
Gartner, Inc, the technology research and consulting firm, has revealed nine new predictions for data and analytics, ranging from generative AI (genAI) trends to data governance and APIs.
The predictions have been heavily informed by changing regulatory frameworks and the continued and often controversial emergence of advanced AI applications.
As AI proliferates into different industries and our every day lives, it repeatedly intersects with questions on ownership, the future of work, ethical decision-making, and how technology can be used for good.
IP Loss Risks and Copyright Infringement to Slow GenAI Adoption
By 2026, defensive spend to derisk loss of intellectual property and the occurrence of copyright infringement is predicted to slow generative AI (genAI) adoption and diminish returns, according to Gartner.
“As GenAI advances, regulators are rushing to keep pace,” said Rita Sallam, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.
“IP risk is not a new issue. However, copyright infringement risk, previously a limited risk, now affects potentially everyone in the organisation. Copyright infringement risk must be incorporated into the vendor selection and governance process, while workers must be trained on assessment tools.”
Pressure Mounts to Demonstrate Business Value
By 2026, Gartner predicts that three quarters (75%) of CDAOs that have failed to make organisation-wide influence their top priority will have been assimilated back into technology functions.
“Rhere is greater pressure than ever on D&A leaders to demonstrate business value, but now, it’s existential to their role,” said Sallam.
Data and Analytics (D&A) leaders need to become indispensable and highlight the business outcomes stakeholders care about, such as data quality impact and the accuracy of personalisation models which drives higher revenue and retention.
Governance As a Key Business Strategy
By 2027, two fifths (40%) of chief data and analytics officers (CDAOs) will have rebranded governance as business enablement of strategic business initiatives from the outset.
Today, governance is critical to value realisations and chief data and analytics officers (CDAOs) must track governance investments against business value.
Organisations that do so will achieve both their data governance objective and business enablement.
“CDAOs who are successful in articulating the impact of D&A governance through the lens of value to the stakeholder are more likely to be strategically involved across the organization,” said Sallam.
“Top-performing D&A leaders are far more effective at informing senior business leaders about the impact of D&A capabilities than low performers.”
Accounting for Ethics is Vital
By 2027, 60% of organisations may fail to realise the anticipated value of their AI use cases due to incohesive ethical governance frameworks.
While governance is often underinvested and undervalued, it is a necessary factor of success.
However, many leaders will fail to account for ethics as they proceed with AI.
“Organisations should translate principles into practical guidelines; people won’t adopt it if D&A leaders don’t,” said Sallam. “Seek out influential allies to make governance a strategic business enabler to make ethics a distinct priority in governance discussion.”
Abandonment Issues to Face LLMs
By 2028, more than 50% of enterprises that have built their own large language models (LLMs) from scratch will abandon their efforts due to costs, complexity, and technical debt.
CDAOs should balance AI ambition with risk tolerance and view the cost of tech debt as an “options price” to accelerate learning and market impact.
With this in mind, Gartner predicts that by 2027, GenAI tools will be used to explain legacy business applications and create appropriate replacements, reducing modernisation costs by 70%.
“The key will be to design open systems to switch models as innovation warrants,” said Sallam. “That redundancy will have a cost as well, but may be offset by GenAI tools that can accelerate migrations.”
GenAI Connects Insights and Actions
By 2027, Gartner predicts that 75% of new analytics content will be contextualised for intelligent application through GenAI, enabling a composable connection between insights and actions.
Natural language has become the new application composer and as such, adoption of GenAI industry models will grow.
CDAOs should explore autonomous agents to take action as they mature. By 2027, over half of the GenAI models used by enterprises will be domain-specific, up from 1% today.
“The next wave of autonomous agents have the potential to take action as part of an application workflow as they mature,” said Sallam.
Cloud Spending Will Get Automated
By 2027, GenAI-enhanced cost optimisation will automate 40% of data and analytics spending in cloud-based data ecosystems.
Cost and cost uncertainty are significant risks to success; GenAI-enhanced cost optimisation will offer CDAOs a competitive advantage.
GenAI is both the problem and the solution when it comes to cost optimisation, which is a complex discipline with highly interconnected outcomes.
“GenAI uncertainty will drive adoption of GenAI-enabled Cloud Financial Management tools or Augmented FinOps,” said Sallam.
“GenAI provides an easy, natural language interface that can reduce complexity by identifying connections between disparate components of the data ecosystem; organizations should look for vendors with these capabilities on their roadmap.”
APIs Will Go Natural
By 2025, use of natural language as a primary data management application programming interface (API) will be dominant interface leading to a 100x consumption of data across the ecosystem.
One of the biggest challenges for data management leaders to showcase value and scale their engineering efforts is business use and adoption of data.
Incorporating GenAI in data platforms makes it easier to use natural language through prompts as a common API to create queries and also to perform mappings.
“GenAI is set to transform data management technology and platforms, and AI-ready data will be a critical element of AI success,” said Sallam. “D&A leaders should start prioritizing projects, pipelines and data products that are not being utilized due to lack of data prep skills from the business.”
From Consumer to Creator
By 2025, Gartner predicts that 90% of current analytics content consumers will become content creators enabled by AI.
“Natural language will not only be the language of data, it will also turn most content consumers into content creators enabled by AI; expect new user experiences beyond dashboards,” said Sallam.
“We’ve been seeing this for a while, but new natural language and automated insight have driven user experience to displace dashboard use.”
The European Union is one step closer to adopting their AI Act, a world first, after approving a provisional agreement to regulate the rapidly emerging technology.
The AI Act is set to regulate foundation models and generative AI, from their development to their deployment, to mitigate risks associated with the advanced tech.
It mainly focuses on large models that are trained on a plethora of data to generate outputs and perform functions, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
High-impact, general-purpose AI models as well as high-risk AI models will be regulated, and will have specific transparency obligations to follow. They will also be required to uphold EU copyright laws.
AI models and systems will be rated on a scale of their associated risks as far as their data harvesting and deployment.
Decision-making AI models will face some of the greatest scrutiny under the bill, and some deployments will be greatly restricted under the act, such as real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces.
High-risk applications include deployments in critical infrastructure, including health, law enforcement, education, and border patrol.
However, the EU expects that most services will fall into low risk categories, which would include spam filters.
“I welcome the overwhelming support from the European Parliament for the EU AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive, binding framework for trustworthy AI. Europe is now a global standard-setter in trustworthy AI,” EU industry chief Thierry Breton said.
All that is left for the law to come into effect is for lawyers and translators to go over the bill, and for the European Council to give its seal of approval.
In an effort to dispel misinformation, Google has announced that all election-related questions will be restricted on its AI chatbot Gemini.
The new restrictions will begin rolling out in India ahead of their upcoming elections, but Google has indicated that the same restrictions will come into effect in other countries with elections this year, including in the US and UK.
Gemini, formally known as Bard, is Google’s AI chatbot, a rival of ChatGPT, and has faced criticism recently for its art generation feature for not depicting certain races in AI-generated images.
Research into Large Language Models (LLMs), including Gemini and ChatGPT, have revealed different political leanings and biases, sparking concern that the answers they generate to political questions can perpetuate skewed views.
In a blog post, Google said that they would restrict Gemini answering election questions “out of an abundance of caution.”
“We take our responsibility for providing high-quality information for these types of queries seriously, and are continuously working to improve our protections,” the post read.
Google is taking a cautious approach to its AI after the recent image-generation controversy, and has since pulled the tool saying it was “missing the mark.”
Their other efforts include digital watermarking, launching ad disclosure requirements for election ads containing synthetic content.
Users will also be provided with information to assess the credibility and context of images found online.
Hiring activity across Scotland fell again in February, according to the latest Royal Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs survey, compiled by S&P Global.
Recruiters reported falls in both permanent staff appointments and temporary billings.
However, trends diverged as permanent placements fell at the quickest pace in 15 months, while the downturn in temp billings moderated since January.
According to anecdotal evidence, economic uncertainty and subdued demand for staff had weighed on hiring decisions.
“The latest recruitment survey continues to highlight reduced hiring activity across Scotland amid a backdrop of lingering economic uncertainty,” Sebastian Burnside, chief economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.
“While lower confidence meant that employers remain wary of taking on additional staff, there were also reports that shortages of suitably-skilled workers had impacted recruiters abilities to fill roles.
“At the same time, candidates were cautious to seek new opportunities, instead favouring security in their current roles or pausing their job search.
“With vacancies continuing to fall, this suggests that we could see a further deterioration in hiring conditions across Scotland in the months to come.
“However, starting pay for both permanent new joiners and temp workers continued to increase at marked rates, suggesting that while overall hiring activity is down, for the right skillset employers are willing to raise their offers.”
Demand weakness was highlighted by marked falls in both permanent and temporary vacancies during February. However, pay pressures persisted amid competition for suitably-skilled workers.
February also showed a third consecutive monthly fall in permanent staff appointments across Scotland. This decline, as well as the quickened rate of contraction in January, was linked to fewer vacancies.
This matched the overall fall in permanent hires in the UK as a whole, but the rate of contraction in Scotland was sharper than the rest of the UK.
Temp billings also declined in Scotland, but when adjusted for seasonality, this represented only a fractional fall.
The availability of permanent staff has also fallen – February’s decline was only slightly less rapid than that seen in January.
A lack of suitably-skilled workers and economic uncertainty making people hesitant to seek out new roles has contributed to this continued trend.
In stark contrast, the availability of permanent candidates rose sharply at the UK level.
As has been the case in each month since December 2020, pay increased for permanent new joiners across Scotland during February.
The rate of salary inflation quickened to the fastest since November, after having softened to a near three-year low in January. The rise in salaries was widely attributed to shortages of suitably-skilled candidates.
For the first time since November, the rate of salary inflation across Scotland was stronger than that seen for the UK as a whole.
Scottish recruiters signalled a fall in permanent vacancies during February, thereby extending the current run of contraction to seven months. The rate of decline moderated slightly from January, but was rapid overall and outpaced the UK-wide average.
Aside from medical and care, all of the eight monitored employment groups registered lower demand for permanent staff.
February data revealed a seventh successive monthly fall in demand for short-term staff across Scotland. The rate of contraction softened from the previous survey period but was sharp overall. Short-term vacancies across the UK as a whole meanwhile declined for the first time in three-and-a-half years, albeit only marginally.
Heriot-Watt University is to help train a new generation of researchers in critical technologies through six new centres.
The new centres are part of an investment of more than £1 billion in 65 Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) led by universities across Britain that is being announced by the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The centres are being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) – the main funding body for engineering and physical sciences research in the UK – and will train more than 4,000 students studying Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees in areas of national importance including artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, semiconductors, telecoms and engineering biology.
Heriot-Watt is leading two of the six new centres and collaborating in a further four.
The two centres being led by Heriot-Watt will train researchers in net zero industries and the use of photonics – the science of light – in sensing and measurement. These are called the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Green Industrial Futures and the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Use-Inspired Photonic Sensing and Metrology.
Derryck Reid, Professor and photonics expert in Heriot-Watt’s School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said the science of photonic sensing and metrology – using light to create highly advanced detection and measurement tools – was vital to addressing challenges in sectors including transport, energy, manufacturing, medicine, food production and security – but was hampered by a lack of specialist researchers.
“Photonics is the fifth most productive manufacturing sector in the UK and generates £14.5 billion annually across 1,200 firms with 76,000 staff,” Professor Reid said.
“Photonic sensing and metrology is part of this sector that’s vital to our economy. But there aren’t enough professional-level researchers who understand this field and also have high-level business, management and communication skills.
“Our new Centre for Doctoral Training will train these specialists to help the sector continue advancing products and services that have far-reaching impacts on our society.”
Real world applications for photonic sensing and metrology include remote wind turbine monitoring, precision measurement in manufacturing and tools to measure nutrients and potential contaminants in food production.
The new EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Use-Inspired Photonic Sensing and Metrology is a collaboration with six other universities, including the University of Huddersfield, which is a centre of excellence in optical metrology. The centre represents a continuation of Heriot-Watt’s doctoral training in photonics, making it one of the UK’s longest-running doctoral centres.
The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Green Industrial Futures being led by Heriot-Watt is a collaboration with four of the UK’s leading institutions in industrial decarbonisation – Heriot-Watt University, Imperial College London, University of Bath and University of Sheffield.
The partners will deliver a cohort of 100 PhD graduates trained in environmental sustainability and the transition to clean energy.
Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer, deputy principal for global sustainability at Heriot-Watt University and director of the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre, said: “There’s a substantial and pressing demand for training doctoral-level graduates to underpin research and development for industrial decarbonisation, and also more widely, to prepare future leaders for the net zero agenda.
“Our Centre for Doctoral Training will deliver this next generation of global leaders, through a world-leading research and training programme than spans multiple research disciplines. This will systematically bring together key technology solutions to fully decarbonise industry and address national and global priorities.”
Research projects at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Green Industrial Futures will be “challenging and original,” Professor Maroto-Valer added, and will include a focus on hydrogen and low-carbon fuels; carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS); CO2 removal and resource and energy efficiency. Research projects will also address the key policy, social and environmental considerations to integrate and deploy these technologies.
The Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre is a UK research and innovation hub for industrial decarbonisation. It is based virtually at Heriot-Watt and was launched in 2021 with more than 140 partners from industry, research organisations, trade organisations, policy makers and government bodies.
Heriot-Watt University is co-leading a third EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in collaboration with the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh to bring together researchers in fundamental mathematics and physics. The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Algebra, Geometry and Quantum Fields (AGQ) CDT is the UK’s first Centre for Doctoral Training to offer specific training in algebra, geometry, topology and mathematical physics.
Multidisciplinary research in these fields is driving developments in areas including quantum computing, machine learning, information security and cryptography.
Professor Richard Szabo, of Heriot-Watt’s School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, is the coordinator of industrial engagement for the CDT. He said: “Our graduates will be equipped with the skills needed to translate mathematics into practical tools with real-world applicability and will be ready to become leaders in their chosen field.”
Heriot-Watt is also a partner in three further EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training: the EPSRC and MOD CDT in Sensing, Processing, and AI for Defence and Security (SPADS), led by the University of Edinburgh with Dr Yoann Altmann at Heriot-Watt; the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Quantum Informatics led by University of Edinburgh with Professor Erika Andersson at Heriot-Watt – and the EPSRC CDT in Applied Quantum Technologies, led by University of Strathclyde with Professor Alessandro Fedrizzi at Heriot-Watt.
The announcement of these six EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training follows the recent news of a further two CDTs being led by Heriot-Watt University: the UKRI AI CDT in Dependable and Deployable Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, led by Professor Ron Petrick and the NERC Centre for Ecologically Relevant Multiple Stressor Effects on Wildlife (ECOWILD), led by Dr Frances Orton.
Overall, the eight CDTs are expected to help train almost 600 PhD students in technologies that are critical to industry, the economy and sustainability.
Steve McLaughlin, deputy principal of research and impact at Heriot-Watt University, said: “This investment represents a significant uplift in Doctoral Training programmes for Heriot-Watt University and recognises our research strengths in critical technologies including photonics, green technologies and quantum applications. We’re involved in more than 10% of the EPSRC-funded CDTs which, for an institution of our scale, is remarkable.
“The CDTs focus on key technological areas that will deliver for the UK economy. They also attract significant industry support in terms of investment and engagement in the training of the next generation of researchers. Our integrated approach to business and enterprise partnership working was key to this success, with more than 170 unique industry organisations agreeing to support the CDTs and fully funded studentships.”
EPSRC is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the UK’s national funding agency for investing in science and research. The investment being announced includes £500 million from UKRI and the Ministry of Defence, plus a further £590 million from universities and business partners.
Professor Charlotte Deane, EPSRC executive chair, said: “The Centres for Doctoral Training announced today will help to prepare the next generation of researchers, specialists and industry experts across a wide range of sectors and industries.
“Spanning locations across the UK and a wide range of disciplines, the new centres are a vivid illustration of the UK’s depth of expertise and potential, which will help us to tackle large-scale, complex challenges and benefit society and the economy.
“The high calibre of both the new centres and applicants is a testament to the abundance of research excellence across the UK, and EPSRC’s role as part of UKRI is to invest in this excellence to advance knowledge and deliver a sustainable, resilient and prosperous nation.”
New research has revealed that UK businesses lost over 50 million hours and £3.7 billion due too internet failures in 2023, according to a new report.
While this statistic paints a stark picture, the research commissioned by Beaming, a broadband ISP, does show that the amount of time businesses lose to connectivity failures has fallen by a fifth in the last five years.
However, growing internet dependence means that the cost of downtime has increased by 400%.
The research is based on a survey of 504 UK businesses using connectivity from various internet service providers by Censuswide.
Cumulatively, UK businesses experienced 8.8 million internet failures and 50.5 million hours of disruptive downtime in 2023, where the ability to trade or access vital services was impaired.
The amount of time businesses lost to connectivity failures in 2023 was a fifth lower than in 2018, when Beaming carried out a similar survey. However, the cost increased fivefold, from £742m in 2018 to £3.7bn in 2023.
Heightened dependence on connectivity for communication, e-commerce and access to cloud applications means 15% of UK businesses, some 850,000 nationwide, would now start losing money the moment their connectivity fails. This is 81,000 more firms than five years ago.
During 8-hour internet outages – a standard working day – 39% of businesses now would lose money. This compares to 34% at the end of 2018 and represents an increase of 240,000 companies nationwide.
According to the research, median time for financial losses to kick in from internet failures is six hours for businesses with employees today. This applies to employers of all sizes, from micro-companies with two to 10 employees to big companies with more than 250 staff members.
SMEs bore the brunt of internet disruptions in 2023, enduring an average of three to four failures and 19 hours of downtime each. Those working a standard eight-hour day and five-day week lose more than two working days a year to downtime, around 1% of their productive time.
The hospitality, IT, and manufacturing sectors experienced the highest levels of internet downtime and the biggest financial impact. On average, hospitality businesses lost 27 hours to downtime in 2023, while companies in the IT industry lost an estimated £555m to connectivity failures.
“The adoption of digital technologies has been a lifeline for business survival and a driver for increased prosperity in recent years, but this has come with a heightened dependence on connectivity,” Sonia Blizzard, managing director of Beaming said.
“Companies are demanding more of their connectivity than ever before, and those relying on e-commerce, automation and public cloud services then incur the highest costs due to internet downtime.”
“Greater use of faster, stronger, more resilient forms of connectivity has helped reduce downtime, whilst downtime has become much more costly. Good planning, higher capacity services and expert support are vital now to reduce the risk of internet failure and the associated financial fallout.”
Creative Informatics, the research and development programme established to bring together Edinburgh’s creative industries and tech sector, is partnering with the Edinburgh Science Festival to celebrate the end of its funded programme and showcase the wide-ranging community it built.
Events and activities inspired by the programme, which began in 2018, will come together in a festival programme packed with creative experiences, demonstrations, and debates at the National Museum of Scotland and Summerhall.
A new interactive exhibition “Unleashing the Power of Data” runs throughout the two weeks of the festival at the National Museum of Scotland, and showcases some of the incredible artworks, objects, and innovations developed by Creative Informatics community.
VR and AI tools are set to combine with light, sound and music across a series of immersive installations, combing Scotland’s burgeoning tech sector with its bustling creative scene.
Exhibits will include a VR obstacle course through digital landscapes traversing forests, valleys, and cliffs from game designers Bear Hammer; a collaborative music making app that transforms phones into magic wands, allowing audiences to make music together in real time, created by Ray Interactice; an interactive light-box from artist Dominka Jackowska combining art, sound, and animation; an AI-driven, Lego-powered DJ centre which allows visitors to create their own music using building-blocks, designed by Playable Technology; data-inspired art and sculpture from artists Rebecca Kaye, Mella Shaw, Caitlin Macdonald and Inge Panneels; and a digital exploration into Edinburgh’s fabled ‘lost’ Empire Palace Theatre.
Other events include ‘Creative AI for Creative Work’, a talk at the National Museum of Scotland exploring the burgeoning world of AI and its positive potential for use across the creative sectors, as Chair Frauke Zeller – Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Creative Informatics at Napier University – is joined by creative professionals working with AI to enhance their projects – from developing playful innovations to creating new revenue streams for sound and audio production.
Lastly, experience why Scotland has a global reputation in the video game, film and TV industries at Let’s Play, a data-driven evening for adult audiences at Summerhall, part of the festival’s ‘Nights Out’ programme. This playful evening features interactive experiences, short talks from industry creatives and researchers, and AI-generated beats creating a live soundtrack to the event.
‘We’re really excited to be celebrating the achievements of the Creative Informatics programme at this year’s Edinburgh Science Festival,” Professor Melissa Terras, professor of digital cultural heritage at the University of Edinburgh said.
“Our events have been specially curated to highlight some of the extraordinary work developed through our programme – from innovations in gaming and audio production to artistic creations that push the boundaries of how we think, feel and interact with the world around us.
“These events and exhibits showcase the incredible Creative Informatics community that has been built over the last five years, whose practice, products and networks will form a lasting and supportive legacy for creative professionals across Edinburgh and South East Scotland.”
The event will begin on 30 March and run until 7 April, with venues at both the National Museum of Scotland at at Summerhall.
Ransomware continues to be the biggest cybersecurity threat to small- and medium- sized businesses (SMBs), according to a new report from Sophos, the cybersecurity-as-a-service firm.
Their new report, Cybercrime on the Main Street, has revealed the biggest trends facing SMBs, tracking the continued prevalence of ransomware, the top forms of malware used, and how threat actors are sharpening their attack skills.
According to the report, 50% of malware detections for SMBs were keyloggers, skyware, and stealers, malware that attackers use to steal data and credentials. Attackers use the stolen information to gain unauthorised remote access to extort victims, deploy ransomware, and more.
The Sophos report also analysed initial access brokers (IABs) – criminals who specialise in breaking into computer networks. As seen in the report, IABs are using the dark web to advertise their ability and services to break specifically into SMB networks or sell ready-to-go-access to SMBs they’ve already cracked.
“The value of ‘data,’ as currency has increased exponentially among cybercriminals, and this is particularly true for SMBs, which tend to use one service or software application, per function, for their entire operation,” said Christopher Budd, director of Sophos X-Ops research at Sophos
“For example, let’s say attackers deploy an infostealer on their target’s network to steal credentials and then get hold of the password for the company’s accounting software. Attackers could then gain access to the targeted company’s financials and have the ability to funnel funds into their own accounts.
“There’s a reason that more than 90% of all cyber-attacks reported to Sophos in 2023 involved data or credential theft, whether through ransomware attacks, data extortion, unauthorised remote access, or simply data theft.”
Ransomware Still the Biggest Cyberthreat to SMBs
Even though the number of ransomware attacks against SMBs have stablised, it continues to be the biggest cyberthreat to SMBs, according to the research.
Out of the SMB cases handled by Sophos, LockBit was the top ransomware gang wreaking havoc.
Akira and BlackCat were second and third, respectively. SMBs studied in the report also faced attack by lingering older and lesser-known ransomware such as BitLoker and Crytox.
Ransomware operators continue to change ransomware tactics, according to the report. This includes leveraging remote encryption and targeting managed service providers (MSPs).
Between 2022 and 2023, the number of ransomware attacks that involved remote encryption, when attackers use an unmanaged device on organisations’ networks to encrypt files on other systems in the network – increased by 62%.
In addition, this past year, Sophos’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) team responded to five cases involving small businesses that were attacked through an exploit in their MSPs’ remote monitoring and management (RMM) software.
Attackers Sharpen Their Social Engineering and Email Attacks
Following ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) attacks were the second highest type of attacks that Sophos IR handled in 2023, according to the Sophos report.
These BEC attacks and other social engineering campaigns contain an increasing level of sophistication.
Rather than simply sending an email with a malicious attachment, attackers are now more likely to engage with their targets by sending a series of conversational emails back and forth or even calling them.
In an attempt to evade detection by traditional spam prevention tools, attackers are now experimenting with new formats for their malicious content, embedding images that contain the malicious code or sending malicious attachments in OneNote or archive formats. In one case Sophos investigated, the attackers sent a PDF document with a blurry, unreadable thumbnail of an “invoice.” The download button contained a link to a malicious website.
The Scottish Impact Investor Readiness Programme aims to address growth barriers facing Scottish businesses, specifically informed by research into the challenges businesses centred on environmental and societal impacts face when attempting to scale-up.
While aiding in other obstacles facing businesses, the programme focuses on helping organisations develop a more clear understanding of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues of their business, and how to measure impact.
Experts from across the University of Strathclyde are set to deliver the programme, from the ScaleUp Institute-endorsed Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship and the Centre for Sustainable Development.
“As an impact investor, we can see first-hand how focusing on critical impact measures can drive long-term societal and economic benefits for Scotland, for generations to come,” David Ritchie, executive director of partnerships and engagement at the bank, said.
“Investors demand more than commercial returns, they also want to see the positive human impact that their funding enables,“ he added. “It’s never been more pressing for businesses to understand and embed the principles of impact investing in their business plans.”
John Anderson, director of growth programmes at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, added: “Having supported over 450 SMEs since 2015, across multiple practical programmes, we’re delighted to partner with Scottish National Investment Bank to continue our mission in supporting leaders of ambitious, growth-oriented businesses.
“Thanks to the partnership arrangement, the programme has been made as accessible as possible, with fees heavily subsidised, reducing the usual cost of £7,500 down to £500 per participant.“
The programme begins on 27 August, and applications are now open.
The National Robotarium, one of Heriot-Watt University‘s Global Research Institutes, launched an ambitious manifesto at an exclusive event at the Houses of Parliament.
‘Reaping the Rewards of the Robotics Revolution: Making the UK an active player in the future global economy’ sets out a five-point plan for establishing the UK as a world-leader in robotics, including creating a Robotics UK agency to develop a national strategy, and investing in a UK-wide network of robotics centres inspired by the National Robotarium, based at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
The policy document highlights the success of the National Robotarium model in driving increased productivity, efficiency and skills development through robotics, and outlines how it can be used as a blueprint to put the UK at the heart of the global robotics revolution, estimated to be worth $283.19 billion (£221.10bn) by 2032.
“It is inevitable that robots will play a transformational role in the future of the world’s economy and society, and the UK needs to be on the front foot to embrace this change,” Stewart Miller, chief executive of The National Robotarium said.
Sponsored by Heriot-Watt’s local MP Joanna Cherry, the event held at Parliament brought together key stakeholders from science, industry and policy to hear talks from Heriot-Watt principal and vice-chancellor professor Richard Williams, National Robotarium chief executive, Stewart Miller, and an impressive roster of robotics start-ups – Touchlab Ltd, Crover, and BioLiberty – that are utilising the facility’s business acceleration and incubation support.
“Like much of the work at Heriot-Watt University, it plays an important role in providing a place where academic research meets industry to find practical robotic applications to the world’s biggest challenges,” Heriot-Watt local MP Joanna Cherry, who sponsored the even in Parliament, said.
Stewart Miller said: “It is inevitable that robots will play a transformational role in the future of the world’s economy and society, and the UK needs to be on the front foot to embrace this change.
“By getting to showcase the ongoing success of the National Robotarium – which has already accomplished so much in its first 18 months – and speak directly to policymakers within the walls of Parliament, I am hopeful that decision makers will recognise this opportunity and adopt our ambitious plans that seek to move the UK from passive consumer to active player in the robotics market.
“But to be a benefactor of this multi-billion-dollar industry, we must act now.”
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has found that the EU Commission failed to issue appropriate safeguards for personal data shared with non-EU countries.
Specifically, the EDPS has found that the EU Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 was in breach of several key data protection rules.
For this contract, the EDPS found that EU Commission did not sufficiently specify what types of personal data are to be collected and for which explicit and specified purposes when using Microsoft 365.
“It is the responsibility of the EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (EUIs) to ensure that any processing of personal data outside and inside the EU/EEA, including in the context of cloud-based services, is accompanied by robust data protection safeguards and measures,” Wojciech Wiewiórowski, EDPS, said.
“This is imperative to ensure that individuals’ information is protected, as required by Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, whenever their data is processed by, or on behalf of, an EUI.”
Therefore, the EDPS has ordered the EU Commission to suspend all data flows resulting from the use of Microsoft 365 to Microsoft and to its affiliates located in countries outside the EU and the European Economic Area, as well as bring its processing operations into compliance with EU regulations.
While the EU Commission has yet to respond with a comment on the ruling, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “Concerns raised by the European Data Protection Supervisor relate largely to stricter transparency requirements under the EUDPR, a law that applies only to the European Union institutions.”
The Financial Conduct Authority has changed its stance and will now allow recognised investment exchanges to create cryptoasset-backed exchange notes (cETNs)on the UK market.
These products would be available for professional investors, such as investment firms and credit institutions authorised or regulated to operate in financial markets only.
Exchanges will need to continue to make sure sufficient controls are in place, so trading is orderly and proper protection is afforded to professional investors.
The FCA did stipulate that cETNs must meet all the requirements of the UK Listing Regime, for example on prospectuses and on-going disclosure.
With increased insight and data due to a longer period of trading history, the FCA believes exchanges and professional investors should now be able to better establish whether cETNs meet their risk appetite.
However, the FCA continues to believe that cETNs and crypto derivatives are ill-suited for retail consumers due to their perceived risks.
As a result, the ban on the sale of cETNs and crypto derivatives to retail consumers will remain in place.
Even with the new allowances, the FCA continues to warn people that cryptoassets are high risk and largely unregulated – those who invest should be prepared to lose all their money.
The National Cyber Security Council (NCSC) has released a free new tool aiding organisations in protecting their email from cyber-attacks.
Recent government reports show that 32% of small businesses faced a breach or cyber-attack just in the last 12 months, showing that regardless of size, every organisation is at risk.
One of the most commonly reported techniques cyber-criminals employ is phishing, where criminals impersonate an organisation or person to commit online fraud or to spread ransomware or malware.
To help prevent the disastrous effects of these cyber-attacks, the NCSC is encouraging organisations to register with their free email security check.
The online tool runs a series of technical checks in seconds, without requiring personal information or software installation.
By simply entering an email domain, the tool will identify any vulnerabilities in the email set up that could be exploited by a cyber-criminal.
The tool is designed specifically to help with email anti-spoofing to stop cyber-criminals from sending emails pretending to be you or your organisation, and email privacy.
The Check your email security online tool is just the latest iteration of the NCSC’s scheme to improve organisational cybersecurity, expanding from their check your cyber security website.
This feature is designed to help non-technical users identify and fix some of the most important cybersecurity issues that could face their organisation.
It also helps users identify common vulnerabilities in their IT system: users can check their IP address and website, as well as their web browser.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced the 2024 Spring Budget, detailing a range of new tax reforms and financial allocations which the Conservative party claims will spur economic growth and strengthen public services.
The Chancellor announced that the Scottish Government will receive nearly £300 million pounds from the UK government’s budget.
In another move, the UK government will sell some of its shares in NatWest, after it previously bailed out the bank, formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, during the financial crisis.
As far as tech, the Chancellor’s focus was in stark contract to his Autumn budget of the previous year. Headline technologies such as AI and renewable energy was mentioned largely in passing, perhaps denoting their ubiquitous rather than novel appearance in government initiatives.
Previously covered, the Hunt mentioned his public sector productivity plan, which would include the massive task of digitising the NHS, and using AI to speed up hospital processes, as well as improving the NHS app.
“Backed by £4.2 billion in funding, the plan will allow public services to invest in new technologies like AI, replace outdated IT systems, free up frontline workers from time-consuming admin tasks and take action to reduce costs down the line,” a statement from the government read.
The NHS is set to receive £3.4bn as part of this funding to update old IT and introduce more AI to diagnosing processes.
The Spring Budget will also allocate £120m for renewable industries to develop and invest in infrastructure such as offshore windfarms and carbon capture projects.
This is part of the £360m package for R&D and manufacturing projects in the UK, which is set to go to the life sciences, automotive, and aerospace sectors.
What Does the Tech Industry Have to Say?
Compared to previous budgets, tech appeared to play a minimal role in the UK’s Spring Budget, contrasting greatly with some of the government’s major ambitions to become a tech superpower.
“The Spring Budget, likely the last before the General Election, took place against an economic backdrop of continued stagnant growth, diminished living standards and scrutiny around inflation,” Rupal Karia, country leader UK&I, of Celonis explained.
As such, many would have expected the Chancellor to take this opportunity to play to the UK’s strengths, and give one final push to make the UK a tech superpower before the general election gears up.
“The UK is punching above its weight in global AI rankings. Right now, it’s placed 4th internationally in the Global AI Index, thanks to a consistent high calibre pool of tech talent,” Erin Nicholson, global head of data protection and privacy at global tech consultancy, Thoughtworks said. “To keep pace with this, the Spring Budget needed to include funding for Data and AI education.
“As a country, we are also falling behind on the reliability and scale of access infrastructure, from electricity and internet to supercomputing capabilities,” she also pointed out. “The government could make investment in our network infrastructure, to ensure all organisations can take advantage of AI and the productivity strides it brings, not just in cities and areas with better internet speed.”
The investment in digitising public services was met with positivity: “This level of investment in technology across the NHS and the police is vital to improve the quality and speed of the medical service and criminal investigation,” Rashik Parmar MBE, chief executive of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT said.
However, he thought the funding did not go quite far enough: “But funding for AI must include investment in digital professionals – people – who will work with it and lead it at all levels. They need not just high degrees of competence, but an understanding of ethical principles, which are key when using automated technology that affects our lives, like processing patient data, or responding to emergency enquires.
“We need the public to trust that the UK’s journey to become the next Silicon Valley will make their lives better, knowing it is delivered by accountable experts who meet independent standards.”
As part of its investments, the UK is also increasing funding for the Alan Turing Institute, a welcomed step for Martin Taylor, the co-founder and deputy CEO at Content Guru.
He said: “It’s also important the Chancellor announced plans to increase AI adoption within the UK public sector that will allow for cost savings to be made across the next few years.
“The UK has lagged behind other leading economies when it comes to productivity and more must be done to ensure the public sector is operating as efficiently as possible, especially against the backdrop of tough economic conditions.
“If implemented effectively, AI has the potential to transform public services by providing a much needed productivity boost all whilst balancing the books and not compromising on the delivery of services.”
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a call for views on how it may regulate the “consent or pay” model of data tracking on platforms.
The ICO says it is working on ways to clarify to the online advertising industry the methods in which they can employ advertising – or third-party – cookies in compliance with data protection law.
Focusing on “consent or pay” as a mechanism is likely due to its recent deployment across the EU by Meta in response to a major GDPR ruling prohibiting Facebook and Instagram from using third-party cookies without explicit consent from users.
Meta rolled out a subscription service to EU users, offering the option of a monthly fee for an ad-free experience where their data won’t be tracked, packaged, and sold to the highest bidder for behavioral advertisements. Otherwise, users could continue to use the website for free, paying only with unmitigated access to their personal data by third-party advertisers Meta deals with.
The policy is already being lambasted with lawsuits in Europe while the UK’s data watchdog catches up and reveals its somewhat neutral stance on the controversial concept.
In their call to views, the ICO says that pay or consent models are not explicitly prohibited by current data protection laws, but that organisations should be “careful” in how they consider the model to “ensure that consent to processing of personal information for personalised advertising has been freely given and is fully informed, as well as capable of being withdrawn without detriment.”
The key word does not appear to be ‘free’, however, if companies can charge users who do not give their consent to data processing. In other contexts, this is typically referred to as coercion.
The ICO does say that organisations need to consider if there is a power imbalance, for instance if the service is essential or if the platform has market dominance.
Further, organisations need to ensure that the fee is appropriate, that there are equivalent services for each ‘consent’ option, and that the choices are presented fairly and equally.
The proposed regulatory approach also calls for the ability for people to withdraw consent without detriment – which under consent or pay, may not be possible as a fee could be classified as a detriment to the user.
While the EU gears up to consider the legality of consent or pay under their GDPR, the UK is left with a lacklustre and tepid approach to new data model that monumentally alters users’ awareness of how personalised advertising and data tracking functions across the internet.
Platforms and websites that have been free to use for millions of users could now present users with two different price tags: one monetary, and one for their personal data.
Is the new regulatory model exposing the ugly truth of the internet: there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so is there no such thing as a free social platform? What price will consumers be willing to pay, and will they be forced to pay it to protect their personalised data?
Further, the UK’s data laws are set to change – the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is set to replace the UK’s GDPR. One of the most controversial stipulations in the bill includes the ability for the Secretary of State – an appointed government official – to override guidance and decisions made by the ICO, an independent regulator.
This rises only further concerns on who will protect consumer and user data rights as the UK pushes for more business-friendly legislation.
Less than 25% of government organisations will have generative AI (genAI) enabled citizen-facing services by 2027, according to Gartner, Inc.
Fear of public failure and a lack of community trust in government use of the technology will slow adoption for external use with citizens.
Like all industries over the past 15 months, governments have been exploring the opportunities and risks associated with the emergence of GenAI. Gartner’s annual global survey of over 2,400 CIOs and technology executives found that 25% of governments have deployed, or plan to deploy GenAI in the next 12 months.
A further 25% plan to deploy in the next 24 months. Early focus has been on establishing an initial governance framework to support experimentation and narrow adoption.
“While governments have been benefiting from the use of more mature AI technologies for years, risk and uncertainty are slowing GenAI’s adoption at scale, especially the lack of traditional controls to mitigate drift and hallucinations,” said Dean Lacheca, VP analyst at Gartner.
“In addition, a lack of empathy in service delivery and a failure to meet community expectations will undermine public acceptance of GenAI’s use in citizen-facing services.”
Align Adoption and Risk Appetite
To address this, Gartner recommends governments continue to actively deploy GenAI solutions that will improve internal aspects of citizen services.
“GenAI adoption by government organizations should move at a pace that is aligned to their risk appetite, to ensure that early missteps in the use of AI don’t undermine community acceptance of the technology in government service delivery,” said Lacheca.
“This will mean back-office opportunities will progress more rapidly than uses of the technology to serve citizens directly.”
According to Gartner, government organisations can accelerate GenAI adoption by focusing on use cases that predominantly impact internal resources, avoid perceived risks associated with the technology.
They should also build trust and mitigate associated risks by establishing transparent AI governance and assurance risks by establishing transparent AI governance and assurance frameworks for both internally developed and procured AI capabilities.
“These frameworks need to specifically address risks associated with citizen-facing service delivery use cases, such as inaccurate or misleading results, data privacy and secure conversations,” said Lacheca.
“This can be done by ensuring governance processes specifically address each risk both before and after initial implementation.”
In addition, government organisations should implement an empathy-focused practice of human-centred design when designing the use of citizen or workforce-facing AI solutions
This would help to ensure solutions remain in line with community expectations when it comes to determining how and when they should be used from a citizen-facing perspective.
Financial pressures and changing candidate expectations are driving a significant shift in hiring strategies in the UK, new research from HireVue reveals.
The survey of 900 hiring professionals and 2,319 candidates in the UK revealed new hiring strategies focused on using technology and a skills-first approach to find the best candidates, and achieve diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B) goals.
Revelations were underpinned by the ever-present talent shortage as well as an undulating economic landscape.
Tech Budgets Increase, Despite Overall Cuts
Economic headwinds are forcing nearly half of UK businesses to tighten their hiring purse strings with 47% cutting budgets over the last 12 months.
In response, 30% are turning to technology by increasing their tech budgets, in the hope of streamlining processes, targeting candidates more effectively, and ultimately finding cost savings. To fill vacancies and avoid external recruitment fees, 44% are promoting from within.
These trends highlight a shift towards tech-driven, cost-conscious hiring strategies in the face of economic uncertainty.
Beyond Resumes: Skills Assessments Reign Supreme
The hiring landscape is moving away from relying solely on resumes, towards a more objective and predictive assessment of an individual’s capabilities.
Almost three quarters of respondents, 72%, rely on skills assessments to evaluate a candidate’s true potential, while 34% prioritise a candidate’s potential over established experience.
This compliments candidate sentiment with 83% comfortable completing skills assessments and 71% aware of their transferable skills.
Further solidifying this trend, 63% of organisations surveyed have already adopted skills-based assessments to some extent as organisations recognise the importance of adaptability and future-proofing the workforce.
Tackling Talent Scarcity
Recognising the value of experience and expertise, businesses are increasingly turning to mature workers and internal mobility to fill talent gap.
Almost half of respondents, 46% actively seek to attract and retain mature workers, with 44% of businesses focusing on internal mobility, promoting career growth and development within their existing workforce.
However, there’s still work to be done on awareness of internal opportunities as less than half of candidates (46%), have ever considered applying for a job internally.
Tom Cornell, senior A/O Psychologist at HireVue, said: “This strategy not only saves on recruitment costs but also fosters employee engagement and loyalty. By embracing mature workers and internal mobility, businesses can access a wider talent pool, build a more diverse workforce, and gain a competitive edge in a very competitive job market.”
DEI&B Remains a Priority
Despite economic headwinds, almost half of the organisations surveyed, 45%, have met all or most of their DEI&B goal, highlighting a strong commitment to fostering inclusive workplaces.
Internal training emerges as a critical driver of progress, with 51% of businesses implementing programmes to educate employees and address potential biases.
However, over half haven’t met all or most of their goals, and 43% of UK hiring professionals are not changing their DEI&B budgets to meet their goals, proving that there is still progress to be made and achieving these goals is a lifelong commitment.
New survey data from Tech.co’s Impact of Technology on the Workplace report has revealed that more than 1 in 10 business leaders are unaware if they’ve been hacked.
The survey of 1047 US business leaders found that 11% of respondents – representing 115 different companies – admitted they were “not sure” whether their company had suffered a data breach in the last year.
Data breaches are set to be a continued cause for concern during the year ahead as 40% of surveyed business leaders think cybersecurity threats will “highly affect” their organisation’s performance this year.
But despite this looming threat, senior leadership are not doing enough to implement sufficient cybersecurity measure. 66% of businesses say they do not use password managers, and 59% do not currently use a VPN.
While the data breach landscape continues to diversity, Tech.co’s research also shows that one of the biggest threats to business security lies internally – specifically, the errors made by employees. “Human error” such as sending a document to the wrong address, is still at the centre of a significant number of cyber-attacks experienced by businesses.
Phishing attacks, which mostly reply on employee interaction with a link or fake landing page, proved to be the top reason for data breaches (23%) experienced by surveyed business leaders in 2023.
One business leader spoke to Tech.co about their company falling victim to a phishing email attack, revealing the email was “sent on a Friday evening, exploiting the reduced vigilance typical of week’s end”. This allowed the threat actor a 36-hour window before detection. The individual shared that a “special response team” of legal, IT, and communication stakeholders was required to devise a rescue plan and address impacted clients via email.
While phishing came in first, computer viruses (22%), and employee error (12%) also contributed significantly to data breaches in 2023.
“When the results from our survey came through, I was surprised to see some business leaders were “unsure” if their company had been hacked, especially considering how damaging a data breach can be to both a company’s reputation and its bottom line,” Tech.co’s lead writer, Aaron Drapkin commented.
“Responding to a major data breach is a wide-ranging process that involves virtually all of a business’s key stakeholders. Not only do you have to re-secure all of your company’s systems – which may involve re-authenticating your entire team’s account credentials – you also have to notify any customers or clients who’ve had their data exposed in the breach. On top of this, there’s a range of other, subsequent steps that businesses that have suffered a breach have to take to comply with the local data security and privacy laws.
“It’s vitally important that logging and reporting these kinds of incidents is done with as much transparency as possible, and that responses commence swiftly once the breach is discovered.
“If any leader at a business cannot confidently say whether their company’s systems have been hacked or not, then it may be time to revise how such incidents are reported and managed.”
Scotland is pulling ahead of the rest of the UK – in terms of its economic inactivity.
Scotland’s economic inactivity between October 2022 and September 2023 is at 31.7%, the highest of all UK nations.
CBI’s and Fraser of Allander’s Scottish Productivity Index revealed a stark picture for Scotland’s economic performance, finding that Scotland also fell behind in 10 out of 13 productivity indicators available in the rest of the UK.
In terms of business, Scottish GDP contracted by 0.3% in 2022 to 9.5%, whereas the rest of the UK increased to 9.8%, another case of Scotland lagging.
As far as exports, as a share of Scottish GDP they increased from 20.4% to 22.1% in 2022, whereas the UK rose to 33.4% as a whole.
Research and development for Scottish businesses as a percentage of GDP, showed a small decrease from 1.9% in 2020 to 1.8% in 2021. The UK, however, remained unchanged at 2.1%.
Despite lagging behind in several factors, Scotland does boast the highest percentage of the working-age population with a higher education, at 50%, whereas the rest of the UK has 43.5% with a higher education certificate or higher.
Scotland also shows a small rise in job-related training, rising from 26.1% in 2021 to 27.5% in 2022.
“Discussions around our country’s potential have gone on for far too long – now is the time to take decisive action as the window narrows on Scotland’s target of achieving net zero by 2045,” Tracy Black, the CBI’s chief strategy officer and devolved nations and regions ambassador, said.
“All Scotland’s sectors and regions, and the devolved and UK governments – regardless of their political differences – must work closely together for the benefit of business to achieve sustainable growth.
“With the Spring Budget tomorrow and a General Election looming, it is right to move beyond talking about ambitious goals and to take swift action before time runs out.
“Our shortage of skills and an ageing population means businesses have to look at other options such as new technology and innovation to make processes more efficient and improve productivity.”
She added: “Scotland has a highly educated workforce., we need to make sure they are contributing to sustainable economic growth by cultivating leadership skills, enhancing digital proficiency and integrating new technology.”
Mairi Spowage, director at the Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde, commented: “Despite improvements in the openness of the economy over the last two years as it shrugs off the supply chain and trade jolts of Covid-19 and Brexit, the latest index highlights that Scotland’s productivity is still lagging the rest of the UK’s performance.
“There’s still plenty of work needed to improve workforce health, with the indicators suggesting a worsening of the situation with regard to sickness absence and inactivity in the last year; this is supported by wider evidence, such as the increases in the numbers of people claiming disability-related benefits.
“A key plank of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation is on getting people back into the jobs market via investment in employability programmes,“ she continued, adding: “However, despite a 10- year strategy, NSET is already being reviewed and refreshed.
“Some of the investment needed to support people back into work has often been subject to in-year budget cuts in the last two years, which means it has not materialised.”
Apple has been slammed with a €1.84bn (£1.57bn) fine from the EU’s antitrust body for unfair trading practices, which largely consisted of an extra fee known as a deterrent.
This is the first time the EU Commission has added a monetary deterrent to a fine, which added the whopping 1.8bn euros to the original fine, acting as a punishment for Apple’s behaviour and to deter the company from committing similar practices.
The complaint was brought up originally in 2019 by Spotify, the Swedish music streaming platform, over the Apple Store’s 30% fees for in-app purchases.
Spotify alleges that Apple prevented itself and other music streaming apps from telling their users about other payment options outside of Apple’s App Store, which would stop Apple from receiving the 30% commission on the purchases.
The charge is why certain apps, including Netflix, do not let users sign up for subscription services in mobile apps as Apple would take away some of their profit.
The EU said that Apple’s trading conditions were unfair in their ruling, and the deterrent was added as a large part of the harm Apple’s practices caused were non-monetary.
“For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store,” EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
“They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules.”
Apple is already saying it will challenge the decision, saying in a statement: “The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast.”
The new ruling mimics the same restrictions brought on by the Digital Markets Act, which would also call for Apple to remove its App Store restrictions by 7 March.
The gender gap in tech has narrowed across the UK, EU, and US in the past four years, according to analysis from the Financial Times.
The report revealed that the proportion of women in the UK working in computer related roles rose from 29% in 2019 to more than 32% throughout the last year.
Overall female representation rose from 30.9% to 34.1% over the same period.
A further report from FT highlighted that the share of EU women in computer programming and related services has increased from 23% from before the pandemic to 25% at the end of 2023.
This is due to more tech roles becoming available in banks and consumer good companies within the EU.
According to the data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of female workers in tech rose from 31% in 2019 to 25% by the end of 2023 across America.
There were just under 900,000 female workers in computer programming and related services out of 2.5m in total last year.
Equally problematic, the further up the corporate ladder you look, the less diversity one sees.
When asked why women were leaving tech, they cited a lack of career progression, their care responsibilities, and the inability to reach a work-life balance in their role.
“The transformative power of technology makes it an enticing and exciting sector for women to be involved in,” Sai Bendi, software development manager at Encompass Corporation said.
“However, while the latest findings highlight progress, there’s still work to be done to ensure that diversity is, rather than just a buzzword, a fundamental aspect of organisational culture and decision-making processes throughout the industry.
“Flexible working practices are key to women being able to achieve a positive work-life balance that allows them to meet family and caring responsibilities, for example, while also thriving professionally. These evolving practices also underscore the industry’s adaptability to changing lifestyles today.”
Sheila Flavell CBE, chief operating officer for FDM Group commented: “The gender gap in tech remains startling, however, it is positive to see that tech firms across the advanced economies are starting to close the gap through gender equality policies and greater flexibility in the workplace.
“The rise of work-from-anywhere and flexible hours since the pandemic has shifted employee expectations and opened the door to tech for many people. Businesses must capitalise on this, encouraging more women into tech roles and equipping them with digital skills training to empower them to lead the development and adoption of fast-growing technologies such as artificial intelligence.”
A global study by MIT Technology Review Insights (MITTR) has found that while most businesses are seeking to disrupt their industries using generative AI, only a small proportion believe they have the right level of technology and other attributes such as funding, culture and skills to support its rapid adoption.
Those with the most experience of rolling out generative AI have even less confidence in their IT, suggesting many businesses underestimate the requirements for its effective deployment.
This implies their plans to be disruptors—rather than the disrupted—may well founder over problems that many respondents appear not to appreciate fully.
The report for the study was produces in partnership with Telstra International, a global arm of the telecommunications and technology company Telstra.
MITTR polled 300 business leaders across Asia-Pacific, the Americas, and Europe on how their organisations are implementing – or planning to implement – generative AI technologies, along with the barriers to effective deployment.
The respondents mostly manage information technology data, and data engineering-related functions, and represent a broad spectrum of industries including financial services, banking, and insurance, consumer packaged goods and retail, manufacturing and automotive, technology and telecoms, logistics, energy, oil, and gas, and media and communications.
David Williams, Managing Director of EMEA at Telstra International, noted the widescale optimism to translate the benefits of generative AI across all industries is being tempered by a range of technical, regulatory, skill challenges that remain to be overcome.
He said: “There are clearly great expectations around how game-changing generative AI could be, with an overwhelming majority of leaders suggesting they see it more as a competitive opportunity than a threat.
“However, this research highlights an important shift as executives work to address the underlying challenges with deployment, before the hype around generative AI hype begins to translate into more impactful and meaningful ways.
“A wide pool across all industries continues to experiment with these powerful tools which can deliver practical benefits to certain use cases.
“To unlock the transformative capabilities that will separate the leaders from the followers across any given sector, executives will need to start building end-to-end capabilities that allow them to handle large datasets, accurately contextualise the data for business value and ensure the responsible and ethical application of AI.”
Disruptors or Disruption?
Overall, six out of ten respondents agree that generative AI technology will substantially disrupt their industry over the next five years. Despite inevitable variations, respondents that foresee disruption exceed those that do not across every industry.
Rather than be concerned, 78% of respondents see generative AI as a competitive opportunity. Just 8% regard it as a threat.
Instead, most hope to become disruptors themselves, with 65% saying their businesses are actively considering new and innovative ways to use generative ways to use generative AI to unlock hidden opportunities from data.
Experimentation or Adoption?
Although most (76%) companies surveyed had worked with generative AI in some ways in 2023, few (9%), had adopted the technology widely.
The rest who experimented had deployed it in only one or a few limited areas. Moreover, the most common use case was automating non-essential tasks – a low-to-modest-gain, but minimal-risk usage of the technology.
Respondents also expect the number of functions or general purposes where they will seek to deploy generative AI to more than double in 2024. They expect to frequently apply the technology in customer experience, strategic analysis, and product innovation areas by end of 2024.
Meanwhile, respondents plan to increase use of generative AI in specific fields relevant to their individual industries. These areas include coding for IT firms, supply change management in logistics, and compliance in financial services.
Updating IT
Companies need to address IT deficiencies or risk falling short of their generative AI ambitions.
Fewer than 30% of respondents rank IT attributes at their companies as conducive to rapid adoption of generative AI.
Moreover, these results may be overly optimistic. Those with the most experience of rolling out generative AI have even less confidence in their IT.
Many in this group (65%) say their available hardware is, at best, modestly conducive to rapid adoption.
Other Factors in AI Adoption
The MIT survey respondents, both in general and AI early adopters, also report non-IT impediments to the extensive use of generative AI.
Regulatory compliance with the data privacy environment was a leading barrier to rapid AI adoption cited by 77% of respondents.
Meanwhile, 56% cited IT investment budgets as a leading barrier.
The survey did identify some positive attributes necessary for AI adoption: early adopters of genAI are more likely to regard an openness to innovation as an enabler of rapid adoption.
Early adopters also saw a competitive environment to be seen as an enabler of rapid adoption than as a barrier.
The skills needed for significant AI projects are in short supply, but among the respondents, early adopters are more acutely aware of the shortage of available talent.
Elon Musk has opened a lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, accusing the company of breaching its founding mission to be a non-profit.
Musk is alleging that company behind ChatGPT are now chasing profits over benefiting humanity, and is no longer making its technology freely available as per its original goal.
Filed in a California court, the lawsuit claims that OpenAI has moved to a for-profit-model after its partnership with Microsoft.
“In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the lawsuit read, as report by TechCrunch. “This was a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement.”
Musk donated over $44 million to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020, but left the company’s board in 2018. Since then, he was offered a for-profit stake in the company, which he refused.
Musk is using OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft as the main push for his lawsuit, alleging that OpenAI is now serving Microsoft’s interests rather than developing technology for the good of humanity.
The lawsuit also alleges that OpenAI’s GPT-4 model relies on AGI – an AI model with the intelligence on par with humans. Musk claims that OpenAI and Microsoft are not properly licensing the model.
Musk is aiming to urge OpenAI to not monetise its technologies, and also change the designation of GPT-4 so it cannot be licensed.
Almost half of social media users who used content controls said their experience did not change, while some even said it got worse (2%), according to new research by internet watchdog Ofcom.
Only 38% of those surveyed said using content controls improved their online experience.
The survey follows the adoption of the Online Safety Act, the regulation of which will be overseen by Ofcom in an attempt to place more protection powers into the hands of consumers to better control their online experiences.
Social media and video-sharing platforms have content controls that allow users to select and control the content they see.
New research from Ofcom’s Behavioural Insight and Research and Intelligence teams, as part of our work on media literacy, sheds light on people’s experiences.
About a quarter of users (26%) said they have used content controls at least once.
Reasons for this ranged from aligning content with interests and preferences (36%), protecting themselves from seeing something upsetting or harmful (35%), or because they had already seen something harmful or upsetting (21%).
Nevertheless, after using content controls, only 38% said their experience improved, while 44% said their experience didn’t change, 2% said it got worse, and 16% said they didn’t know.
Around 47% in the survey said they were aware of content controls but never used them, with 22% saying they were completely unaware of them before taking part in the study.
Most did not elect to use content controls because they were happy with the content they saw (68%), or just didn’t think they needed them (66%).
Others did not trust platforms categorisation of content (26%), did not have the time (26%), or did not want to miss out on interesting content (23%).
Some found the controls too complex (14%), or could not find them in the first place (10%).
One in ten Brits would cut back on food or heating rather than be disconnected from the internet, a new study by digital inclusion charity Good Things Foundation revealed.
The research shows just how vital Brits consider being connected to the internet is to their everyday lives, as the cost-of-living crisis continues to heap strain on the nation.
Nearly half (45%) of Brits would find it harder to manage their household finances without the internet while four in ten (42%) would find it tougher to pay their bills.
Women spend half their waking lives online, with three quarters (78%) using their phone more than any other device to get online, according to the research.
The average woman is online for 7.7 hours a day, just over an hour more than the average man who is connected for 6.6 hours of the day.
WhatsApp, Facebook, work and emails were the biggest uses of the internet among the 2,000 Brits polled.
Two-thirds (65%) of Gen Z (aged 18 to 24) use TikTok the most, Instagram was the biggest hit with Millennials (aged 25 to 34) at 40% and WhatsApp was most used by Gen X, with nearly half (49%) using that platform more than any other.
Four in 10 people say they would feel “cut off from the world” without digital access.
Some 2.5 million UK households struggle to afford internet access with one in 14 homes having no access at all, and 10 million people who lack the skills to use it.
Helen Milner, CEO of Good Things Foundation, which campaigns to end digital exclusion and get everyone connected, said: “Our findings show just how vital being able to use and have access to the internet is to people in Britain today.
“Everyone needs internet access to participate in everyday life – to connect with opportunities, services like healthcare and loved ones. We just can’t live without it – it’s very much one of our human rights.
“And it would take co-investment of less than £25 million a year from Government and businesses to halve the digital divide by 2030.”
Good Things Foundation has this month launched Digital For All, a nationwide campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the problems of digital exclusion and pressurise the government to do more to eradicate it.
The campaign shines a spotlight on the transformative power of digital inclusion, made possible through free local digital support.
Working with their community partners in the National Digital Inclusion Network, the charity helps people who are digitally excluded in their own neighbourhoods, providing a space and online learning platform for those struggling to get online, as well as making devices accessible.
Alongside this, the charity runs the National Databank, which works like a food bank, but offers free mobile SIM cards for people in need of internet connectivity.
Electronic Art (EA), the video games company behind EA Sports, has announced it will lay off 5% of its workforce, cutting around 670 people, as well as cancelling its upcoming Star Wars game.
Just last December, EA also announced it would lay off UK workers at Codemasters, the development team known for EA Sports WRC.
CEO Andrew Wilson said in a letter to staff that the company is “moving away from the development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry,” as reported by GamesIndustry.biz.
“This greater focus allows us to drive creativity, accelerate innovation, and double down on our biggest opportunities — including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities — to deliver the entertainment players want today and tomorrow,” he rationalised.
As for the layoffs, Wilson claimed that EA’s leadership looked into all viable options to avoid impacting their team, but the process of laying off around 670 workers will be mostly completed by next quarter.
The layoffs are just one part of the company’s restructuring initiatives, as EA plans to close offices and abandon other games.
While the tech industry continues to face round after round of layoffs, the games industry is also affected.
This is the latest round of layoffs to affect EA itself, as just last March is cut 6% of its workforce.
Just this January, Microsoft cut a whopping 1,900 people from its gaming department. Further, Riot Games laid off 11% of its workforce near the start of this year.
Meta’s new subscription model in the EU is coming under direct fire for violations of GDPR, with a new lawsuit brought up by eight consumer groups across Europe.
In a controversial move last year, Meta introduced a payment option to users of Facebook and Instagram, offering an ad-free experience for a price. The ad-free experience – which costs users €9.99/month on web or €12.99/month on mobile – prevents users from seeing any advertisements on the platforms.
Those who do not opt to pay, however, will continue to have their data collected, tracked, and sold to third parties.
The move came after the EU ruled that, under GDPR, Meta did not have a legitimate legal basis to collect personal data and therefore would have to provide users the free and fair choice to opt out of data tracking.
Their new policy however provides users with an option to pay for privacy, which experts and data privacy advocates immediately lambasted as providing an unfair choice to users.
A complaint against “pay-or-consent” model is now being formally launched by eight consumer groups in the BEUC network with their national data protection authorities against the tech giant.
This compounds the complaint filed last year by BEUC and 19 of its members with consumer protection authorities to denounce Meta’s “misleading and aggressive” practices.
“Meta has tried time and time again to justify the massive commercial surveillance it places its users under. Its unfair ‘pay-or-consent’ choice is the company’s latest effort to legalise its business model,” Usula Pachl, deputy director general of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) said.
“But Meta’s offer to consumers is smoke and mirrors to cover up what is, at its core, the same old hoovering up of all kinds of sensitive information about people’s lives which it then monetises through its invasive advertising model.
“Surveillance-based business models pose all kinds of problems under the GDPR and it’s time for data protection authorities to stop Meta’s unfair data processing and its infringing of people’s fundamental rights.”
A new funding boost to research collaboration and a new partnership to further global AI safety are part of measures announced by the UK and France.
The French Minister for higher education and research Sylvie Retailleu is meeting with Secretary of State Michelle Donelan for the first time since the UK reaffirmed their association to Horizon Europe after Brexit.
The two ministers are set to build on the existing links between British and French scientists, researchers, and businesses – which historically has lead to innovations like the Concorde’s supersonic flights and the Channel Tunnel – by endorsing a joint declaration to strengthen UK-French research ties further.
This includes a commitment o £800,000 in new funding towards joint research efforts both the UK and France are already involved in, such as Horizon Europe, to unlock more UK-France joint bits for grants to support research and development.
They will also announce a landmark new partnership between the UK AI Safety Institute and France’s Inria (The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology), to jointly support the safe and responsible development of AI technology.
This comes ahead of France hosting the next in-person AI Safety Summit later this year, which will build on the historic agreement on frontier AI testing struck between world leaders and businesses at the UK’s world-first Summit, last year.
The French-British joint committee on Science, Technology and Innovation also represents a unique opportunity to bring key influencers from across both countries’ research sectors together, to work on shared and promising opportunities for R&D teamwork across the Channel: from low-carbon hydrogen and space observation, to AI and research security.
It will meet every two years with a view to boosting UK-France scientific cooperation in priority fields such as emerging technologies like AI and quantum.
“The links between the UK and France’s brightest minds are deep and longstanding, from breakthroughs in aerospace to tackling climate change,” UK secretary of state Michelle Donelan said. “It is only right that we support our innovators, to unleash the power of their ideas to create jobs and grow businesses in concert with our closest neighbour on the continent.
“Research is fundamentally collaborative, and alongside our bespoke deal on Horizon Europe, this deepening partnership with France – along with our joint work on AI safety – is another key step in realising the UK’s science superpower ambitions.”
The UK-France joint declaration is part of the UK’s ongoing campaign to strengthen the UK’s collaboration with colleagues in France, across Europe and beyond through Horizon Europe.
The UK’s continued participation in Horizon Europe was tenuous after its exit from the EU, but after reinforcing its membership, the UK is trying to holdfast its bonds with European researchers.
This push is part of the UK’s efforts to convince European firms and researchers of the opportunities to collaborate with the tens of thousands of UK companies eligible for Horizon Europe grants. The UK is also participating in the Copernicus component of the EU space programme, providing a host of opportunities for our Earth observation sector, researchers, and the public.
Besides AI safety, the agreement looks at joint work on space, hydrogen and research security.
This is the latest in a series of bilateral international science deals the UK has signed recently, which include partnerships with the Republic of Korea, Israel, India, Switzerland and South Africa, as well as recent international digital deals such as the UK-Japan Digital Partnership.
Pathways Forward has launched its Pledge initiative with leading organisations committing to actionable steps aligned with the principles set out in the Pathways report, with their performance measures over a 12-month period.
AccelerateHER, CivTech, CodeBase, Deloitte, Eos Advisory, Scottish EDGE, and the Scottish National Investment Bank are the first members of Pathways Pledge, which is set to add more organisations over the months ahead.
Ana Stewart said: “The Pledge initiative is a key pillar of Pathways Forward. Our focus is on consolidating efforts to drive change through collaboration with each organisation contributing its share to achieve a greater collective impact. I’m encourage to have such a diverse group of organisations aligning with our objectives.”
The individual pledges are aimed to complement existing internal policies, and range from the capture and publication of enhanced gender data, gender diversity on selection panels, evidential increases in female participation rates, and the design of key programmes with integrated childcare.
“What we would also highlight”, continued Stewart, “is that this is not so much about implementing the 31 recommendations in the report, it’s about each player committing to positive actions that have an impact at a local level, driving behavioural change, influencing others including government to embrace the recommendations.”
Pathways Forward was launched last September to drive an action-led approach towards realising the principles outlined in the Scottish Government-commissioned Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship review, co-authored by Ana Stewart and Mark Logan, chief entrepreneurial adviser to the Scottish Government, published in February 2023.
Ana Stewart said: “The severe gender imbalance in entrepreneurship and investment persists because the causes are structural and deep-rooted. It requires engagement and action at a more profound level and across the entire landscape. We need to challenge the way we think about tackling this issue in order to drive meaningful change.”
Last year, the Scottish Government accepted the findings of the Pathways report in their entirety, and subsequently launched a Pathways Pre-start Fund in September with 20 organisations now being supported including Dechomai, Digital Boost, Egg, Elevator, and Women’s Enterprise Scotland to action initial programmes across Scotland.
“In 2024, we’ll focus on women founders who are looking to grow their tech startups, and actively improve the representation of women mentors and facilitators in our network,” Yasmin Sulaiman, VP of partnerships for CodeBase. “By embedding this work in our day-to-day activity, we hope to impact long-term change in the tech industry and support an ecosystem where women founders can flourish.”
A new report published by the Regulatory Horizons Council (RHC) has set out a pro-innovation approach to regulating quantum technologies, in an attempt to set the stage for safe and effective advancement of the technology.
Commissioned as part of the UK’s National Quantum Strategy, the report provides policymakers, regulators and industry with crucial guidance to safely and effectively advance quantum technologies.
Quantum technologies already offer possible solutions to some of society’s challenges and provide future capabilities that are yet to be explored, from new sensing technologies to help screen for diseases, to quantum computers which could solve problems even the most powerful classical computers currently struggle with.
The potential is one of the reasons quantum has been prioritised as one of the government‘s five critical technologies, as set out in the UK Science and Technology Framework.
The RHC is an independent expert committee, sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). Its role is to identify the implications of technological innovation, and provide government with impartial, expert advice on the regulatory reform required to support its rapid and safe introduction.
The government hopes that quantum technologies will revolutionise many aspects of life in the UK and grow the economy.
While acknowledging the early stage of development for some quantum technologies, the report emphasises the importance of proactive discussions and planning for future regulation to provide certainty and encourage long-term investment.
It advocates for a pro-innovation approach that attracts and retains domestic and international expertise and fosters a competitive domestic landscape.
The report did however call for regulations specific to the different applications of quantum technologies, as well as pleading with lawmakers to plan for and monitor progression on the use and integration of quantum technology.
Writing to the RHC, science minister Andrew Griffith MP welcomed the report, highlighting the government’s plans to leverage technological innovation for growth and to establish the UK as a leader in regulatory best practice. The minister says that DSIT will lead the development of the government’s response to the report over the next three months.
“I welcome the Regulatory Horizons Council’s report and its recommendations to take a pro-innovation approach to regulating quantum technology as its use in our economy grows,” he said.
“Quantum holds immense promise, with the potential to revolutionise disease screening, advance quantum computing, and ultimately transform our lives and boost the UK economy.
“In line with our ambitious National Quantum Strategy, our commitment of £2.5 billion over the next decade in quantum research and innovation is a clear signal of our resolve to stay at the forefront of this transformative technology.”
The report set out a total of 14 recommendations outlined within three categories, including regulatory frameworks and governance, standards and international collaboration, and innovation funding and market development.
Tech Talent Charter’s latest Diversity in UK Tech report has been released, revealing the level of diversity across 708 organisations in the UK, representing close to 977,000 people.
The report revealed important stats on the representation of different genders, sexual orientations, and ethnic minorities, and disabled people in the tech sphere, among lower-level tech workers, senior leaders, and VCs.
While not holding any surprises, the statistics did bring up important changes in how certain companies are reporting diversity, particularly in terms of gender identity, and the disclosure of ethnic minorities.
LGBTQ Representation- The T Does Not Stand for Tech
According to the data, only 0.17% of tech employees identified as trans compared to 0.5% of the UK 16+ population.
This lack of representation is multifaceted – only one in four companies are measuring trans identity in their workforce, and many transgender people may feel unsafe, unwilling, or unable to disclose this aspect of their identity to their employer even in terms of diversity tracking. Even still, many transmen and transwomen would rightfully just tick the box of man or women in a gender diversity survey, especially if these are the only options, without feeling the need to explain anything more about their gender identity.
Further, only a third of companies recognise non-binary genders in their employee data. Only 0.09% of tech employees reported to be non-binary, based on a sample of 89,000 tech employees at 235 organisations the recognise non-binary genders.
The Diversity report did not offer any specific glimpses into the amount of those of different sexual orientations worked – and were out – in the tech sector.
Gender Equality is Not Looking Up
According to the report, women and non-binary employees account for 29% of the UK tech workforce.
This stat gets more bleak when you dive deeper: only 20% of software engineers are women or non-binary, and only 21% of senior roles are held by women or non-binary people.
And the report shows that this gender imbalance may only increase, as more and more women share their intention of leaving the tech industry altogether, reflecting other surveys reporting the same trend.
If tech’s higher salaries and remote or hybrid work opportunities cannot attract r retain women and non-binary people, then it begs the question of what in tech is driving them away.
Ethnic Diversity
Based on ethnicity data shared by over 140,000 tech employees, there is a relatively high proportion of ethnic minority representation in tech compared to the overall UK workforce.
18% of tech workers in the survey are Asian or British Asian, with 5% being Black, African, Caribbean or Black British, and 2% being mixed or multiple ethnic groups.
71% of those in tech are white, while 81% of those in the UK 2021 benchmark census were white.
While tech may appear more diverse, this is skewed toward London which has a higher level of ethnic diversity in the first place.
Still, the stats should be promising for the tech sector. However, more than one in five did non share their ethnic information with their employer. The average disclosure rate is 79%, which could mean that some feel uncomfortable sharing their race or ethnicity with their employer.
When looking up the ladder, ethnic diversity decreases, dropping from 25% overall to 14% when looking at senior tech role holders.
Disabilities and Neurodivergence
Only 6% of tech employees reported being disabled, compared to 23% of the wider working age population.
Inclusive hiring practices are vital to include disabled people in workforces and ensure their fair treatment during their careers.
Further, tech employers report that just 3% of their tech employees are neurodivergent.
However, when asked directly as part of the survey, 53% of tech workers identify as being neurodivergent.
This shows that many workers may be unsure about disclosing their neurodiversity to their employers, or may not count it as a disability.
Bumble, the online dating app, has announced that it will layoff 350 employees, equating to about 37% of its workforce.
The news comes as Bumble reveals its fourth quarter and full year 2023 results, which fell much below expectations on Wall Street. The company had a net loss of £32 million, making £273.6m in revenue. The dismal posting, tied with a poor 2024 first quarter forecast, has sent Bumble’s stock down about 10%.
“Today, we announced solid full-year results and a bold plan to transform Bumble and lead the company to its next phase of growth and innovation,” said Lidiane Jones, CEO of Bumble Inc.
The move to cut around 350 roles is in an effort to align Bumble’s operating model with “future strategic priorities and to drive stronger operating leverage,” the company said in their 2023 results statement.
“We are taking significant and decisive actions that ensure our customers remain at the centre of everything we do as we relaunch Bumble App, transform our organisation and accelerate our product roadmap,” Jones said.
“We believe these actions will strengthen our foundational capabilities and enable us to continue delivering new and engaging user experiences that create healthy and equitable relationships. I am confident in our team’s ability to deliver Bumble’s next chapter of growth as we sharpen our focus on execution.”
Jones took on the role of CEO last November after Bumble’s founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, stepped down and became an executive chair of the company.
Bumble’s C-suite has since transformed, with four new appointments in the last week.
The dating app is a lone wolf against the Match conglomerate of Tinder, Hinge, and Match.com, which have contended to keep the younger generations pre-occupied with algorithmically derived love as real-life meetups returned to the foray after the pandemic.
Bumble tried to set itself apart by letting women make the first move on dating apps – men matching with women could not send the first message to a match.
While Bumble was not a part of this lawsuit, it points to a potential mistrust in the dating app industry.
Further, dating apps are struggling to get GenZ and Millennials to pay for premium – a 2023 study found that only 22% of users under 20 have paid for dating apps.
Bumble’s layoffs mirror other tech companies reeling from an changing economic ecosystem – according to layoffs.fyi, 45,356 jobs have been cut since the start of 2024.
University of Glasgow researchers have partnered with Sung Kyung Kwan University (SKKU) in the Republic of Korea for a major new international partnership in quantum technologies.
The five-year Joint research centre in Superconducting Electro-Optic technology for Near-infrared single photon counting project, or JOSEON, aims to develop cutting-edge quantum devices.
The researchers plan on working together to create next-generation superconducting photon detectors for demanding applications such as secure quantum communication networks in optical fibre and space.
Professor Robert Hadfield, of the James Watt School of Engineering, and Professor Yonuk Chong, of the SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology, will lead JOSEON, which is also the historic name for the Kingdom of Korea.
JOSEON is one of just four Korea-Europe Quantum Science and Technology Collaboration Centres selected for funding by the National Research Council of Korea.
The project will be supported by £2.8m in funding across its lifespan.
Professor Chong said: “I am delighted to be working with my good friend Professor Robert Hadfield, who is a renowned expert in superconducting photon detectors. I am impressed by the superb facilities in the ARC and the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at the University of Glasgow.”
Professor Hadfield added: “It is a great honour that our project was selected by the National Research Foundation of Korea. This will facilitate exchange of expertise on superconducting devices and accelerate scientific progress on emerging quantum technologies.
“I am very pleased to be hosting Dongki Choi and Beomgyu Cho as visiting postgraduate researchers and I am looking forward to visiting Professor Chong’s labs and facilities at SKKU Suwon.”
The JOSEON partnership builds on a Memorandum of Understanding on Research Co-operation between the University of Glasgow and SKKU signed in March 2022.
Professor Konstantinos Kontis, the University of Glasgow’s dean for global engagement (China & East Asia), said: “This consolidates the strong partnership between the University of Glasgow and SKKU, two universities with historic traditions which are world-leading in advanced science and engineering. I congratulate Professor Hadfield and Professor Chong and wish them success with JOSEON.”
A Glasgow technology company has secured a fresh round of funding from the billionaire founders of Skype and Bolt, along with Iron Wolf Capital, Specialist VC and Scottish Enterprise, to further bolster its growing fleet of robotic lawn mowers for large lawns.
Kingdom Technologies, established in 2018 by Joan Kangro, will use the £1.4m funding, which also includes grant support from Scottish Enterprise, to develop a new version of their mower and produce more than 100 units this year.
Since securing £2m in seed funding 18 months ago, Kingdom Technologies has doubled its headcount to around 20 people, and seen a surge in customer activity in Florida, primarily cutting sports fields which generally require cutting heights between 20-60 mm. The new version of the mower will be able to cut up to 100 mm, and handle rougher terrains to maintain commercial campuses, parks and other large lawns in the US.
Kingdom Technologies has been supported in this, and previous funding rounds, by investment specialists at law firm Harper Macleod since 2019.
Joan Kangro, originally from Estonia, but now living in Glasgow, established Kingdom Technologies after graduating from the University of Glasgow. With support from the European Regional Development Fund through Glasgow City Council’s business advisory scheme, Scottish Enterprise and the University of Glasgow, Joan then went on to win in the Scottish Edge Wild Card competition and RSE Unlocking Ambition Enterprise Fellowship.
This latest round of funding is a precursor to the next, much larger, fundraising exercise which aims to raise a £20m Series A round by the end of this year to enable to grow the fleet to over 1000 robots.
Research from the US Environmental Protection Agency suggests that petrol-powered lawn mowers are responsible for 12% of carbon monoxide emissions and 5% of the overall air pollution, with some states, including California, already banning or restricting smaller engine-based mowers.
Kingdom robotic lawn mowers are fully electric and therefore have a significant positive impact on the environment. In addition, they are much quieter than traditional lawn mowers, which is often one of the main arguments for using Kingdom mowers by the clients.
Although robotic lawn mowers have been available since the 1990s, Kingdom Technologies’ mowers are able to cover much larger cutting areas, due to proprietary positioning, mapping and path planning technology.
Traditional robotic mowers cut the lawns using a random cutting pattern, while Kingdom mowers maintain the lawn by an efficient, human-like cutting trajectory, to avoid going over the same spot multiple times. They are also safer and easier to install, making them perfect for large, public areas. Kingdom’s current robot capacity allows it to cut up to 70,000 m² per week.
Joan Kangro, Kingdom Technologies CEO, said this latest investment round sets the company on the next phase of its journey.
Joan said: “The US is the biggest growth market for Kingdom Technologies, which we’ll continue to drive from our Glasgow home due to the support we get from Scottish Enterprise, local partners and the growing robotics expertise emanating from local universities.
“Our aim is for Kingdom Technologies to be one of UK’s largest robotics companies in the coming years. The faith shown in us from our current, new and potential investors means we are well on the way to achieving that ambition.”
The idea for Kingdom Technologies came about when Joan was asked by a friend to help install an existing robotic lawn mower. He realised that the current models had significant shortcomings, including a lengthy installation process, inefficient operation and safety concerns, which could be improved with novel new technologies.
Rachel Miele, a senior solicitor in the corporate, commercial and regulatory team at Harper Macleod, said: “Joan and his team are quickly growing Kingdom Technologies into a global company, underpinned by robust technology and a diverse range of investors who can support them in their ambitions. This follow-on investment is the second chapter in what promises to be an exciting story and sets the company up for a more significant fundraising exercise towards the end of this year.
“Joan has attracted funding from some well-known investors who will not only raise the global profile of the company and its technology, but also support the development of new robots and open up new markets.”
Kerry Sharp, Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment at Scottish Enterprise, added: “Kingdom Technologies is a great example of how we can support the growth of innovative Scottish companies through the right mixture of investment, grant funding and expert advice.
“It’s exciting to see the progress the company is making having gained a foothold in the lucrative US market. This, and the planned Series A round, has the potential to really accelerate Kingdom Technologies’ development and help deliver on its ambitions to scale.”
Alongside the investment, Kingdom Technologies also welcomes a new Board Member, David Lane, who is a passionate scientist, innovator, educator & personal investor in the twin disciplines of robotics & AI.
David is the founder of SeeByte and director of several businesses in the UK, US, Norway and Hong Kong. Over an extensive academic career as Professor & Founding Director he co-created the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and National Robotarium, a £150m joint venture between Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and has held visiting scientific appointments in the US, China and with NATO.
David said: “I have been impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of the team at Kingdom and their ambitions to grow. With a timely product and first traction in their beachhead market they are well-placed for success. I look forward to becoming part of the journey and to helping the organisation realise its potential”.
Research from STX Next, an IT consulting firm, has found that six in ten (59%) CTOs believe human error to be the biggest cybersecurity threat facing their organisation.
Human error, which can range from downloading a malware-infected attachment to failing to use a strong password, was found to be more threatening than the potential of both ransomware (48%) and phishing (40%) attacks.
In response, CTOs are deploying a range of tactics in order to protect their teams and wider organisation, and are taking advantage of the many solutions on the market.
94% of companies said that they have now deployed multi-factor authentication (MFA), 91% are using identity access management technology (IAM), and 58% are using security information and event management (SIEM) technology and 86% are using single sign-on (SSO) solutions.
The findings come from STX Next’s 2023 Global CTO Survey, which surveyed 500 global CTOs about the biggest challenges their organisations face.
Around a quarter (24%) said that security was their biggest challenges across the organisation, which was the fourth most popular response.
Despite the growing threat of attack, just less than half (49%) of companies surveyed said that they currently have a cyber insurance policy in place, while 59% of businesses have implemented a ransomware protection solution.
In-house security teams are still in the minority: just 36% of companies have a dedicated team or department providing security services, whereas 53% of companies are using the services of external specialised companies for security.
Krzysztof Olejniczak, CISO at STX Next said: “The data from this year’s survey indicates that employees are still the weakest point of company security. Despite deployment of comprehensive technology, poor implementation, substandard support processes or lack of governance can render these efforts useless.
“In recent years, the frequency and severity of cyberattacks across all industries has risen extraordinarily, and employees are often carrying the burden of being an organisation’s first line of defence.
“While the threat of ransomware remains high, in many cases, cybercriminals aren’t in fact relying on incredibly advanced and sophisticated methods of attack, but on human error and social engineering techniques to gain access to an organisation’s systems.
“And this method of attack is still the most popular and successful. Human error can also include internal fraud, where employees intentionally do not follow procedures and expose critical information.
“In response, it’s crucial that management teams focus not only on educating staff to recognise and respond to new threats but also on periodically testing their resilience through simulated attacks or phishing and ransomware tests.
“Frequent testing also encourages good cyber hygiene practices and behaviours. On top of testing and education, solutions such as MFA, IAM and SSO are quickly becoming an industry standard for the modern business and can provide an additional line of defence to limit the risk of human error.
“It’s also inevitable that the smaller a company is in headcount or revenue, the less likely it is to have a dedicated security team. This is why more businesses are accessing the services of specialised cybersecurity solutions or providers in the form of vCISO services.
“Without putting protections in place, organisations place themselves at risk of being impacted by attacks, either directly or via their supply chain. Whether in-house or outsourced, CTOs and CISOs must take steps to support their teams and ensure that they are prepared and protected for the inevitability of attack.”
From renewable energy sources to electric vehicles and greener finance initiatives, the ‘net zero economy’ grew 9% in 2023, contributing £74 billion to the UK economy.
The net zero economy, including net zero businesses, supply chains, and spending by employees, is worth a total of 3.8% of the overall UK economy, the study found.
The analysis found that jobs in the net zero economy are highly productive, generating £114,300 in economic activity, more than one and half times the UK average of £72,550.
Workers in this industry are typically also better paid by almost £10,000, with the average net zero salary being £44,6000 compared to the £35,400 UK average.
The report showed that Scotland, Wales, and the Midlands have particularly strong net zero economies, with economic powerhouse London having the lowest proportion of its economy based on businesses in the net zero sectors.
In Scotland, the net zero economy added 5.7% to the economy and supported 85,500 jobs. Aberdeen in particular was a stronghold for net zero economic activity, with the net zero economy in both Aberdeen South and Aberdeen North contributing over 10% of local employment.
In the UK, the sector supports around 765,500 full time jobs, the data found.
“The UK’s transition to net zero brings immense opportunities for our economy,” Louise Hellem, chief economist at the CBI said.
“Our report, together with the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, highlights how businesses are already seizing those prizes – creating jobs and attracting investment, whilst boosting our energy resilience. But we also know that there’s much work to be done to fulfil the UK’s potential, and accelerate our journey to net zero.”
The survey also discovered that some areas with particularly high concentrations of net zero activity are amongst the most deprived in the country.
Further, around two in three (65%) of the top 25 net zero hotspots and half of the top 50 net zero hotspots in England and Wales are classified as key electoral battlegrounds heading into the general election.
“Against the backdrop of economic stagnation, the net zero economy is bucking the trend, but it’s clear that the policy U-turns of the past year have damaged investor confidence at a time when the US and EU are investing billions to compete for clean industries,” Peter Chalkley, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said.
“Thousands of jobs depend on net zero in constituencies right across the country, including many key battleground seats. The question now is will political parties provide the leadership, stability and investment needed to generate further growth or shy away from the global race for net zero.”
Despite net zero businesses receiving £279m in public InnovateUK funding and £12.3bn of private investment during 2021-2022, the UK has fallen down the EY clean energy attractiveness index in the past year.
“The UK net zero economy is a vibrant, dynamic area to be a part of, offering huge opportunities for new, innovative businesses to grow. SME’s will be the driving force behind the Net Zero economy, and account for 61% of private sector employment,” Thomas Farquhar, chief commercial officer at cleantech startup Heatio said. “However, for this growth to materialise, it is imperative that Government provide policy consistency and unwavering ambition.
“Frustratingly, we are lagging behind the rest of Europe in the transition to cheaper, more secure and cleaner energy in homes. Countries like Norway have already transitioned 66% of their homes to low carbon heating, Sweden 43% and Finland 41% whereas the UK has less than 1%.
“When it comes to Solar the UK has uptake of 5% of suitable homes behind the likes of Italy at 23%, the Netherlands 16%, Germany 11% and further afield Australia with 31%. The numbers are startling and highlight the scale of the opportunity but necessity for investor confidence.”
New UK funding for innovative mobile phone technology aims to help change lives in the poorest countries around the world, development minister Andrew Mitchell will announce today.
Harnessing AI technology to provide real-time agricultural advice to farmers in Nigeria and pay-as-you-go solar powered fridges are just some of the ways UK-funded mobile technology is aiming to improve livelihoods globally.
At a speech at the Mobile World Congress today (26 February), Minister Mitchell will announce the UK is providing £37.3 million of new support for the Mobile for Development Programme, to help more people access mobile and digital technologies to find new opportunities and boost their livelihoods.
The programme, which the UK funds in partnership with UK-based mobile industry association GSMA and the private sector, has already reached more than 94 million people and focuses on women and girls, climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience and scaling up innovative solutions.
“Mobile technology has the potential to revolutionise the lives of the poor by helping tackle the effects of climate change, creating jobs and boosting opportunities for women,” minister for development and Africa, Andrew Mitchell said
“The Mobile for Development programme has already benefitted more than 100 million people, and the UK’s new announcement aims to up the ambition, reaching 110 million additional people, including 60 million women.
“Together the worlds of development and mobile tech giants can be a powerful force to unlock opportunities and prosperity, and meet the UN Global Goals.”
UK funding has previously helped scale up a digital hub in Pakistan, BaKhabar Kissan (BKK), which provides accurate weather forecasting data to farmers to help them make critical farming decisions such as the timing of seed sowing, irrigation, and fertilisation.
With the help of this programme, BKK has almost doubled users from 6.6 million to 12.4 million.
Another innovative business, Ensibuuko, is providing digital skills training to help community savings groups in rural Uganda keep up with the latest digital products and services where previously they relied on paper record-keeping.
Since gaining funding, Ensibuuko has benefited over 236,000 members of rural savings groups, 60% of whom are women, providing them with digital skills training.
“For more than a decade, the FCDO and the GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation have worked closely in partnership to drive socio-economic and climate impact for the most underserved populations through digital innovation, and to date our partnership has improved the lives of more than 127 million people,” John Giusti, president of the GSMA mobile for development foundation, said.
“Today’s renewal of our partnership will further amplify our joint impact by leveraging the power of digital and emerging technologies to support innovation, improve access to opportunities for women, and tackle the effects of climate change for the most vulnerable.”
With the increase in climate crises around the world, the need for new solutions to help vulnerable countries adapt is growing and mobile technology can make a big difference to people’s lives.
At the Mobile World Congress, GSMA will announce the grantees for its Climate Resilience and Adaptation Fund which is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. This fund is designed to test and scale up new technology to combat the effects of climate change in countries throughout Africa and Asia.
Some of the projects being funded include one using AI-powered satellite imagery to help smallholder farmers increase their yields and another to reduce food waste via an online grocery platform.
Small digital firms, also known as microbusinesses, are making a splash on the UK market, with nearly one in five reporting a six-figure annual turnover.
GoDaddy’s new Venture Forward report revealed that digital microbusinesses, those with fewer than 10 employees, are growing in number across the UK, and now contribute to 32% of private sector employment, and 19% of total economic output.
“Despite their small size, microbusinesses are growing,” Gradon said. “According to our data, in the UK alone, there are about of these ventures with a unique domain and an active website, since March 2020.”
The small nature of digital microbusinesses means that data collection can fall from the list of priorities, leading these small businesses to often be overlooked in public debate and their role rarely acknowledged.
This is despite 17% of all microbusinesses earning upwards of £100,000 a year.
Further, one in three microbusiness owners are breadwinners in their household, contributing 51% or more to the total household income.
Microbusinesses also appear to be closing the gender gap, with 42% of them in the UK owned by women.
Millennials are also making their mark on the landscape, with 45% of microbusinesses owned by those aged 25 to 39.
The 2023 report showed that while confidence in the economy was down in August 2023 (17%) compared to January (18%), business confidence maintained itself at 55% during the same period.
Digital microbusiness owners reported that some of their top challenges included online marketing (50%), effectively getting their business website online (25%), and accessing finance capital (22%).
Stressors included finance worries 61%, maintaining a work-life balance (56%), with customers (28%) behind.
“Microbusinesses matter, and their impact is felt,” Gradon concluded. “Their enormous economic contribution drives job creation, annual median pay, and local GDP at the constituency level.”
A UK government report has named Glasgow and Edinburgh as standout cities for their ‘high cross-county collaboration’ – a relationship that can be learnt from and further exploited, says InnoScot Health.
The new report, entitled Identifying and describing UK innovation clusters, has been produced by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, recognising that the UK’s competitive advantage in research and innovation derives from ‘innovative places’ but they need better mapped to encourage and unblock the flow of investment.
It pinpoints Edinburgh as one of the UK’s strongest cities for internal collaboration thanks to it being “anchored by strong research universities and private R&D operations”.
However, the report also believes that marked collaboration between Edinburgh and Glasgow is a result of strong relationships cultivated between the cities across various sectors.
It noted that a key learning from this for the wider innovation landscape is that “places tend to cooperate more frequently with partners in their own broad geographic region” which, the report thought, further suggests, “a regional effect” happening across many parts of the UK.
Formal NHS Scotland partner InnoScot Health insists that strong partnerships forged with academic institutions, funders, entrepreneurs, and industrial partners are vital to the country’s innovation ambitions and prosperity.
Executive chair of InnoScot Health, Graham Watson said: “I believe that what we can learn chiefly from this report is that, while Glasgow and Edinburgh’s strong, mutually beneficial relationship is clear, Scotland should be well-placed to further replicate that success outside of the Central Belt.
“If proximity and commonality help to engender collaborative trust, economic growth, and fundamentally innovation, then Scotland’s size puts it at a distinct advantage, and we must continue to get better at thinking of ourselves as a small nation but with great opportunity to exploit our vast wellspring of expertise.
“The country’s other two noted innovation clusters, Aberdeen and Dundee, offer their own unique expertise – and of course every Scottish region contributes fantastic cross-sector diversity of a kind that other countries can only dream of.
“Many within the same sectors have similar goals but fail to see collaborative opportunities, despite clear patterns and synergies.”
He added: “The further creation of exciting, globally leading clusters of Scottish innovation is within our grasp if we just join the dots and extend our reach a little further.”
The report concluded that “understanding patterns in the geography of clusters can unlock valuable insights to more effectively target investments and tailor supportive policies.”
In autumn last year, the British Business Bank (BBB) identified the life sciences industry as the largest sub-sector across Scotland’s four innovation clusters in terms of deal numbers and investment value.
Edinburgh, and its surrounding areas, was named the leading UK innovation cluster for equity deals outside of London, Oxford, and Cambridge.
The education sector, from universities to primary schools, is facing unique cybersecurity risks and threats due to the nature of their sensitive data.
According to Trustwave, a cybersecurity and managed security services provider, the UK education sector’s extensive infrastructure leaves it ripe to unique cyber challenges.
The wide range of devices and systems involved in education opens up several avenues for attackers to target schools. As educational institutions continue to shift towards online education, there is an escalating exposure of networked devices and systems.
Furthermore, decentralised IT management, and in some cases, limited cybersecurity resources often lead to inconsistent security policies and inadequate controls.
As well, education institutions and their third-party suppliers store large volumes of personal data, which increases the risk and impact of data breaches and identify theft.
Their heavy reliance on digital communication and online collaboration platforms increases the risk of phishing and social engineering attacks. The risk is further heightened by typical open internet access policies and BYOD practices in these institutions.
Adding these risks is the involvement of many educational institutions in research and their possession of sensitive intellectual property, making them attractive targets for cyber-criminals and state actors.
Collaborative activity with entities like the government and military increases their risk exposure, and with the continuing evolution of cyber threats creates challenges their cybersecurity preparedness.
Looking specifically at the risks facing the universities, Trustwave’s 2024 Education Threat Landscape: Trustwave Threat Intelligence Briefing and Mitigation Strategies revealed some of the direct threat patterns these educational institutions face.
The ‘Russian Market’ on the dark web has listed over 82,000 logs containing login credentials for subdomains of just one university in the US, begging the question of how many they have from UK institutions.
Threat actors are also selling domain level access to Azure and Microsoft services withing a university’s or school’s network for £7,500.
In a single year, Trustwave researchers monitored 352 ransomware claims against educational institutions. The average recovery cost of a ransomware account is estimated as £1.7m.
The research also shows 1.8m devices related to the education industry are being publicly exposed globally with a staggering 133,000 in the UK.
Students are being routinely preyed upon with fake job offers – lucrative opportunities offering high compensation and flexible working hours.
In some cases, students have received fraudulent checks with instructors to deposit it and forward a proton of the funds elsewhere.
Fake university communication emails have also been identified, with threat actors impersonating the university’s IT department. These emails typically include urgent calls to action, such as requests to verify accounts and direct students to fake websites designed to harvest their credentials.
“The education sector faces an incredible challenge in navigating a diverse and fluid attack surface with increasing financial pressures, leaving little room for error as digital leaders aim to sustain resilience to threats,” said Trustwave CISO Kory Daniels.
“Student, staff, alumni, and professor data each provide different lures and motivators for threat actors to maliciously target the institution, or the individuals affiliated. Our latest threat briefing serves as a vital resource for cyber defenders, equipping them with actionable insights in navigating the latest threats and defenses of their students, staff, and data.”
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued official guidance for organisations on processing biometricdata lawfully after ordering some companies to stop using facial recognition technology (FRT).
Public server provider Serco Leisure, Serco Jersey and seven associated community leisure trusts were issued the demand to halt their FRT and fingerprint scanning to monitor employee attendance.
The ICO’s investigation found the Serco Leisure and the trusts have been unlawfully processing the biometric data of more than 2,000 employees at 38 leisure facilities for the purpose of attendance checks and subsequent payment for their time.
They failed to show why it is necessary or proportionate to use FRT and fingerprint scanning for this purpose, when there are less intrusive means available such as ID cards or fobs.
Employees have not been proactively offered an alternative to having their faces and fingers scanned to clock in and out of their place of work, and it has been presented as a requirement in order to get paid.
Due to the imbalance of power between Serco Leisure and its employees, it is unlikely that they would feel able to say no to the collection and use of their biometric data for attendance checks.
The ICO has now issued enforcement notices instructing Serco Leisure and the trusts to stop all processing of biometric data for monitoring employees’ attendance at work, as well as to destroy all biometric data that they are not legally obliged to retain.
The must be done within three months of the enforcement notices being issued.
“Biometric data is wholly unique to a person so the risks of harm in the event of inaccuracies or a security breach are much greater – you can’t reset someone’s face or fingerprint like you can reset a password,” John Edwards, UK information commissioner said.
“Serco Leisure did not fully consider the risks before introducing biometric technology to monitor staff attendance, prioritising business interests over its employees’ privacy.
“There is no clear way for staff to opt out of the system, increasing the power imbalance in the workplace and putting people in a position where they feel like they have to hand over their biometric data to work there.
“This is neither fair nor proportionate under data protection law, and, as the UK regulator, we will closely scrutinise organisations and act decisively if we believe biometric data is being used unlawfully.”
“This action serves to put industry on notice that biometric technologies cannot be deployed lightly,” Edwards said.
“We will intervene and demand accountability, and evidence that they are proportional to the problem organisations are seeking to solve.
“Our latest guidance is clear that organisations must mitigate any potential risks that come with using biometric data, such as errors identifying people accurately and bias if a system detects some physical characteristics better than others.”
Reddit, the free online platform, has filed for its first initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange.
While the public filing did not disclose how much it was aiming to raise in its listing, but it did provide details on how the company is performing.
Reddit reported that it’s revenue growth in 2023 was about 21% at $804m (£635.29m), rising from $666.7m (£526.8m) the year prior.
Its net loss narrowed, at $90.8m for the year ending December 31 2023.
The social media site is putting itself to the test as it continues to struggle against major platforms like Facebook and X.
Reddit has on average 73.1m daily active users, with 100,000 active communities in its platform.
In 2021, Reddit was valued at $10 billion (£7.9bn) in a funding rounds, and according to Reuters, the company is expected to seek a sale of nearly 10% of its shares in the IPO.
The IPO listing follows reports that Reddit has entered a deal with Google to make its swath of content available for AI training.
Reddit faced scrutiny last year for beginning to charge users for access to its API, which had previously been open source, enabling developers, and moderators to use and generate third party applications.
The social media platform defended the move, saying it was to safeguard their public content and code from being scraped to train AI models like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
In a new initiative, academics and undergraduates from Glasgow Caledonian University ‘s Cyber Security and Networking Department have unveiled a new platform aimed at thwarting potential cyber-attacks on the country’s rail network.
The project, which received funding from the Smart Technologies Centre, features a unique model trainset controlled by microprocessors and is monitored by a bespoke website, allowing researchers and students to simulate cyber-attacks on vital systems such as a level crossing and train sensors.
“Our students hack various elements of this model to see what would be possible in a physical environment,” Dr Salaheddin Hosseinzadeh, who is leading the project, explained.
“They can manipulate the level crossing barrier and warning lights, for example, or manipulate sensors on the train that alert operators to obstacles in its path. The real-world effects can range from inconvenient delays to mass casualties.”
With recent global cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, such as the Colonial Pipeline in Houston, Texas, Dr Hossenzadeh said the need for robust cybersecurity measures has never been more apparent.
He emphasised the significance of the project in addressing these threats: “The Colonial Pipeline attack left vast parts of the USA without fuel. That is just one example of many recent massive cyber-attacks on worldwide critical infrastructure.
“By using our testbed, our students can see, first-hand, the effects of such an attack on a rail network. More importantly, having seen what is possible for hackers, the students then learn how to stop these attacks and make the network more robust.
“Therefore, the initiative not only provides hands-on experience for budding cybersecurity experts but also serves as a vital research platform for developing innovative solutions to protect critical infrastructure.
“This is the only testbed of its type in Scotland. Efforts are now under way to document findings and methodologies for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. Our story highlights innovation, collaboration, and the advancement of cybersecurity education, offering potential inspiration for further development and collaboration within the sector.”
Plans are now underway to digitise the model, making it accessible to remote learners, and to collaborate with rail-industry experts to further enhance its capabilities and realism.
HPR ROV, a sub-sea robotics firm based in the north-east of Scotland, has been acquired by Subtron Group, an energy firm, for an undisclosed sum.
The deal will safeguard the HPR ROV’s Thainstone team, and has created an additional five positions to add to the team of 17. The five new jobs are part of the company’s expansion into Altens this coming May.
The robotics firm is a supplier of micro-ROV inspection and intervention solutions, and the deal is set to help the companies escalate existing research and development.
Subtron’s acquisition of HPR ROV should help it expand into the renewable energy sector, while it continues to address its core markets including reducing costs to oil and gas decommissioning and decarbonisation efforts.
Newly appointed HPR ROV managing director Jan Stander said: “HPR’s delivery model of using small and light remotely operated systems for inspection and intervention work aligns perfectly with the rapidly advancing technology landscape we now see changing how work is done subsea.
“The offshore wind, oil and gas decommissioning and power industries are demanding reductions in cost, which HPR is ideally placed to deliver.
“Our plan will deliver strong growth for HPR, creating energy transition job opportunities in offshore wind – we have already engaged with the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership’s WEST program to assist us bring cost reductions to the industry.”
Subtron chief executive Steven Gray added: “With strong historic relationships in almost all the oil and gas operators – stretching to around 300 projects over the last 10 years – HPR ROV has the experience and track record to deliver for operators who require effective light intervention and inspection.
“This acquisition is not just a financial investment; it’s a commitment to the future of underwater technology.
“We see enormous potential in HPR ROV’s capabilities and are excited to be part of its next chapter of innovation and expansion.”
Google’s Gemini AI art generator has come under fire for its controversial depictions and reluctance to portray certain racial groups.
After a flurry of posts on X allegedly showed the AI art generator neglecting to create art with white people, or generating what many classified as historically inaccurate or ‘overly diverse’ depictions of different people, Google paused Gemini’s AI art generator altogether.
In a post on X, Jack Krawczyk, product lead of Gemini at Google, said “We are aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions, and we are working to fix this immediately.”
Though not verifiable, countless posts on X detailed Gemini’s interesting responses to prompts referring to different time periods, as well as people’s anger towards the AI model, derogatorily calling it too ‘woke.’
Below, an X user asked Gemini to generate a depiction of a Black couple as a king and queen, and presented four different options.
When asked to do the same with a white couple, Gemini refused, saying it could not depict people of a certain race or ethnicity to “avoid perpetuating harmful stereotypes.”
Please… just take this in everyone. A black king and queen? No problem! A white king and queen… "I'm unable to generate images of people based on specific ethnicities or skin tones." 💀 #Geminipic.twitter.com/R2ZmM84LyO
This is just one of many examples of a potential double standard for AI depictions – clearly it can produce racially-specific depictions when asked, but only for certain races.
AI-bias has been a longstanding issue surrounding large language models and image generators. AI models can actually perpetuate and exacerbate existing biases as it relies on data that already exists.
One X user was annoyed that their AI generator depicted art works of Ukrainian women from modern days showed not only white women, but also two depictions of Black women.
Woke AI Gemini is awkward… it keeps inserting the word “diverse” into its responses even though the prompt isn’t for such content.
The X user was even more upset when the AI image generator depicted a Black women when it requested Ukrainian women from the 1800s, as well as four other depictions of white women.
Google has said it will fix Gemini in response, and is currently pausing Gemini’s image generator
A new report by the Open Rights Group, the digital rights campaigners, has found the data of people who are referred to the Prevent programme in the UK is being widely shared and retained for years.
The Prevent programme is designed as an intervention for people believed to be showing signs of radicalisation and if they meet a threshold defined by section 36 of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015.
Teachers, social workers, doctors, and people working for other public authorities are required to refer individuals to the Prevent under the Channel programme if they believe the individual meets these thresholds.
The majority of Prevent referrals – on average 90% over the last five years – do not meet these thresholds, however.
Despite this, the data of Prevent referees is retained and shared across multiple databases, with potentially harmful outcomes.
Findings from the Open Rights Group report has revealed a lack of oversight surrounding the data retained by the Prevent programme, and the particular harms against children this could cause.
Prevent referees are typically children who are being intercepted before they can be radicalised, but this can also lead to abuses of power against children with little rights, and fearmongering tactics to different racial, ethnic, and religious groups due to harmful steroetypes.
Referrals are stored within a national Prevent database regardless of whether they meet the threshold to be reviewed by a Channel panel.
The data is being held for a minimum of six years, but can be kept for up to 100 years. The government’s ‘rationale’ for this minimum retention period is in consideration of possible re-offenders, even though Prevent referees have not in fact committed a crime.
The Open Rights Group therefore claims that if there is no policing purpose for retaining data, this retention could be unlawful. Individuals are not necessarily informed that their data is being stored nor whether their data has been deleted after the six-year period or further retained.
Further, their report stipulates that there is a lack of oversight and parliamentary scrutiny over data sharing, processing, and storage of Prevent referrals that are inappropriate for Channel interventions but which are managed by police-led partnerships.
Once a case is managed by the police, national security exemptions can be applied to limit rights to rectification, access and removal. But the Intelligence and Security Committee does not deal with policing and the Independent reviewer of Terrorism Legislation does not oversee cases managed by police-led partnerships.
This means that new counter terrorism capabilities are being built without Parliamentary oversight or legislative safeguards.
Further, the report showed that the data of some Prevent referees is being shared with airports, ports, and immigration services, which could explain reports of referees being questioned at ports and airports.
As such, it is difficult for individuals to exercise their right to erasure and request data is removed because many will not know that they have even been referred to Prevent. The subsequent lack of transparency around data sharing would make it difficult for people even if they were aware they had been referred.
Problematically, there are particular harms for children who make up the majority of Prevent referrals.
Even if they have not been previously known to social services, a referral is shared with children’s services and the data will be kept for 15 years after the child turns 18. The data would therefore still be available after the child is adult, and can even influence assessments concerning their own children.
Children have experienced harms due to their data being retained as Prevent referees. A 16-year-old was rejected from a Sixth Form College because he was a Prevent referee, the report showed.
The report detailed testimonials of children who’s data had been retained by the Prevent programme, including a data from a six year old whose parents struggled liberate.
“This is just another example of the blanket retention of data and unnecessary mass surveillance by the government,” Sophia Akram, Open Rights Group programme manager said.
“Not only is the Prevent policy ineffective, it is used as a vehicle to retain the data of hundreds of people every year with little purpose.
“Despite the lack of utility to state security, these referrals – and their storage, retention and sharing – can have disruptive and lasting impacts on individuals, including children as young as 6-years-old.”
The Open Rights Group is therefore calling on the government to impose an immediate moratorium on Prevent referrals, introduce a blanket ban on the retention of data where described thresholds are not met.
Further, they are calling for the end of the Prevent Duty to free up resources for different counter-terrorism strategies.
There is just one week to go until the DIGIT ITSX (Service Desk) Summit, held live and in-person at Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth on 29th February.
The Summit will contextualise the evolution of the service desk and the future of customer experience and IT support.
The programme will consider how the service function has advanced in the age of digital transformation, omni-channel engagement, and personalisation. And examine the increasing role of automation, analytics and AI, and the rise of Chatbots and self-service systems.
The conference will explore how tech leaders can maximise the business impact of their service function, with presentations looking at actionable ways to improve process, operations, observability, and customer experience.
The Summit is geared for professionals working in IT, Tech Support, Customer Service, UX, Digital Transformation and Leadership roles.
NHS Scotland is expanding its use of Seer 2, a data and analytics platform that will aim to help improve collaboration and innovation across Scotland’s health and social care system.
Seer is a platform that allows staff to more easily access and analyse data, helping clinicians, teams, and boards in decision-making around patient care and the planning of resources.
Areas in which it is currently used include cancer intelligence, the monitoring of blood stocks and the flu vaccination programme.
Seer 2 is the next phase, which utilises cloud technology and will give the health and social care workforce access to a more advanced version, increasing opportunities to access new tools and technologies with greater flexibility.
Areas in which it is currently used include cancer intelligence, the monitoring of blood stocks and the flu vaccination programme.
These features have already been used to create new dashboards to help manage capacity during winter.
Speaking at the Digital Health and Care Scotland Conference 2024, health secretary Neil Gray also confirmed the Scottish Government will provide an update on Scotland’s first Data Strategy this spring – with an updated Delivery Plan for the Digital Health and Care Strategy to be published in April.
“NHS Scotland is growing opportunities to use digital and technology-driven services to enhance health and social care,” Gray said.
“Better use of data and digital technology is critical to how we drive improvements in healthcare and is a key part of our plans to reform services.
“Through enhancing our use of technology, we can unlock opportunities for collaboration across health boards and other organisations, and it is therefore vital that this includes maximisation of digital and far better, and far faster, use of data.
“It’s great to see how world leading Seer 2 is enabling us to support collaboration and innovation across government and the NHS, providing near real time intelligence to support decision making, build new insights and enable better outcomes.
“This platform is just one of the ways we are embracing tech to help us as we face challenges ahead in funding pressures, inequalities and workforce.”
Technical debt is hampering digital transformation efforts across EMEA, a new global report has discovered.
More than one in four (28%) of EMEA companies surveyed in Red Hat’s Global Customer Tech Trends report said that accumulated technical debt is the number one factor hindering their digital transformation.
The burden of technical debt has consistently been a top contender against digital transformation, as well as manual processes or IT operations (16%), and the seemingly perpetual skills and talent gap (24%).
Besides overall challenges and obstacles, the global survey of 700 IT leaders also asked about cloud proliferation and spending priorities for the coming year.
Cloud: On Premise On Top
When asking European IT managers about their cloud usage, of their own apps (i.e. not SaaS) around half (47%) are on premise, while two in five (40%) are in a hybrid cloud environment, and 12% are in the public cloud.
Respondents said they chose on-premise for the sake of dataprivacy and security, while cost benefit and technology preference are main reasons why EMEA-based respondents use public clouds.
Currently, most respondents have under 40% of their workloads containerised and there is an expected increase in the next 12 months.
When it comes to allocating budge, the funding priorities for IT managers in EMEA is to manage the cloud (62%), consolidate the data centre (35%), and optimise cloud spend (32%).
In doing so, they hope to make the organisation both more secure and more efficient. When questioned on the desired outcomes for these funding priorities, almost half (43%) of EMEA IT managers say they are investing to obtain better security and data protection.
Another four in ten (42%) are hoping to achieve improved efficiencies.
Similarly, the top funding priorities for security were in alignment. Network security (36%) appears to be the top financial priority, followed by threat intelligence, detection and response (35%), and vulnerability management (30%).
Edinburgh-headquartered payment orchestration provider, BR-DGE, has announced its integration with PayPal, the global payments platform, in an effort to offer merchants greater choice and flexibility at online checkout.
The collaboration between the two companies offers the latest integrations for BR-DGE merchants with PayPal’s complete payments platform (PPCP) and the PayPal Braintree platform.
PayPal’s complete payments platform (PPCP) is enabling businesses of all sizes across the global economy to drive conversion by giving them the ability to reduce friction at checkout, offering customers an easy and secure way to pay online and in-app.
Through this collaboration, BR-DGE’s merchants will have access to the latest PayPal technology, enabling them to offer payment innovations to consumers via BR-DGE Connect, its payment ecosystem connectivity tool.
Merchants will be able to access PayPal’s full stack of payment methods and features, including PayPal Pay LaterandVenmoin the US coming later this year, and offer consumers greater flexibility at checkout.
Recent research from BR-DGE found that 32% of consumers say the availability of payment options is a high priority in their purchasing decisions.
Leveraging PayPal’s existing foothold and global strength in payment acceptance, BR-DGE is able to meet this demand for merchants and deliver a better payment experience for consumers via a scalable checkout solution.
As part of the integration, BR-DGE merchants will also have access to PayPal Braintree, which may allow them to reach more buyers and drive higher conversion among customers.
Tapping into BR-DGE’s position in the market, PayPal will also have access to a global network that empowers merchants across travel, leisure, retail and beyond.
“We are on a mission to empower merchants with the latest payment innovations the industry has to offer,” Tom Voaden, head of partnerships at BR-DGE, said.
“By partnering with PayPal, we are able to meet merchant and consumer needs with an easy-to-use and frictionless payment solution. As we look to process over £1.5 billion of transactions this year, this partnership will help our merchants drive revenues and provide customers with the best possible payment experience. We look forward to working with the PayPal team on this collaboration.”
J.P. Morgan Private Bank has announced it will expand its presence in Scotland with a new team of advisors added to their Edinburgh offices.
Advisors will provide wealth management services to individuals, charities, family offices and foundations in Scotland.
“Our journey in Scotland began over a century ago. Fast forward to today and the country has become a strategic hub for the firm with several lines of business represented including J.P. Morgan Private Bank,” said Oliver Gregson, region head of J.P. Morgan Private Bank in the UK, Ireland & Channel Islands.
“This rich local history, when combined with J.P. Morgan’s global resources will help us deliver unparalleled depth of expertise and capabilities. That means you can call on our specialist teams to help with everything from investing, lending, financial planning and philanthropy through to corporate transactions and support of operating businesses.”
“As we continue to deepen our roots across the country, our vision is clear: we are here to grow, to partner and to invest in the people and the communities that make Scotland so unique.”
Khayyam Jumani, team lead and senior client advisor for Scotland and Northern England, also said: “I firmly believe that to truly understand our clients – from challenges they face to potential opportunities available to them – location and environment is key.
“Scotland has for some time now, been a fast-growing hub for innovation and tech start-ups, attracting global interest and investment. Our dedicated local team strengthens our ability to better serve our clients and businesses across the country.”
Cyber-attacks in schools are increasing year on year: research from the Department for Education shows that 21% of schools in the UK are experiencing cyber-attacks weekly.
But why are they such popular targets?
School systems are viewed as ‘good’ targets by cybercriminals. They contain reams of personal information, from dates of birth to home addresses, and the lack of funding available to schools has led to the perception that they are easier to penetrate than other organisations.
As a result, schools must recognise the threat and take proportionate action. With over a decade of experience working with schools to implement effective cybersecurity policies, Ash Earl, Cyber Security Consultant at RM Technology, believes basic security hygiene can bolster schools’ defences, protecting their systems and data.
Here are his top tips for how Scottish schools can improve cyber hygiene this CyberScotland Week.
1. Raise awareness
Human error is one of the most common reasons for a cyber-attack. All it can take is someone clicking on a ‘bad’ link to start a chain of events that will end in the school network being compromised, sensitive data being lost and vital IT systems being damaged.
Therefore, the first step in improving your school’s cyber hygiene is to educate teachers and other staff on the risks and how to spot and act upon them.
One of the easiest places to start is training staff on how to spot a phishing attack – which is the most common way for a school to become infected by ransomware. This normally occurs when someone opens an attachment in an email or clicks a link to a malicious website.
The email may look legitimate, posing as something they might expect to receive, making it difficult to distinguish from a legitimate email. Users are then tricked into sharing their login details or downloading malware which can then be used to launch a larger attack.
By training teachers to be vigilant about links, email addresses and requests for personal information, you can take a simple but effective step in protecting your school network.
Running a gap analysis report can also go a long way in identifying where your potential pitfalls might lie and help create a training programme that is right for staff.
2. Get the basics right
When it comes to cyber hygiene, there are a few basic practices that can help bolster a school’s defences.
You should always use different passwords for different services, and never share passwords for personal accounts with work accounts.
A great way to make passwords easy to remember is to follow the NCSC advice for using passwords generated from three random words that are long enough and ‘strong enough’ for most purposes. Using password managers can also help school staff access the complex passwords they need when they need them.
The next is enabling multi-factor authentication, which acts as an additional layer of security making it harder for unauthorised users to hack into accounts.
Ensuring teachers have access to verified and trustworthy authentication apps, such as Google or Microsoft Authenticator, can strengthen defences further by providing a time-based code.
Lastly, blocking unauthorised use of VPNs and restricting access to harmful websites helps ensure students do not accidentally expose vulnerabilities in school networks when using the internet for schoolwork. Schools can create a more secure online environment by creating digital ‘safety rails’ within a school’s IT infrastructure.
It might not feel like much, but these steps will have a big impact with Microsoft’s 2023 Digital Defense Report stating that “basic security hygiene protects against 99% of attacks”. The simple fact is that a school with basic cybersecurity hygiene is less likely to even be targeted because the threat actors will divert attention to those less well-protected first.
3. Be consistent
With so many competing priorities in schools today and reams of regulations, it can be hard to find the time to regularly assess your cyber health and ensure you are keeping up to date on the latest threats out there. However, cybersecurity best practices are evolving constantly – and staying updated is important.
Glow, Scotland’s national digital learning platform offers a wealth of free resources for schools as well as training packs which tackle the latest developments – helping you stay on top of the latest developments.
By promoting awareness, implementing essential practices, and cultivating a culture of vigilance, schools can create a safer and more secure online environment for everyone.
The UK government is trying bolster attendance for its tech skills bootcamps aimed at GenZ with a new marketing campaign, promising young workers the chance to double their salary expectations.
Research published by Barclays Eagle Labs and Beauhurst, and funded by DSIT’s Digital Growth Grant, shows that demand for technology talent surged in 2022 after a slump through the pandemic.
“The new Eagle Labs report outlines what we have known for some time, that the technology sector continues to grow, with highly paid opportunities available,” Amanda Allan, director of Barclays Eagle Labs said.
“Vacancies with such high median salaries shows there is clear potential for the tech sector to improve prospects for people right across the UK.”
In Scotland, one in ten job openings are in the tech sector.
While tech job adverts decreased through the last year in the UK, demand for junior and entry-level roles persisted as technology companies struggled to recruit the early career talent they needed to match their growth ambitions.
Scale-up companies who have already demonstrated high potential and are in their ‘venture-stage’ dominated this demand, with the high-growth group recruiting almost one third (31.3%) of all digital jobs.
After establishing boosting scale-up growth and tackling the skills gap as two of DSIT’s three priorities for the year ahead, Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan today said: “The appetite and potential British scale-ups have for growth is immense, we can no longer allow digital skills shortages to limit their ambition.
“Whether your personal ambition is to secure a comfy pay packet, land a creative role, solve the world’s most pressing challenges, or all three – the Skills Bootcamps we are promoting today can help achieve your own career goals while being part of our superpower sector.”
Each bootcamp will see people take part in courses that last up to 16 weeks and will prepare them for high-tech careers, with each guaranteed an interview on completion.
No technical knowledge or educational qualifications are required to secure a place.
Digital skills is one of several areas where £550m of funding is aiming to upskill 64000 people through bootcamps by 2024.
Launched by DSIT, the campaign is focussed on boosting five priority skills to plug gaps in British tech talent – covering cloud computing, software development, data and analytics, cybersecurity, and web development.
The courses are available part-time and full-time across the country, with many providers offering flexibilities to make sure that more people can take advantage.
The campaign has been supported by the Digital Skills Council, a group of major technology companies including Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS), as well as skills-focused organisations like Future Dot Now and more.
“Digital Skills are vital throughout the economy and existing successful programs such as bootcamps play an important role in providing relevant and focused up-skilling and a proven path into high value enjoyable jobs,” Phil Smith, co-chair of the Digital Skills Council and chairman of IQE, said.
The ISACA Certification Body, a specialist in cybersecurity certifications, and BIT Training, a provider of IT and cybersecurity apprenticeships, today unveiled a partnership to help bridge the cybersecurity skills gap in the UK.
“The UK is facing a cybersecurity skills gap, threatening business success,” said Chris Dimitriadis, chief global strategy officer, ISACA.
“We are proud to be part of the apprenticeship programme, while this partnership is designed to prepare organisations with the next generation of highly skilled cybersecurity leaders, ensuring continuity of business operations and enhancing resilience.”
The partnership marks the launch of the Cyber Level 4 Security Risk Analyst Apprenticeship programme, the first of its kind to incorporate the internationally recognised Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) certifications directly into its curriculum.
The programme offers a blend of on-the-job training and academic learning, leading to a nationally recognised qualification.
Apprentices will gain practical experience working on real-world cybersecurity projects while earning industry-leading certifications, positioning them well for careers in the field.
“This innovative collaboration represents a significant advancement for the cybersecurity industry,” added Faisal Malik, director of global sales, ISACA.
“By embedding the CISM and CRISC certifications into the Level 4 apprenticeship programme, we are broadening globally recognised credentials to a more diverse pool of talent, including those who may not have pursued a traditional degree in cybersecurity.”
The Level 4 Cyber Security Risk Analyst Apprenticeship programme reduces the reliance on graduate programmes, opening the door for organisations of all sizes to attract talent with diverse backgrounds and experience levels, previously limited by degree requirements. This expands the talent pool and helps with fostering a more inclusive cybersecurity workforce.
With increased internal mobility, organisations can also upskill existing employees, regardless of their educational background, creating a pipeline of talent and promoting long-term career development.
“We are thrilled to partner with ISACA to offer this transformative apprenticeship programme,” commented Dan Troke, director of apprenticeship at BIT Training.
“By integrating the CISM and CRISC certifications, we are ensuring that apprentices graduate with the knowledge, skills, and industry recognition needed to excel in the cybersecurity workforce. This programme opens doors for individuals seeking a career in cybersecurity, regardless of not achieving a degree.”
The apprenticeship offers a comprehensive curriculum that goes beyond CISM and CRISC, providing valuable training and certifications programmes in alternative areas such as fundamental IT security knowledge and skills, including cloud security, security protocols, information security, encryption, and network security and ISO 27001 Lead Implementer training.
This holistic skillset can prepare apprentices for immediate impact in real-world security roles.
In January 2024, global levels of ransomware attacks fell by over a quarter (27%), from December, with a total of 285 cases compared to 391 in the previous month, according to NCC Group‘s December Threat Pulse.
However, year-on-year ransomware attacks in January continue to rise. Data from January 2024 shows that levels of ransomware attacks were up to 73% from 2023, and 138% from 2022, marking a steep upward trajectory of attack volume over the last three years.
“While the overall number of attacks has decreased compared to December 2023, it’s essential to consider the historical context, as January tends to be a ‘quieter’ month,” Matt Hull, global head of threat intelligence at NCC Group said.
“However, this is by no means an indicator of a ‘quieter’ year.”
The Most Prominent Threat Actors
While Lockbit was responsible for 64 cases (22%), maintaining its position as the most prominent threat actor, 8Base (10%) and Akira (9%) climbed from fourth to eighth to second and third respectively. This is a notable increase from December.
Black Basta, BainLian and Medusa are in fifth, sixth, and eighth positions with 19 case (7%), 17 cases (6%), and 13 cases (5%) respectively. However, none of these groups were part of the top ten in December, marking a significant reshuffle of key players.
Attack Numbers Fall
Unsurprisingly, North America and Europe remain the two most targeted regions in January, with 86% of global attacks between them. North America experience 59% (169) of all attack down (15%) from 199 in January. With 75 attacks in January, Europe had a 34% decrease in attacks.
Asia is the third most targeted region for ransomware in January. The scale of the attacks the region observes, however, pale in comparison to Europe and North America.
With only 22 total attacks, down 41% from December’s 47 attacks, this represents under 8% of the global total.
January’s top four sectors attracting ransomware attacks replicate those from December 2023, with Industrials dominating the landscape accounting for 34% (96) of the 285 attacks seen this month.
Consumer cyclicals came in significantly lower in the second spot, with 16% (46), technology in third place with 10% (28), and healthcare retaining fourth position with 8% (24) of all attacks in January.
Notably, this year the industrials sector has started with a significantly higher volume of attacks (96), representing a 96% uplift year on year.
January’s stats show that a whole range of sectors were vulnerable to attacks. Outside the top 4, Consumer Non-Cyclicals and Basic Materials rose significantly, to fifth and sixth place respectively.
Spotlight: Hydradynamics
Despite the activity of malware family Hydra being notable last month, January showed activity indicators going down. The numbers show only one “hydra head” as active, albeit persistently so: namely an ongoing campaign targeting financial institutions in DACH region.
“We’ve seen an incredibly active start to 2024 already by threat groups, the most significant in three years,” Hull said. “The ransomware threat landscape remains dynamic and ransomware attacks continue to evolve, with new tactics emerging, and the potential impact of AI looming on the horizon.”
Technology company Xergy has raised £3.1 million in additional investment helping to drive the expansion of its project management software.
Its latest investment round for series A+ funding was oversubscribed, the company said, and was supported by both its existing investment base and a number of new strategic investors.
Since its inception in 2018, the Aberdeen-based company has raised £10.2 million.
“This successful financial raise allows us to increase the size of our in-house development team by recruiting new talent who will focus on building Proteus’s generative AI,” Xergy co-founder Colin Manson said.
“This will further help our clients optimise their project performance. In addition, the raise will support our growth into Australia and our planned entry into the United States later in 2024.”
Proteus is the company’s software platform, a project management tool that claims to meet the demands of complex projects and ambitious targets for global teams. The tool can help drive digital transformation and improve project delivery, with energy sector clients across the UK and engineering companies around the world using Proteus.
“Our latest raise enables the Xergy team to broaden market penetration and awareness of Proteus and further boost our ambition to bring a game-changing, financially compelling, project controls solution to a global market,” said co-founder and Xergy chairman, Professor James McCallum.
“Our vision remains to assist our clients in delivering exceptional project performance whilst embracing the broader potential of digital transformation. We are humbled by the continued support of our legacy shareholders and excited to add some new investors who are joining us on our journey.”
Recently, Xergy also announced the opening of new offices in Dundee, Scotland, and Perth, Australia, with a current workforce of 34.
One in five children have been found to engage in illegal activity online, with many completely unaware they are committing any cyber-crime at all.
The data comes from the National Crime Agency (NCA), which conducted a survey on children aged 10-16, showing that 20% engage in behaviours that violate the Computer Misuse Act.
The statistics rise to 25% for those who game.
“Many young people are getting involved in cyber crime without realising that they are breaking the law,” NCA deputy director Paul Foster, head of the National Cyber Crime Unit, said.
“Our message to these teenagers is simple – don’t play games with your future.”
Examples of low-level offences include downloading software to get access to another’s device, trying to access protected servers or buying something using the saved card details on someone else’s account.
Gamers who make in-game purchases without the permission of the account holder or engage in DDoS-ing are breaking the law, despite often doing so unwittingly.
Even for low level crimes, the consequences can be serious – in addition to being arrested and potentially given a criminal record, those caught can have their phone or computer taken away from them, risk expulsion from school, and face limits on their internet use, career opportunities, and international travel.
While skills in coding, gaming and cybersecurity or anything digital related are in high demand, those with these skills could risk their future if they are found in breach of the Computer Misuse Act.
The NCA is therefore calling on parents to be more aware of their children’s online actions, and to make them aware of the severity of their offenses.
“Whether you engage in this behaviour knowingly or without realising, you are committing an offence – and could face serious consequences for your actions,” Foster added.
“We’d encourage any concerned parents and teachers to speak to young people with an interest in tech, help them understand the dangers, and highlight the many rewarding and varied careers available to them.”
The NCA’s Cyber Choices team has launched a campaign to tackle the issue for the next three weeks, including video content on Snapchat and YouTube that is expected to reach over three million young people.
Some of the world’s leading technology companies have pledged to help prevent deceptive AI content from interfering in this year’s upcoming global elections.
More than four billion people in over 40 countries are set to vote in elections this year, including in the UK, US, and India.
The “Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections” is a set of eight commitments to deploy technology countering harmful AI-generated content meant to deceive voters.
Signatories, which include Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Google, TikTok, Meta, and LinkedIn, pledge to work collaboratively to detect and address the distribution of fraudulent AI content.
Also promising to drive educational campaigns and provide transparency, the pledge includes a broad set of principles, including the importance of tracking the origin of deceptive election-related content and the need to raise public awareness about misinformation.
Specifically, the accord aims to address digital content consisting of AI-generated audio, video, and images that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election, or that provides false information to voters about when, where, and how they can vote.
The eight commitments are:
Creating and using technology to mitigate risks related to AI-generated election content, including open source tools where appropriate.
Assessing models in the scope of the Accord to understand the risks they may present to fair elections.
Seeking to detect the distribution of AI-generated election content on their platforms.
Seeking to appropriate address this content detected on their platforms.
Fostering cross-industry resilience to deceptive AI election content.
Providing transparency to the public regarding how the company addresses these issues.
Continuing to engage with a diverse of global civil society organisations and academics.
Supporting efforts to foster public awareness, media literacy, and all-of-society resilience.
The Accord was announced and signed at the Munich Security Conference, by Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Arm, ElevenLabs, Google, IBM, Inflection AI, LinkedIn, McAfee, Meta, Microsoft, Nota, OpenAI, Snap, Stability AI, TikTok, TrendMicro, Truepic, and X.
“Elections are the beating heart of democracies. The Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 elections is a crucial step in advancing election integrity, increasing societal resilience, and creating trustworthy tech practices,” said Ambassador Christopher Heusgen, Munich Security Conference (MSC) Chairman.
“As society embraces the benefits of AI, we have a responsibility to help ensure these tools don’t become weaponized in elections,” said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft. “AI didn’t create election deception, but we must ensure it doesn’t help deception flourish.”
NatWest Group has formally appointed Paul Thwaite as their group CEO and executive director after publishing its highest yearly profit since before the financial crash of 2008.
NatWest Group said they undertook a “rigorous and competitive search process” to find the right candidate to fit the bill, landing on Thwaite.
Rick Haythornthwaite, chair designate of NatWest Group said: “Paul has shown an unrivalled understanding of this business, our customers, and the opportunities for growth. We are both ambitious for this organisation and I fully expect his potent blend of NatWest knowledge and thoughtful, imaginative approach to leadership to prove key to forging success in the rapidly changing landscape of banking.
“The Board agreed that he was the outstanding candidate and the right person to shape the future of NatWest.”
NatWest also revealed that they hit a pre-tax profit of £6.2bn in 2023, which beat out analysts expectations and was a marked increase of 20% from 2022.
Income for the group was a £14.3bn, up 9.3%, though overall costs rose by 5% to £7.6bn.
In 2023, NatWest lent £9bn into the UK economy, opening over 100,000 startup accounts.
The New Startup Index from NatWest and Beauhust also found that over 900,00 new companies were incorporated in 2023, making it a record year for new businesses.
Thwaite acted as interim boss for NatWest in July 2023, and previously served as
“I want to thank the Board for their support and the opportunity they have given me,” he said upon the announcement.
“It’s an honour to lead what, I believe, is a great business, which plays a vital role in the lives of the 19 million customers we serve. With that, comes a great sense of responsibility to succeed for our customers, colleagues, and shareholders.
“Our customers’ needs and expectations are changing at pace, as they engage with emerging technology, adapt to new social trends, and build ever more resilience to a fast-evolving world. I believe that NatWest, with its heritage, leading customer businesses, deep regional connections and financial strength, can be a trusted partner to customers during a period of change.
“It is an exciting time for our sector and our bank. I am confident we can shape the future of NatWest to deliver its full potential.”
A UK-based lawsuit against Meta surrounding its sharing of data between platforms has been given the go ahead in London.
Despite Meta saying the claims are without merit, Dr Lisa Lovdahl Gormsen claims Meta is offering an unfair bargain with its users.
She is suing on behalf of 45 million Facebook users, claiming that Facebook is abusing its market dominance and forcing users to share their data from non-Facebook products and other Meta-owned platforms, like Instagram.
The lawsuit claims that sharing personal data with third parties has become conditional to using Facebook, creating a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer.
Gromsen is essentially saying that Meta monetarily benefitted by not compensating Facebook users for the amount of personal data they collected, that could then be shared across to its other platforms and to third party platforms.
Facebook says that the lawsuit ignores the value Facebook does provide to users, however.
After refusing to go ahead with the case last year, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has reversed its decision and the case is set to move forward, by the first half of 2026.
The decision for the lawsuit to go ahead follows recent EU rulings surrounding Facebook’s data policies.
After a landmark ruling in the EU, Meta’s platforms were found to be in breach of GDPR as they were found to lack a reasonable legal basis for their collection of personal data to use of targeted advertisements.
In response to this ruling, Meta will run Europe’s Facebook on a subscription service, where people can pay for an ad-free service. However, those who cannot pay can access the site and services for free, but their personal data will be harvested and sold to advertisers which will appear on the platform.
This move is already being slammed by Max Shrems-led privacy advocacy group NYOB (none-of-your-business), which said the new policy could lead to more platforms adopting the same model, and many will be left unable or unwilling to pay to stop their data being sold.
Essentially, a choice where one option is free and the other is paid, is not an equal choice.
Still, Meta has also introduced different data sharing choices in the EU to comply with the Digital Markets Act – now EU users will be able to use Facebook Messenger, Marketplace, and Games without linking a Facebook account.
While the EU’s GDPR has dismantled the status quo of Facebook’s operations, the UK has not matched this step despite currently still abiding by the same set of laws and standards.
By 2026, however, the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill will likely be placed into law, leaving the future of data protection in the UK at greater uncertainty.
Google Deepmind has released a new generation of their AI model, Gemini, with a new advanced version 1.5.
The updated model claims to offer a ‘breakthrough’ in long-context understanding. Essentially, the model can process more information than before, running up to 1 million tokens consistently, which Google says is the longest context window of any large-scale foundation model out so far.
Gemini 1.5 is supposed to offer “dramatic improvements” in various dimensions, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet said.
The first model to be released for early testing, Gemini 1.5 Pro, is a mid-size multimodal model, which Google claims works at a similar level as their largest current model, 1.0 Ultra, with less computing power.
While the standard Gemini 1.5 Pro will come with a 128,000 token context window, a limited group of developers and enterprise customers will have access to a context window of up to 1 million tokens.
While the 1m token model is rolled out, Google says they will continue to work on optimising its features and latency, as well as attempting to continually reduce its computing requirements.
It is currently unclear what the time scale of the rollout will look like, but Google’s demonstration of Gemini 1.5 Pro’s power was promising.
It was able to summarise and pinpoint detail in the entire Apollo 11 transcript – totalling 402 pages – and even locate humour. Further, it was able to find and discern scenes in the a 44-minute silent film.
Google has credited these advancements to the model’s use of mixture-of-experts architecture – this method divides the neural network AI uses to process information into separate pieces, and only activates the parts relevant to a task rather than using the entire neural network for every task. Google Deepmind is not the only large language model to employ this design, however.
The model is currently only available as a limited preview to developers and enterprise customers via Google’s AI Studio and Vertex AI.
More than £1.2 million is set to be invested in creating six new innovation colleges across Glasgow and the west of Scotland to help encourage innovation in local businesses.
The 12-month College Local Innovation Centres (CLIC) pilot project, funded by the Innovate UK Further Education Innovation Fund, will help businesses across the Glasgow City Region gain access to comprehensive support and guidance on embedding and embracing innovation within their organisations.
The hubs will aim to support businesses across a number of sectors including digital, health, and sustainability.
Support will range from advisory services to hands-on assistance in adopting cutting-edge technologies, processes, and business models.
It’s hoped more than 200 businesses across Glasgow, Inverclyde, North and South Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire, and West Dunbartonshire will benefit from the project, which starts at the end of March 2024.
Six colleges across the Glasgow City Region will host the innovation hubs, including:
Centre for Digitally Enabled Health – New College Lanarkshire.
Centre for Sustainable Development – South Lanarkshire College.
Centre for Advanced Manufacturing – West College Scotland.
Centre for Digital Enablement – Glasgow Kelvin College.
and Centre for Innovation Leadership – City of Glasgow College.
Centre for Digital Creativity – Glasgow Clyde College.
Stella McManus, principal of South Lanarkshire College and a member of the College West Partnership Group, said: “This is a significant moment for the Glasgow City Region and further highlights the crucial role the college sector will play in collaborating with the business community to drive innovation across Scotland.
“Innovate UK has recognised the importance of Scottish colleges in the innovation and enterprise landscape and the role our institutions play in leading economic and social transformation.
“This sector-first opportunity and collective approach brings six colleges together to deliver on innovation and economic priorities and will underpin the ambitions of the business community across the city region and Scotland.”
The award of funding is part of a UK-wide push by Innovate UK to promote innovation that will see £7.3 million invested in nine projects across 33 colleges.
Other regions involved across the UK include Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.
Hosted within each college, the Innovation Hubs are set to begin supporting businesses at the end of March 2024.
Cisco, the networking, cloud, and cybersecurity solutions provider, will cut 5% of its global networks as the major tech reshuffle continues to plague workers in the undulating industry.
Revealed in an investor call on 14 February, CEO Chuck Robbins blamed the layoffs on macroeconomic challenges, saying that the company is aiming to be more cautious in the expectations based on customer feedback and uncertainty about deals.
A downturn in purchases from Cisco, especially among telecommunications providers, was cited as a major reason for the layoffs.
“This industry has seen significant pressure and they’re adjusting deployment phasing, which is weighing on our business outlook,” CEO Chuck Robbins said, as reported by ITPro. “Given these factors, we are adjusting our expenses and investment to reflect the current environment.”
Despite the layoffs, Robbins credited Cisco with a solid second quarter performance.
“We continue to align our investments to future growth opportunities,” Robbins said in their Q2 report. “Our innovation sits at the centre of an increasingly connected ecosystem and will play a critical role as our customers adopt AI and secure their organizations.”
CFO Scott Herren added: “We are making good progress in our business model shift to more recurring revenue while remaining focused on financial discipline, operating leverage and shareholder returns, as evidenced by our increased dividend.”
While confidence may appear high, CISCO’s revenue was down 6% year-on-year, but their revenue in security, collaboration, and observability did grow.
CISCO’s decision to layoff staff points to the continued trend of major tech companies having their employees pay the price for an uncertain economic future.
Ukraine is set to receive thousands more drones as defence secretary Grant Shapps announces today that the UK will co-lead a major drone capability coalition with Latvia for Ukraine.
As part of the coalition, the UK will scale up and streamline the West’s provision of ‘first person view’ (FPV) drones to Ukraine.
FPV drones have proven highly effective on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion, providing their operators with situational awareness to target enemy positions, armoured vehicles, and ships with explosive ordnance.
By creating a competition to produce these drones at scale and at an affordable price point, the UK will try to leverage its industrial strength.
This is the first project to be launched from the £200 million drone package announced by the Prime Minister in January this year. It will see the UK order thousands of FPV drones for Ukraine, including from UK manufacturers, providing a boost to the industry and delivering on the Prime Minister’s priority to grow the economy.
“The UK continues to do all we can to give Ukraine what it needs – upping our aid to £2.5bn this year and committing £200m to manufacture drones, making us Ukraine’s largest drone supplier,” defence secretary Grant Shapps said.
“Today, we’re going even further. I’m proud to announce that the UK and Latvia will co-lead an international coalition to build Ukraine’s vital drone capabilities. Together, we will give Ukraine the capabilities it needs to defend itself and win this war, to ensure that Putin fails in his illegal and barbaric ambitions.”
Further to this, the defence secretary will bring together 13 NATO allies and Sweden to sign an agreement on two new multinational procurement initiatives focusing on munitions and missiles.
Spearheaded by the UK, these initiatives aim to increase defence industrial capacity across the Euro-Atlantic area, replenish stockpiles at pace and continue support to Ukraine.
This multinational approach offers a scalable solution for nations to jointly procure more of the missile and munition types that NATO and Ukraine need.
The UK is also working with NATO Allies Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States to deliver priority air defence equipment to Ukraine. This partnership, which Canada recently joined, has so far delivered hundreds of short and medium air defence missiles and systems to keep Ukraine’s cities safe from Russian bombardment.
So far, the UK has committed £2.5bn in military aid to Ukraine in 2024/25, an increase of £200m on the previous two years.
The UK has also officially entered into a recession.
The Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC) has announced its 2024 TechX startup cohort. The TechX Clean Energy Accelerator, now in its sixth year, will welcome 12 high potential startups to the programme commencing February.
Each startup will receive up to £100,000 in funding and access to NZTC’s network of mentors, investors, and sponsors, including bp, Equinor ADNOC, and ConocoPhillips, the latter of which joined the programme this year. Startups can also benefit from industry support opportunities including field trials.
“As NZTC welcomes its sixth TechX cohort, we reiterate the pivotal role entrepreneurs will play in accelerating the energy transition,” chief acceleration officer and TechX director Mark Anderson said.
“This year’s cohort introduces compelling innovations, offering solutions to propel the adoption of clean and affordable energy. TechX start-ups are the companies of the future, poised to reshape the energy landscape and help lead us towards net zero.”
The programme aims to leverage entrepreneurial ingenuity to discover and propel critical technologies required for the energy transition. Following 15 weeks of investor readiness training, refining business models, business storytelling and more, the programming will culminate in a Demo Day in June 2025.
This will provide the start-ups with an opportunity to showcase their solutions to industry and investors, with potential to win further funding.
Following graduation from the programme, TechX also provides two additional years of growth support and continued access to NZTC’s network and co-working facilities.
The selected start ups are:
Airspection: Drones designed for more reliable, more robust and safer offshore infrastructure inspection.
Apleum: Technology to convert renewable energy, carbon dioxide and water into zero carbon jet fuel.
Kali Technology: Carbon-zero industrial process heating using low cost, integrated heat pump technology.
Frontier Robotics: Platform-agnostic software and associated hardware for autonomous underwater inspections.
HyWaves: Power management control system to increase hydrogen production for dedicated solar-to-hydrogen, and lowering cost.
H2CHP: Fuel-flexible power generator targeted at ports offering full control over the combustion process to operate at high efficiency with zero carbon emissions.
INERGIO Technologies: Novel system design that combines advantages of fuel cells and diesel generators for sustainable off-grid and backup power solutions.
MECHAPRES: High-temperature heat pump with embedded thermal storage for industrial heat decarbonisation, with heat and steam as a service potential.
Modjoule: Smart, battery-equipped containers for cost-effective electrification of shipping vessels.
Reaforma: Leveraging construction waste for secure carbon capture and storage in a novel carbon-negative composite.
Soltropy: Novel solar thermal technology for buildings that harvests carbon neutral heat all year round.
SurreyH2: Lower cost green hydrogen production technology using a recirculating catalyst, with intrinsic hydrogen storage capability.
To date, 57 start-ups have been supported through the programme. The alumni have collectively generated £32m in revenue, and created 443 new jobs. With seven commercialisations already achieved, TechX alumni companies are demonstrating steady growth, and are forecast to enable 20-25 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions savings per year by 2030.
“Congratulations to those selected for the TechX Clean Energy Accelerator programme,” UK government minister for Scotland Malcolm Offord said. “Start-up companies play a fundamental role in driving innovation in the energy sector, supporting sustainable economic growth, and delivering solutions to the environmental issues we all face today.
“The UK Government is investing £90 million in the Net Zero Technology Centre and more than £2.9 billion to level up right across Scotland.”
Virgin Money has agreed to purchase abrdn‘s 50% stake in their joint venture, Virgin Money Investments, following the launches of its new investment and pension services for customers.
Established in 2019, the joint venture combined abdrn’s and Virgin Money’s specialisms to create a new proposition for retail investors.
The service, comprising a new digital platform as well as a range of investment products, launched to customers in April 2023.
A new pension was launched on the platform in November 2023, and all existing investment and pension accounts held on the old platform were successfully migrated to the new platform in January 2024.
Following the achievement of these significant milestones, Virgin Money will now take full ownership of Virgin Money Investments, representing a step forward in Virgin Money’s strategy to pursue profitable growth.
“Our joint venture with abrdn has successfully delivered a new investment service offering simple and straightforward investment options for customers,” Allegra Patrizi, managing director, business and commercial, at Virgin Money said.
The purchase will enable Virgin Money and abrdn to focus on their respective strengths; Virgin Money’s broad appeal and distribution and abrdn’s strength in asset management. Following the transaction, abrdn will continue to provide the investment advice for Virgin Money Investments.
Virgin Money Investments had total assets under management of c.£3.7bn and over 150k customer accounts 31 December 2023. Virgin Money’s ambition is to double assets under management for Virgin Money Investments within the next five years.
“Taking full control of Virgin Money Investments will mean we can bring the investments and pensions business together with our deposits, mortgages, credit cards and daily banking, enabling us to help more customers feel confident to invest for the future and driving significant growth in assets under management,” Patrizi said.
Under the terms of the deal, which is subject to customary approvals, Virgin Money will acquire the 50% of Virgin Money Unit Trust Managers Limited1 currently owned by abrdn, for a cash payment of £20 million, funded entirely from Virgin Money’s existing capital resources. The transaction is expected to consume c.5bps of Common Equity Tier 1 capital on day one at completion, which is anticipated to be during April.
In 2024, UK SMEs could be more vulnerable to cyber-attacks than SMEs in other countries, new research from JumpCloud has indicated.
Their Q1 2024 SME IT Trends report found that UK respondents are less likely to offer formal cybersecurity training (62% UK, 72.5% USA, and 74% in India), less likely to have an IT security expert on staff (78% v 87% v 94%), least financially prepared to recover from a cyber-attack (65% v 75% v 80%), and least likely to have a cybersecurity plan (72% v 82% v 87.5%).
This lack of investment in planning, training, and resources could be budget-related. The UK reported the lowest overall budget increase (75%) and lowest percentage reporting “budgets up by more than 20%”, at 13%.
UK budgets are more likely to be remaining flat than other countries and combining “remaining flat” and “decreased” the picture is slightly less favourable overall. In the Q2 2023 report, 77% of UK respondents reported budget increases.
Security is the Number One Challenge
In terms of challenges, security dominates, cited by more than half of respondents globally (56%) and by 50% of UK respondents. The second and third biggest challenges both globally and in the UK were new services/application rollouts (45% and 41% respectively) and increased work burden (44% and 38% respectively).
In Q2 2023, UK respondents cited device management as their second largest challenges, but this has now dropped to sixth place. Network attacks topped the list (40%), followed by software vulnerability exploits (34%), and ransomware (29%).
In the UK, network attacks also topped the list (44.5%) followed by ransomware (35%), with software vulnerability exploits in third place (32%).
In fact, ransomware is a bigger concern for UK organisations than the other countries surveyed (35% UK vs 32% USA vs 20% India).
Budgets on the Rise
The good news is that globally, IT budgets are up over the past 12 months, continuing the trend seen in early 2023. Over eight in ten organisations report an increase in IT budgets (82%), and a fifth (20%) report an increase of more than 20%.
Likewise, 2024 is an improving picture for UK SMEs with 69% of UK respondents expecting their IT budgets to increase and only 7% predicting a decrease. In Q2 2023, 57% expected increases and 10% expected budgets to decrease.
Greg Keller, CTO of JumpCloud commented; “SMEs are often called the “engine” of the UK economy and they have contributed to better-than-expected performance over the past year. Defending against cyber attacks is important so UK SMEs can continue driving growth, and organisations are naturally looking for powerful but cost-effective solutions that minimise administrative burden. Frictionless device and identity management is a great place to start.”
AI Adoption
With all the hype around AI, it is no surprise that organisations are actively planning for AI; only 13% of global organisations do not currently have any plans to implement AI initiatives.
Well over half (61%) expect to implement AI initiatives within the next year, with 76% agreeing their organisation should be investing in AI, and 63% already having their own AI policy.
However, adoption of AI appears to be higher among Indian and USA respondents than in the UK. In fact, 23% of UK respondents have no plans to implement AI and 8.5% are taking a longer-term view and not planning to implement until 19-24 months out.
Only 70% of UK respondents think their organisation should be investing in AI, versus the global average of 76% and only 45.5% have a policy around AI versus 63% globally.
UK respondents were more likely to disagree or strongly disagree that AI is outpacing their organisation’s ability to protect against threats (22% versus 18% in the USA versus 5% in India).
Also, the UK was least likely to claim that AI will be a net positive (71% versus 76% USA and 91% India). That said, 22% of UK respondents do feel that the organisation is moving too slowly when it comes to the adoption of AI, a higher percentage than the USA and India respondents.
As Google’s phase out of third-party cookies becomes a reality in 2024, UK businesses are taking action.
A new survey conducted by Capterra, the software and services marketplace, found that despite 61% of marketers expressing concerns about how the cookie discontinuation may impact their company, nearly half (49%) of all the respondents said their company felt “well prepared” and 44% are “moderately” so.
In fact, for many, the change is perceived as beneficial: More than half (52%) of marketers expect an increase in revenue after the end of third-party cookies, with 39% anticipating that it will have a positive impact on business performance.
Capterra surveyed 138 marketing professionals in UK companies to investigate the impact of Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies. The survey found that despite worries about a ‘cookieless’ future, companies are equipped with alternative methods for data collection.
Preparing for the phase-out, 57% of respondents said their company is relying on alternative channels and 51% are developing new means to collect data. A further 46% reported that they will use Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) to centralise and manage first-party customer data.
For the type of data collected, 69% say they will focus on collecting first-party data – this includes demographics, direct website interactions, purchase history, and behaviours with marketing content.
64% say they will leverage second-party data from ‘trusted organisations’ – second party data is essentially first-party data that has been shared outside of its original source, typically with trusted partners.
Another 60% aim to make use of contextual data, a catch-all for any relevant data that can be gleaned from a customer’s environment.
These data collection techniques can help marketers get a clearer picture of their customer base and enhance personalisation while respecting data privacy. In addition, companies will leverage tools to gain key customer insights.
Notably, the majority (78%) of surveyed marketers said their company is investing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to unify first-party data and track customer interaction.
“The end of third-party cookies does not mean the end of data collection for businesses,” Capterra UK analyst, Eduardo Garcia Rodriguez said.
“The new way to collect data will focus more on first-party data from companies’ websites or data that is proactively provided by customers while respecting data privacy in a consensual manner.
“Additionally, businesses will look for quality rather than quantity. For example, they will use CRM tools to build and strengthen customer relationships, while finding alternative routes to personalisation.”
However, adapting to a ‘cookieless’ marketing environment also poses challenges for advertisers, especially for those who rely heavily on them: more than half (53%) of respondents said that over a fifth (20%) of their company’s campaigns are based on data collection with third-party cookies, and 78% of all surveyed marketers admitted to their increased importance in recent years.
Third-party cookies have been essential for advertisers to track website activities and help support a range of online experiences. For example, 86% used third-party cookies to collect general information, such as gender, age, and race, while they have helped a further 83% create personalised ads.
Consequently, the biggest hurdle in the future for most marketers (45%) will be redefining their marketing strategies.
Respondents identified other challenges too, such as tracking the right data (42%), relying more on first-party or zero-party data (41%), and having to readjust their budgets (36%).
Plus, with the increased demand for ad placements on websites, more than half (55%) expect online marketing competition to increase. To comply with data privacy and stay in the game, UK companies need to take an innovative and agile approach to their marketing efforts.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, new research from Cequence Security found that scammers are increasingly active on dating apps, attempting to manipulate and exploit users for financial gain.
These deceptive individuals pose as genuine romantic interests, building emotional connections before attempting to extract money from unsuspecting individuals.
Developed by the Cequence CQ Prime Threat Research Team, the report analysed anonymised 2023 traffic and attack data across multiple customers in the dating and media vertical across all geographies.
The CQ Prime team identified and categorised active threats, and the resulting threat intelligence is a foundational element of Cequence products that enable mitigation and blocking to protect customers’ business.
According to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), £92 million was lost to romance fraudsters in the UK for the financial year ending April 2023.
Bots serve as the linchpin for scammers, providing the means to scale their operations. Through the efficiency of automation, these perpetrators intensify their efforts, significantly elevating the likelihood of successful exploits.
In 2023, more than 660 million bot requests on popular dating apps were detected, and more than 12 million unique accounts were protected from account takeovers.
Over a quarter (28%) of fraudulent transactions were spoofing an iPhone app, with 58% of all detected bot activity originating from the US.
“This Valentine’s Day, love is in the air, but so are scammers targeting lonely hearts on dating apps and looking for ways to extort money,” said William Glazier, director of threat Research at Cequence.
“Thanks to the recent advancements in AI, bad actors are now leaning on automation to scale their operations, increasingly exploiting APIs to get the accounts they need to continue their scams. While legitimate end users should always watch for red flags, organisations that develop and manage the social and dating applications where these scams occur must take the appropriate measures to curb this malicious activity.
“To combat romance fraudsters, dating sites and apps must find the perfect, long-term match to help protect their users from automated attacks,” Glazier continued.
“These organisations must adopt a holistic security strategy that protects their APIs at every lifecycle phase. This means treating API security and bot management as interconnected challenges, not separate issues solved by isolated teams. This combined approach involves identifying and registering all APIs, ensuring rigorous adherence to industry standards, and deploying advanced threat detection and mitigation tools to defend against attacks.”
A group dedicated to preserving and promoting one of the most renowned collections of early medieval sculptures in Europe has been awarded a grant of £150,000 by SP Energy Network’s Net Zero Fund to make vital sustainable upgrades to the home of the archaeological site in the heart of Govan.
Govan Heritage Trust is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of Govan Old Church – a Grade A listed building on the banks of the River Clyde – and will use the funding to install a new river source heat pump, resulting in a 93% reduction in carbon emissions and a 20% saving in energy costs.
The trust is one of the recipients of SP Energy Networks’ Net Zero Fund – a £5 million funding pot designed to support vulnerable communities across Central and Southern Scotland and ensure no one is left behind on the country’s journey to net zero emissions.
Scott Mathieson, network planning and regulation director at SP Energy Networks, said: “SP Energy Networks takes pride in serving all of the communities of Central and Southern Scotland.
“Our staff and networks are part of the fabric of the central belt and it’s right therefore that we play our part in ensuring the most vulnerable customers in our areas also obtain access to the benefits that zero emission energy can bring in transport, heat and jobs.
“The projects awarded in our first round of our Net Zero Fund are diverse and the ingenuity of these community led schemes is inspiring. We feel privileged to help them realise their net zero future.
“Our next funding round is now open, and we’re welcoming applications from eligible charities and community groups looking to accelerate their net zero plans.”
Following the closure of Govan Old Church in 2007, the community-run trust took over ownership of the listed building and the Govan Stones, a collection of early medieval carved stones dating back to the Viking era. Many archaeologists consider it one of the most important historic sites in Glasgow.
The stones were first discovered in the churchyard in 1855, however several were accidentally destroyed in the 1980s when they were mistaken for debris during the demolition of a neighbouring shipyard.
Since then, a community effort has been placed on maintaining and restoring the site – with Professor Stephen Driscoll at the University of Glasgow leading the latest excavations just last year.
Now in community ownership, the church is currently being transformed into a museum to showcase the site’s heritage and expects to welcome over 14,000 visitors each year.
The renovations will also offer a meeting space for local organisations and charities such as those catering for elderly and isolated members of the community, groups welcoming and supporting refugees, organisations working with Govan’s youth and local schools looking to learn about heritage.
Speaking on the support, Pat Cassidy, a trustee of Govan Heritage Trust said: “The Govan Stones are one of Scotland’s most remarkable historic artifacts, and the church itself has become a landmark in the local community.
“This funding will allow us to make much-needed improvements to our current infrastructure. Not only will we be able to lower our emissions, but we’ll also benefit from a significant saving on our energy bills and be able to focus on the renovations and provide an affordable meeting space for local groups, charities, and organisations to use.
“Two of our longest-standing members, Robert and Catriona Preston, first met in the church back in 1956 when they were in the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade and even held their wedding here in 1962. To this day, they remain an active part of our community and it’s this sense of legacy that the funding will help us safeguard – ensuring both the people of Govan and visitors can make their own memories here for years to come.”
A host of charities and organisations supporting communities across Scotland have been awarded funding from SP Energy Networks’ Net Zero Fund to introduce innovative net zero technology.
The groups will receive grants to help them decarbonise and reach their net zero targets sooner, with projects ranging from installation of solar panels and heat pumps to the purchase to electric vehicles and retrofitting listed buildings to increase energy efficiency.
The next round of the Net Zero Fund is now open and is welcoming applications from eligible charities and community organisations.
Alongside financial support, the fund also offers guidance and support through workshops tailored to community organisations and charities looking to take the next step on their decarbonisation journey.
SP Energy Networks owns and operates the electricity transmission and distribution network in Central and Southern Scotland, delivering power to more than two million homes and businesses.
The Net Zero Fund has been established through SP Transmission, a subsidiary of SP Energy Networks, responsible for transmitting high-voltage electricity from power stations and windfarms to the low-voltage network across Central and Southern Scotland.
Aberdeenshire-headquartered drilling tech company Coretax has been acquired by energy services firm Expro in a $210 million (£165.87m) deal.
With a headcount of 320, Coretax has been majority owned by private equity group Buckthorn Partners since 2018. The company specialises in performance drilling tools and wellbore cleanup, well integrity and production optimisation solutions.
The acquisition of Coretrax is set to enable Expro to expand its portfolio of cost-effective, technology enabled Well Construction and Well Intervention and Integrity solutions, particularly across the North and Latin America (NLA), Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions.
Building on Coretrax’s 15-year history, the acquisition will accelerate the availability of the company’s innovative tools by leveraging Expro’s global operating footprint.
Within Well Construction, the combination of Coretrax’s field proven technology offering with Expro’s existing drilling optimisation portfolio provides a comprehensive solutions toolbox.
These solutions include the DAV-MX downhole circulation tool, the HyPR Holesaver hydraulic pipe recovery system, and the Activated Drilling Scrapper (ADS) debris recovery system. Within Well Intervention & Integrity, Coretrax’s brings its best-in-class expandables business, which includes the only expandables solution that can be deployed on any of three conveyance systems (coil tubing, wireline or drill pipe).
Michael Jardon, Expro chief executive officer, said: “We are thrilled to announce our proposed acquisition of Coretrax, and look forward to welcoming John Fraser and his teammates to the Expro family.
“Coretrax has a complementary offering to Expro with little overlap and will bolster the portfolio of technology-enabled services and solutions offered through our Well Construction and Well Intervention & Integrity product lines, adding significant value to our clients from innovative technologies that reduce risk and cost, optimize drilling efficiency, extend the life of existing well stock, and optimise production.
“The integration of Coretrax’s leading technologies will strengthen our foothold in ESSA and MENA where both companies have strong, established positions, and is expected to open new avenues for growth in NLA and Asia-Pacific. We look forward to leveraging the complementary capabilities and customer relationships of Expro and Coretrax to deliver additional value to our customers and other stakeholders.”
John Fraser, CEO at Coretrax said: “I’m excited about the opportunities the acquisition brings for Coretrax and our team. The synergies between our respective technology portfolios will enable us to grow our market share while significantly increasing our capabilities to tackle the most complex well challenges.
“We are proud of the innovation-led approach, strong customer base and performance history that we developed over the last 15 years, and we look forward to joining forces with Expro to create greater value for our customers globally.”
The Scottish Government’s broadband rollout scheme, R100, is facing backlash after its lacklustre attempt to bridge the digital divide effecting Scotland’s rural and remote communities.
Last week the Scottish Government had released an update on the progress of their Reaching 100% (R100) programme in partnership with Openreach (BT), which aimed to ensure that every home and business in Scotland can access superfast broadband.
The project, launched in 2017, was propped up by a vouchers scheme offering financial help tp Scottish households and businesses to access superfast broadband, which would be defined at reaching 30 Mbps.
While over 95% of Scottish premises have access to a network capable of this, the Government missed its target of 100% coverage by 2021, and its voucher programme is still not reaching those who need it most.
A parliamentary question brough up by the Scottish Liberal Democrats party has found that the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme has only helped to connect 3.6% of properties in eligible hard-to-reach areas.
The vouchers of up to £5,000 are available to homes and businesses with less than 30Mbps that have been left out of the R100 and planned commercial advancement.
While 83,855 homes and businesses were found to be eligible for support in 2022, only 3,047 vouchers have been issued.
Scottish LibDem rural affairs spokesperson Beatrice Wishart has called out the Scottish government for their failure to support rural communities in providing effective access to the voucher scheme.
“Everyone should have the digital tools they need to start a business, secure an education or access an online medical appointment no matter where they live,” Wishart said.
The rural divide in broadband and digital access continues to effect business, education, and quality of life inequalities. As the world turns ever-more digital, Scotland risks leaving behind its more remote communities in its sprawling highlands and distant islands.
“A reliable internet connection is a modern day essential, yet the voucher scheme is the Scottish Government’s Plan B,” Wishard critiqued.
“Neither SNP plan to reach all homes with highspeed broadband has worked and a rethink is needed.
“Much is made of ensuring no one gets left behind but the fact is in island and rural areas they have been and vouchers are no alternative to those who are not reached by R100.
“People might be aware of the voucher scheme but on balance choose not to go down that route. The voucher scheme has never been good enough to plug gaps and connect those households and businesses left out of the original scheme.”
While Westminster is technically the overarching authority on Scottish broadband, local and devolved authorities can and do make their own investments in connectivity developments.
The Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC) has announced the launch of its horizon scanning service, tailored to give industry, supply chain, and investors with bespoke insights into net zero technologies and projects, industry trends, global investments, and policy shifts.
Amidst increasing decarbonisation challenges, the technology landscape is rapidly evolving and expanding.
Companies are often faced with inadequate information due to a lack of tools, resources, and expertise to analyse data effectively, impacting decision-making capability and accuracy.
NZTC’s new service will help companies looking to diversify into new energies and markets, build resilience, and future-proof their businesses.
Horizon scanning is delivered to clients through regular updates, and forecasts technology developments from now out to 2050.
This enables businesses to anticipate their subsequent impact and seize opportunities as first movers or early adopters, by giving them confidence to invest in technologies and commit to projects.
Niki Chambers, head of technology services at NZTC, said: “Horizon scanning equips organisations with the insight to stay ahead and navigate the dynamic technological and market landscapes.
“We’ve seen significant demand from companies looking to ensure resilience and adaptability in a dynamic market. Horizon scanning provides companies with the confidence to unlocking the potential for growth and diversify their business.”
Horizon scanning is the third service recently introduced by NZTC through its technology services offering.
The new solution complements its technology roadmapping service, which helps organisations identify emissions reduction potential, and its technology due diligence solution, which aims to support investors in selecting their next technology investment and wider company acquisition strategies.
Heriot-Watt University has selected six startups and small businesses to join the first cohort of its DeepTech LaunchPad pilot programme, which connects entrepreneurs to the university’s expertise and facilities in areas like robotics, AI, and advanced engineering.
The programme, supported by Barclays Eagle Labs through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Digital Growth Grant, will provide organisations with access to tailored services, facilities and equipment within Heriot-Watt and the National Robotarium, the world-leading centre for robotics and artificial intelligence based at the University’s Edinburgh campus.
“The DeepTech LaunchPad marks an incredibly exciting step in strengthening Scotland’s innovation ecosystem and establishing Heriot-Watt as a global leader in commercialising deep technology research,” Jamie Allan, Deeptech Launchpad programme leader said.
“As an international university with campuses and partnerships spanning the world, Heriot-Watt is uniquely positioned to help entrepreneurs translate their ideas into transformative and commercially viable solutions.”
As part of the six-month pilot, participants representing a diverse range of sectors including robotics, self-care, food services, marine technologies and medical devises, will be able to utilise Heriot-Watt’s array of experts from across its three global campuses and the cross-discipline research outputs of four global research institutes – including iNetZ+, the emerging Global Research Institute for Net Zero transition and beyond.
These include Borobo Ltd, founded by industrial designer Alexandre Colle, which aims to advance a new robotics platform targeting enhanced power management and electronic board design.
Also joining the cohort is ScrubMarine, founded by engineer Clyne Albertelli who is developing specialised robots to tackle biofouling in maritime vessels.
GI Healthcare Industries, led by entrepreneur and engineer Aswath Ganesan Indra, is revolutionising food services with semi-autonomous cooking robots for institutional catering.
Infinity DPM is creating advanced upper limb prosthetics through expert engineering and biomechanics by founder and mechanical engineer David Yeudall.
Janki Group, led by architect Aisha Janki Akinola, is building an AI-powered tattoorobot system for the personal self-care industry, whilst Wynter Robotics is building mobile robotic solutions for construction industry applications such as measuring, bricklaying, and wood frame assembly.
The six successful companies will receive training and support from the university’s commercialisation team, helping them to become investment-ready with proven prototype products, industry partners and a viable route to market.
“Through this pilot programme, our six-strong cohort will gain access to world-leading facilities like the National Robotarium as well as our vast network of international industry connections, experts and alumni to accelerate their cutting-edge research toward commercial success on the global stage,” Allan continued.
“By fostering this collaboration, we empower the translation of deep science into transformative solutions ready to make real-world impact.
“We eagerly anticipate the fruits of this hands-on commercialisation experience and look forward to continued engagement with these innovators as they bring remarkable technologies to market across critical sectors like medical devices, food technology, robotics, and sustainability.”
Grant Wheeler, head of commercialisation added: “Having a deeptech accelerator is one of the missing pieces in Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and will allow our nation to create companies that can compete on an international scale.”
“By giving external entrepreneurs access to the same expertise and facilities as our internal teams, the DeepTech Launchpad levels the playing field and fertilises high-growth businesses with world-changing potential.”
Applications for the next cohort open in mid-2024 following evaluation of the pilot. Heriot-Watt intends to scale up the programme and potentially expand to other Scottish universities if this first round proves successful.
Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) have teamed up with HAELO – a regulatory tech company based in Glasgow – to develop an app that aims to offer cutting-edge solutions in anomaly detection and regulatory compliance.
The app aims to address critical challenges faced by businesses across various sectors, as cyber risks continue to permeate and regulatory changes stir the tech scene.
GCU’s School of Computing, Engineering, and Built Environment has partnered with HAELO for the project. HAELO specialises in developing technology for the financial sector to protect against cyber-attacks while assuring compliance with regulation.
Anomalies, defined as patterns or behaviours in data that deviate from the norm, can pose significant risks to businesses, especially in meeting regulatory requirements.
Led by a team of researchers including Dr Yan Zhang, Dr Sajid Nazir and Dr Laura Pruszko, the project focuses on leveraging advanced data analysis techniques to uncover hidden anomalies that may threaten business operations and compliance efforts.
The primary objective of the collaboration is to create a user-friendly application that empowers companies, particularly those operating in highly-regulated industries such as finance, to effectively detect and mitigate anomalies.
By providing a holistic view of critical risk factors, the HAELO app aims to streamline regulatory compliance processes and enhance organisational resilience.
This research initiative is made possible through funding from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), underscoring the importance of academic-industry partnerships in driving innovation and addressing real-world challenges.
The project is set to span a duration of three months, during which the research team will work to develop and refine the anomaly detection and regulatory compliance solution.
Dr Yan Zhang said: “Through this collaboration, Glasgow Caledonian University reaffirms its commitment to fostering impactful research that translates into tangible benefits for industry and society.
“We will provide updates on the progress of this ground-breaking project as we continue to push the boundaries of knowledge and innovation in anomaly detection and regulatory compliance.”
Nucleus Financial Platforms, the Edinburgh-based adviser platform group with over £80 billion of assets under administration from 250,000 customers, announces the acquisition of Third Financial.
Previously known as Nucleus Financial, the fintech company was created after it was acquired by James Hay Partnerships in 2021.
Nucleus’s acquisition of Third Financial, will provide it with 50 clients in the UK which amassed £6bn of assets under administration, and a further £40bn of assets administered via its software system, Tercero.
The acquisition is set to enable Nucleus to extend the platform solutions it offers to firms of all sizes.
As well as the existing leading retail retirement platform and specialists SIP and SSAS products, Nucleus will benefit from Third Financial’s proprietary technology, enabling an enhances ‘adviser-as-a-platform’ proposition to meet the needs of larger businesses who want to offer their own platform.
The move represents a sizeable growth opportunity, as research by NextWealth showed that an increasing number of larger advisory groups were exploring establishing their own platform as a way of increasing revenue, reducing risk and improving operational efficiency.
The key benefit to advisers of this approach is the provision of greater control over the products, service, and price.
The combination with Third Financial is fully aligned with the group’s strategic ambition of building scale and capability through organic growth and compelling acquisition opportunities.
Upon completion, the group’s platform AUA is expected to be circa £90bn.
Richard Rowney, CEO of Nucleus, said: “We’re delighted to announce the acquisition of Third Financial. By combining our scale, expertise and relationships, with their innovative technology, we’ll be able to offer a broader proposition to serve the needs of wealth managers and advisory businesses across the sector.
“We’ve long admired the team that Ian has built at Third Financial and what they’ve achieved. Their focus on innovation and client centricity has clearly differentiated their business, establishing them as one of the leading investment platform providers, and they will be a great addition to our group.”
Ian Partington, group chief executive of Third Financial added: “A crucial factor in the decision to join Nucleus is that we feel very culturally aligned. Delivering excellence for our clients has always been core to our success, and in the Nucleus team we found that quality fully reflected.
“Now with our combined expertise and resource we can deliver even more to existing and future clients both in terms of products and service. Collectively our focus will remain on running a stable and profitable expanded service, continuing to support clients so they can deliver great outcomes for their customers.”
For the acquisition, Nucleus is being advised by Fenchurch Advisory Partners and Slaughter and May. Third Financial is being advised by GP Bullhound and Osborne Clarke.
It’s hard to believe that “AI winters” ever existed given the sheer volume of speculation, media headlines, and pages of content the technology now inspires (..and, often writes!). Although artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing new, its current ‘generative’ flavour seems to have well and truly captured the public imagination like never before. Since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, the AI hype train has sped down the tracks of Progress-Ville unabated.
However, are we starting to see a very light feathering of the brakes in 2024?
In its analysis, it states, ‘While generative AI (GenAI) had significant hype in 2023, it will not significantly change the growth of IT spending in the near-term’ – although it does still state that it believes the tech will eventually ‘change everything’.
Avoiding the traps
Although many organisations will have undoubtedly been swept up in the initial frenzy, many are now starting to take stock and really consider where this new technology can help to augment their operations.
In my opinion, this can only be a good thing – particularly when the consequences of doing AI badly can have such deep and negative impacts, both operationally and reputationally. One only has to look at the plight of a large UK-based delivery provider in recent weeks as it applied the tech to its online chatbot.
Although there will be some ‘first mover’ opportunities to be snaffled up in all sectors, organisations also need to avoid the trap of deploying AI for AI’s sake.
Operating the tech isn’t cheap for a starter, so any implementation needs to be carefully considered for all the right reasons.
Starting with ‘why’
Without sounding like the slightly clichéd go-to for business advice – Simon Sinek – organisations really should heed his advice when he talks in one of his most famous videos about starting with ‘why’.
When it comes to AI adoption, you shouldn’t be starting with the technology to inform your decision – you really need to be thinking about the business challenges/user problems you are looking to alleviate as a result of implementation. It’s only by taking this approach that you can start to apply the tech properly and appropriately.
From some of the businesses we talk to, we find that the hype surrounding generative AI can create unnecessary panic and/or anxiety for them. Not only do they not know where to start when it comes to implementation, they are also fearful of missing the huge opportunities that the technology will unlock for them.
My advice is that you’re much better taking a more considered approach. A dash to implement AI without considering the aforementioned points could lead to unnecessary complexity, cost and inefficiencies – these all being counter to the promise that AI is meant to unlock.
A collaborative approach
It’s my view that collaboration holds the key to unlocking AI’s true potential. Businesses riding the hype train often see AI as a panacea for all ills, and at xDesign it’s our job as a technology partner to help organisations determine if it’s the best option to solve their challenges – or even an option at all.
One way we do this is by running collaborative AI Innovation workshops. Starting at the business level, these high-energy interactive sessions really get into the detail of some real-world business challenges and opportunities that an organisation may be facing.
From there we determine if AI – which is not a product in itself – can form part of a product or service that would provide the right solution. By identifying a clear use case right from the start, these workshops have actually helped us accelerate and expand the AI ambitions of organisations dramatically.
Businesses often come to us asking if we can build them a chatbot without realising that AI is capable of so much more. And, this is where it pays to collaborate with people who fully understand how AI might be leveraged as part of a wider ecosystem.
AI becomes particularly interesting when integrated into a pipeline of technologies – linking it up with existing tooling, knowledge bases and automation to form a solution with a real USP that provides a genuine competitive advantage.
By looking at the bigger picture, it’s easier to build a compelling business case more likely to meet the business’ needs, attract buy-in and ultimately justify that exciting first investment into AI. As the old adage goes, we need to think about ‘more haste and less speed’ when it comes to starting AI journeys.
