The National Cyber Security Centre published its tenth Annual Review this morning, The State of the Cyber Nation, and I listened to the launch live. There were two speakers: Baroness Liz Lloyd, the Cyber Security Minister, and Dr Richard Horne, the NCSC’s chief executive. Between them they called on a supermarket fridge, the Leaning Tower
Wilfully blind? What the NCSC Annual Review 2026 asks of the rest of us Read More »
A deadline, not a software update On 31 January 2027, Openreach switches off the old copper phone network for good. No extensions this time. Openreach has been signalling this move for the best part of a decade, and it has just written to every communications provider on its network making one point very plainly: there
What the landline switch-off is really testing Read More »
This week, up to 600 GP practices across England and Wales lost their websites after the company that provided them went into administration. Patients can no longer use the online consultation forms. The chatbots and the FootFall online consultation platform have gone too, and some practices have warned that requests patients had already sent may
Hundreds of GP Websites Gone Overnight: What Supplier Insolvency Really Looks Like Read More »
This morning Ofcom published its assessment of how social media firms could check that their users are 16 or over when the under-16s ban comes into force next year. It names four methods it considers capable of being “highly effective”: photo ID matching, banking checks, digital ID services and facial age estimation. Most of the
The Social Media Ban Will Check Adults Too. So Who Ends Up Holding Your Passport? Read More »
A LinkedIn Celebration, Six Months Before an Enforcement Notice In April, Auror’s co-founder and the Metropolitan Police’s official account posted on LinkedIn about a retail crime pilot going well. Officers in Lewisham and central London could review CCTV and incident reports submitted by retailers through a platform called Auror, and the positive outcome rate —
What the Met Police’s Auror Reprimand Really Teaches About Shadow IT Read More »
When someone asks me what I do for a living, I usually take a breath before answering. Business continuity, crisis management, information security, data protection, emergency planning, exercising, training…. People’s eyes start to glaze over somewhere around the third item, and I can see them filing me under “something in IT” or “health and safety,
Defrosted overnight: the French supermarket cyber attack and How it describes my job Read More »
This week produced three AI stories that look separate but aren’t. Anthropic’s own alignment lead put a number on AI wiping out humanity: a chance he personally puts at more than 10% within the next decade. The company’s latest Threat Intelligence Report disclosed that it has spent the months since December 2025 detecting and blocking
On Monday evening, Outlook and Exchange Online stopped working. Not for one company, for a meaningful slice of the world. People couldn’t log in. Messages sat unsent. Search returned nothing. IT teams spent hours fielding calls from colleagues who couldn’t do their jobs, because the one tool most of us touch fifty times a day
A Forgotten Certificate Just Broke Email for Millions. That’s the Real Story. Read More »
I got an email last week that a lot of people reading this will also have had. Manchester Airports Group wrote to tell me my data had been caught up in a cyber security incident. In my case it was the car parking, and not the cheap kind either, since I’d paid for it three
I can change a password. I can’t change my number plate. Read More »
IBM published its Cost of a Data Breach Report last month, and the headline figure is the one everyone will quote: the global average cost of a breach has hit a record $4.99 million, a 12% increase on last year. In the UK specifically, that average sits at around $4.27 million (£3.13 million). Numbers like
The Real Cost of a Breach Just Went Up Again — Here’s What the Number Doesn’t Tell You Read More »
