News

Never let it be said that we don’t celebrate good news! Since April 2018, UK banks have had to report “Operational and Security Incidents” affecting personal and business current accounts to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) if they reach any of the following thresholds: 10% of transaction affected; 5000 payment service users affected; and/or 2 […]

Last Saturday marked the anniversary of the Kegworth Air Crash. On 8th January 1989 a British Midland Boeing 737 developed an engine fault shortly after taking off from East Midlands Airport bound for Belfast. The pilots mistakenly shut down the wrong engine and the plane crashed onto the M1 just outside the airport perimeter. Of […]

It seems incredible that, in the space of just a few weeks, we have stumbled from the chaos of the withdrawal from Afghanistan to national CO2 shortages and now a fuel distribution crisis.  Inevitably, comparisons are being made with the end of James Callaghan’s government and the “Winter of Discontent”. Despite the title of this […]

According to figures published recently by the International Standards Organisation (ISO), there was another steep rise in the number of certifications globally to both ISO 222301 and ISO 27001 last year.  As of the end of 2020, there were: 44 486 valid ISO 27001 certificate (up 22% on 2019); and 2205 valid ISO 22301 certificates […]

It is rare to get detailed information on the costs of incidents; so the recent financial update from Ocado Retail, covering the period around the fire at their Erith fulfilment centre, is particularly interesting.  Comments by the company’s senior management, also raise a question mark over how much they have learnt from previous fires. A […]

We blogged last week about the sharp rise in energy prices in the UK and the fact that this was leading some energy-intensive industries to shut-down production.  The situation has now escalated markedly, with the news that our main producer of fertiliser, CF Industries, has shut down production; leading to a massive shortage of CO2 […]

Electricity prices in the UK were already increasing because of a combination of the rising cost of fossil fuels, outages of nuclear power plants and an unseasonable shortage of wind.  However, the sudden shock of a fire at a National Grid site in Ashford, Kent shutting down a 2GW interconnection with France sent prices rocketing […]

The media last week was full of dramatic images of flooding in London: the disruption to Tube stations and two major hospitals causing particular concern.  But, exactly two years ago, we were facing an even more serious flooding incident here in the High Peak. Sustained rainfall through late July 2019 had filled Toddbrook Reservoir to […]

Databarracks have just published their 2021 Data Health Check.  You may think “So what?” – we are constantly bombarded with surveys on different aspects of information security management.  I would argue that the Data Health Check is interesting for two reasons: It is explicitly UK focused; and The survey has been carried out every year […]