Copyright TechTarget - All rights reserved ComputerWeekly’s best articles of the day https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html Techtarget Feed Generator en Fri, 17 Jul 2026 22:14:36 GMT https://www.computerweekly.com editor@computerweekly.com <p>Lots of digital leaders must keep multiple plates spinning. After all, being a successful technology chief in the modern era means ensuring nothing falls crashing to the floor. Yet for Dan Cherowbrier, chief technology officer (CTO) at <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366637710/GSMA-transforms-Formula-E-circuit-into-5G-testbed">Formula E</a>, the number of plates is bewildering.</p> <p>“It’s the most unique job you could ever imagine, because we combine so many elements,” he says about his job running technology at the motorsport championship for electric vehicles (EVs). “My team keeps the Wi-Fi going, we do the timing, the start lights, the TV production and all the elements of making a race happen, while at the same time constantly trying to innovate.”</p> <p>Cherowbrier says <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Jaguar-TCS-Formula-E-racing-team-making-breakthroughs-that-will-fine-tune-electric-road-vehicles">innovation is one of the watchwords for Formula E</a>. He describes the motorsport as a testbed for new ideas, whether it’s the cars on the track, the batteries powering the vehicles or the technology systems behind the scenes.</p> <p>“That’s our unique selling point – we are trying something different every time, pushing the boundaries and not accepting the normal, because we don’t have 40 years of legacy to protect,” he says. “We’re different; we can do that. And the fascinating thing about my job is balancing those two areas of operations and innovation.”</p> <p>Cherowbrier says another crucial element of the organisation’s innovation relates to sustainability. The sport’s ecosystem relies on a strict focus on the circular economy.</p> <p>“We’ve focused on being net zero, and we’re keen to make sure we follow through on that pledge,” he says. “So, we think about that process in how we run our services, which data sensors we use, and how we prompt and use AI [artificial intelligence] as that technology evolves.”</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Embracing innovation"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Embracing innovation</h2> <p>At Formula E, Cherowbrier, who reports to CEO Jeff Dodds, manages a team of around 20 professionals. This in-house team is bolstered by talent from the sport’s key technology partners, including Infosys.</p> <p>Cherowbrier became full-time CTO in January 2025, but he’d worked as a technology consultant for the organisation before joining permanently. For most of his IT leadership career, he has operated as a fractional CTO, working at organisations for two to three days a week, providing strategic technology guidance.</p> <p>“Formula E decided 18 months ago that they wanted a full-time CTO,” he says, referring to the shift to a permanent position with the organisation. They made that decision because they saw where AI was going. They decided they wanted to be a tech-first championship, so they invested in leadership, and then I’ve dropped most of my other roles to focus on being CTO.”</p> <p>So, how has Cherowbrier found the shift to full-time CTO? The answer, after more than a decade of being self-employed, is enjoyable.</p> <p>“Being part of a team in a way that you didn’t have before is rewarding,” he says. “We’re only 12 years old, and a lot of the company has been there since day one and has taken that journey together.”</p> <p>Now, with Cherowbrier, the technology team is forging new directions in digital transformation. Rather than in the early days of the sport, when innovation was mainly focused on making electric cars go as fast as possible, the concentration now is on developing a broad culture of innovation across the organisation and beyond.</p> <p>“We’re trying to expand that approach out to the rest of what we do, not just inside the sport, but inside in terms of how we message our fans, how we do our freight, how we run our business, how we do our finances and making it so that everyone can come up with the new ideas,” says Cherowbrier. “It might be the wrong idea at the wrong time, but there’s no such thing as a bad idea.</p> <p>“We want everyone to be confident and comfortable coming up with ideas. If someone on the logistics or finance team has an idea about something we should pursue in broadcast, we want to hear it. It doesn’t matter whether an idea comes from inside or outside the company. The more ideas you’ve got, the better place you’re in to choose.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Exploiting data"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Exploiting data</h2> <p>Since becoming CTO in January 2025, Cherowbrier has overseen some significant shifts. He gives the example of a change in Formula E’s freight footprint.</p> <p>Previously, the organisation ran the championship using three jumbo jets that took freight to tracks around the world. Air freight moves the cars, the batteries and valuable technology equipment, such as the TV cameras. At the start of 2025, Cherowbrier and his team used data to reduce air freight from three planes to two.</p> <p>“We used AI to analyse all the things we take on the planes,” he says, adding that the company used <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366641999/Google-launches-Gemini-Agent-Platform-eighth-generation-TPUs">Google Gemini</a> to power this process. We asked questions like, ‘Why do we take it? Can we source it locally?’. For instance, we now source our medical cars locally. That approach took two cars out of our freight, which is huge, and allowed us to get down to two planes, which has a huge impact on our cost base and carbon emissions.”</p> <blockquote> <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/Dan-Cherowbrier-FormulaE-PR-140px.jpg" alt="Headshot of Dan Cherowbrier."> </div> <p><strong><span style="color: #34495e;">“The amazing thing about motorsport is we’re dripping in data...Success is about how you then use that data to tell a story”</span></strong></p> <p><em><span style="color: #34495e;">Dan Cherowbrier, Formula E</span></em></p> </blockquote> <p>Cherowbrier continues to look for ways to exploit digital and data. Google Cloud is Formula E’s principal AI partner as the organisation aims to optimise racing performance, streamline operations and enhance global fan experiences. Infosys, meanwhile, is Formula E’s digital innovation partner, with the two organisations seeking ways to exploit analytics effectively.</p> <p>“The amazing thing about motorsport is we’re dripping in data,” he says. “If you think about the data you might have in a tennis match, you’ve got two players and a ball, and then maybe a little bit about the surface and the weather. We have an entire racetrack, with 20 cars and 20 drivers from 10 teams, all producing different data. Success is about how you then use that data to tell a story.”</p> <p>Doubling down on AI is the priority for the next 12 months.</p> <p>“Every CTO in the country is worried about how to adopt AI as fast as they need to,” says Cherowbrier. “Every CEO and CFO is worried about that area, too. It’s almost like an arms race, but you’re desperate not to get it wrong as well, right? So, there’s a fear of missing out and a fear of getting it wrong.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Improving experiences"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Improving experiences</h2> <p>Cherowbrier says Formula E’s AI efforts are divided into three bands. First, bottom-up work, where staff across the organisation are permitted to experiment with emerging technology, so long as the capability sits in the organisation’s existing technology stack. The middle layer is the glue that ensures models and services work to produce business benefits.</p> <p>The top layer includes strategic, CEO-led projects in key areas, such as commercial and logistics. Cherowbrier says the organisation is also focused on using AI to support content creation, with unique messaging and insights for the modern sports fan. A crucial element here is Race Centre, an AI-powered tool developed in partnership with Infosys, which went live in March.</p> <p>“We’ve got people who are motorsport evangelists who watch every single race, and they know everything about every detail of timing systems and leaderboards,” he says.</p> <p>“Then other people just want this complex sport explained to them in an understandable format. What Race Centre allows us to do is to differentiate between those two types of users and what they want and then present that data to them.”</p> <p>Race Centre includes a series of AI-powered features, such as Live Leaderboard, which updates race positions in real time; Generative AI Commentary, which populates automatically after each lap; and Podium Prediction, which allows fans to choose their top three finishers before the start of a race.</p> <p>In addition to Infosys Topaz AI services, Cherowbrier says his organisation uses internal APIs to stream data to the platform’s models. He acknowledges that synchronising data streams from disparate locations can be challenging. However, Race Centre is receiving good feedback.</p> <p>“Before, we didn’t have a great second-screen experience,” says Cherowbrier. “The system really adds to our approach.”</p> <p>He has plans to do more. Cherowbrie discusses the potential to work with Infosys and develop a <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/AI-investment-and-the-effect-on-urban-digital-twins">digital twin</a> that provides a digital visualisation of the race using real-time data feeds.</p> <p>“A lot of organisations have digital twins, but most places that already have a system like this aren’t tracking things traveling around in circles at 200 miles an hour,” he says. “Digital twins are normally quite static. So, we’re trying to build our capability up. Ultimately, can we give an accurate definition of where the car is, where all 20 cars are at any moment in time, using the data sources available to us?”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Transforming continually"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Transforming continually</h2> <p>Cherowbrier reflects on his role and says there’ll be more plates to spin during the next year or so. Most notably, <a href="https://www.fiaformulae.com/en/formula-e-gen4-unleashed">the fourth-generation all-electric race car is set to debut</a> in next season’s championship, with 600kW (or 815bhp) output. Presenting this power upgrade to fans in new, innovative ways brings fresh challenges.</p> <p>“Gen Four is one of the fastest EV cars you’ll ever see,” he says. “It has incredible acceleration, but also a quite impressive top-line speed. So, it’s about, ‘How do we tell that story authentically and really well?’. And that means scaling some of the things we do. Nearly 600 million people are watching at home, and we have plenty of fans coming to our races.”</p> <p>Cherowbrier says the almost constant technology-enabled change in his sport and across business more generally creates new requirements for CTOs and CIOs. While effective digital leaders used to be chief engineers, today’s successful technology executives are enablers.</p> <p>“Successful CTOs are like a ‘continually transforming officer’,” he says. “That role is about setting an organisation up that can adapt to change. It’s recognising that every company is now a tech company, so we need to make sure our entire organisation can use digital. We become more of an enabler to everyone else in the organisation than just the IT department.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more interviews with automotive tech leaders</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366627156/Interview-Steve-Riley-head-of-IT-operations-and-service-management-Mercedes-AMG-Petronas-F1">Interview: Steve Riley, head of IT operations and service management, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1</a> – As the British Grand Prix rolled into Silverstone for the annual jamboree of Formula One motor racing, we caught up with the Mercedes F1 team to find out how technology has advanced in the year since the last race.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366642570/Interview-Alwin-Bakkenes-head-of-software-engineering-Volvo-Cars">Interview: Alwin Bakkenes, head of software engineering, Volvo Cars</a> – As cars become increasingly software-driven and AI-enabled, the Volvo software chief is at the cutting edge of connected vehicles and advanced mobility tools for drivers and passengers.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366640716/Interview-Thierry-Martin-head-of-enterprise-data-and-analytics-Toyota-Motor-Europe">Interview: Thierry Martin, head of enterprise data and analytics, Toyota Motor Europe</a> – A sketch artist by night, and a vehicle engineer by training, Toyota Europe’s data chief is bringing elements of both capabilities to bear in delivering better data insights and building a foundation for AI.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> For the tech chief at the electric vehicle racing organisation, innovation extends from everything digital to all the technology elements that make the growing motorsport operation a success https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/LeMagIT/hero_article/FormulaE.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645733/Interview-Dan-Cherowbrier-CTO-Formula-E Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:45:00 GMT <p>I cross the road on a concrete footbridge, the multi-lane A1261 rumbling beneath. Ahead, men in the “uniform” of contemporary IT staff trudge to their afternoon shift, tidy-but-boring shirt and trousers, and a rucksack that lets the side down as it slumps off both shoulders.</p> <p>On the far side, the herb streets announce themselves – Coriander Avenue, Nutmeg Lane, Oregano Drive – a faintly ridiculous grid of suburban-sounding thoroughfares in this nexus of modern industry.</p> <p>Where goods transit sheds once lined the East India Dock, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/resources/Data-centre-capacity-planning">datacentres now rise</a>: grey, aluminium-clad, multi-storey blocks whose roofs and facades are shrouded in baffles to dampen the noise from cooling equipment behind.</p> <p>The Global Switch building catches the eye with its giant on-off symbol facade – a piece of architectural semaphore that signals what happens inside. I stop to take a photograph. A security guard approaches before I’ve framed my pic.</p> <p>“Where are you from?” he asks. I tell him. “Who are you taking pictures for?” <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/">Computer Weekly</a>, I say. He tells me I can’t photograph here and I put the phone away. It looks just like a public street, but apparently it isn’t. In this cluster of buildings – perhaps 32 acres in total – looking too closely triggers a response.</p> <p>Some old dock walls are still here, the dock itself now a feature lake – a rectangle of still water that once heaved with shipping. Beside it the sudden manifestation of massed construction workers (pictured) suggests solidarity of labour, but it’s probably just a fire alarm.&nbsp;</p> <p>The focus of our visit is half a mile away, on the other side of the A1261 and closer to the Thames: <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645496/Telehouse-completes-fossil-fuel-free-datacentre-retrofit-as-251m-West-2-build-begins">Telehouse South</a>. The herb street cluster feels like a pleasant piazza that happens to house London’s internet aorta. But then we didn’t try to enter anything there. The entrance to Telehouse South shows us what that might be like.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Foolproof layers of security"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Foolproof layers of security</h2> <p>At the gate, the scale becomes inhuman; cleansed of unwanted or unnecessary activity, with double barriers, tight-wire fences, electric doors, cameras and pre-fabricated walls rising high. You can just about glimpse cooling units silhouetted against the sky. We wait at the gatehouse as security staff take fingerprints and check photo ID, the whole transaction hampered by double-thickness soundproofed glass and bright June reflections that make it hard to relate to the faces on the other side.</p> <p>There are five of us in the party. Almost all fail some of our attempts to negotiate the RFID card, fingerprint and face-recognition entry dance. Eventually, at least 30 minutes after arriving at the perimeter, we get through the first skin and go to meet our guide.</p> <p>Julian Hennessey is projects director for development and construction at Telehouse, and Telehouse South – the building we stand in – is, he tells us, “one of my babies from the beginning”. He has designed and built all its phases.</p> <p>The building has a curious provenance. Originally designed by Richard Rogers – the architect behind the Pompidou Centre and the Millennium Dome – it was conceived with a modular facade that allowed any floor to be either datacentre or office simply by swapping aluminium-clad panels for glazing. Thomson Reuters occupied it as a mixed-use facility: three floors of trading desks above data halls that delivered a PUE of 1.74. When Telehouse acquired the building in 2020, the sitting tenant remained until 2021. Then the work began.</p> <p>What Telehouse has done to the building is less a refurbishment than reinvention. Every gas-fired boiler and water heater was removed and taken off-site, and the building now heats itself entirely from waste heat recovered from the data halls. The roof has been replaced and its insulation thickened. The external facade is new. The glazing on level eight is new. All electrical and mechanical infrastructure – from the perimeter of the building to the customer rack – is new.</p> <p>“We’ve given the building a new lease of life,” says Hennessey. “The building’s bones are the same but the infrastructure is completely new.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="CRAC out; CRAH in"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>CRAC out; CRAH in</h2> <p>We walk the data halls. The lighting is cool and even the air moves with a steady, low-pressure hum. Cold-aisle containment channels chill air under a raised floor and up through customer racks, where it picks up heat and returns to computer room air handling units – CRAHs, as the acronym goes – before being pumped to the roof for heat rejection. The CRAH units, all brand new, contain only water: closed-loop chilled, no adiabatic consumption.&nbsp;</p> <p>“It’s filled once, it’s maintained once a year, it doesn’t constantly use water,” says Hennessey. “It’s like your heating system at home – you fill it once and it just works.”</p> <p>On each rack, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365532180/Mobile-operator-Three-cuts-datacentre-cooling-energy-usage-through-EkkoSense-deployment">an Ekkosense display</a> glows to show rack temperature. Engineers adjust floor dampers in response, tuning the environment rack by rack.</p> <p>The customers in here are a spectrum. Some occupy shared facilities management – racks in an open aisle, secured by locks and monitored by CCTV, trusted to the building’s five layers of perimeter and biometric security. Others require dedicated facilities management: their own cages, their own additional biometric locks, their own modesty panels.</p> <p>One cage is completely blacked out. No visibility through the grille, not even a gap large enough for a USB stick to pass through. Four layers of security on the cage itself, that adds to the five to get to the floor.&nbsp;</p> <p>Inside, Hennessey tells us, equipment labels indicate what those servers support – information the customer does not want anyone, even Telehouse’s vetted staff, to see. “The only way we can get in is if there’s an emergency and maintenance staff need to get in,” he says. “But then it needs to be written down who went into it.”</p> <p>Then there are the quarter-racks – a few units of shared space sold at a quarter of the price of a full footprint, aimed at smaller operations that need an edge presence in London. A business might have its main equipment in another country and deploy a single edge router here, buying access to more than 1,000 connectivity partners and the same power and cooling resilience as the largest tenants. “I think that’s the coolest thing we do,” says Hennessey.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Wrapped in polythene"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Wrapped in polythene</h2> <p>We take the lift to the roof. The lift is still wrapped in protective plastic, like the film they put on new cars, to guard against scratches while construction continues on the unfinished floors below.</p> <p>Up here, old and new cooling regimes sit side by side. The old coolers are disconnected, pipework severed. Hennessey gestures towards them. On a mild day like this, he says, they would have sounded “like a helicopter taking off”.&nbsp;</p> <p>Their replacements – rows of new Trane chillers – are purring quietly behind sound attenuation panels mounted on rails, designed to slide aside for maintenance. These units deliver free cooling by ambient air for roughly 78% of the year, which is what helps <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/The-Data-Bill-Considering-datacentres-hunger-for-power">drive the building’s PUE down from 1.74 to 1.27</a>.</p> <p>Between the chiller rows stand buffer vessels – giant insulated tanks that hold chilled water at supply temperature, ready to ride through a power outage while the generators start. The generators themselves, 12MW of new capacity at N+1 redundancy, sit below – kept, says Hennessey, “almost like prize stallions out there waiting”.</p> <p>The view from the roof is panoramic. Below us on the south side, the Thames curves past the Isle of Dogs toward North Greenwich, where the domed roof of the O2 dominates. Further is the green mound of Crystal Palace Park with its transmitter aerial on top. To the north, the rest of the Telehouse Docklands campus unfolds: the copper-coloured Telehouse Central administration building, the West and East facilities, the original North building – the one that opened in 1988 and now hosts more than 1,000 connectivity partners – and North 2 with its blue columns. And on a plot of land just beyond, the foundations of West 2 are being laid.</p> <p>Old satellite dishes still crown the roof here at Telehouse South – relics of Reuters TV, which once broadcast from here. They no longer function. “No scrap value,” says Hennessey. But they serve an incidental purpose. Their height defines the building envelope for planning; a fixed point against which all new equipment – the acoustic packs on the chillers, the attenuation panels – must be measured.&nbsp;</p> <p>Next to the A1261 the futuristic 1960s ventilation shaft from the Blackwall Tunnel rises, Grade II protected. Telehouse had to consult on that, too.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Blitz target"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Blitz target</h2> <p>Telehouse South sits on what was once Blackwall Yard, the site of two graving docks where ships were floated in, gates closed, water pumped out, and hulls exposed for cleaning and repair. During the Blitz, the East India Dock and its surrounding Poplar streets were prime Luftwaffe targets – the warehouses and goods sheds that occupied this land were as concentrated and vital to Britain’s wartime supply chain as the datacentres are to its digital economy today.</p> <p>We go down the caged steel staircases and walkways beloved of shootout-and-chase-scene movie-makers and back into the building. Past data halls, past aisle cages under construction and fibre routes being pulled, past the breakout spaces with subdued lighting and meeting rooms.&nbsp;</p> <p>This is not a hyperscale AI factory. At 2.7MW per floor, it does not pretend to be. But it does not need to be. The value here is not in compute density, but in connection density – in the dark fibre routes that link every customer on the Docklands campus to every other, in the submarine cables that land in Cornwall and break out here, in the 900 networks that converge through Linx exchanges housed in these buildings, in the financial services and streaming platforms and emergency services infrastructure that depend on microsecond latencies across a few hundred metres of fibre.</p> <p>Back at ground level, we pass through the exit gates and step out onto the public road. A final glance back: the grey facade, the rooftop baffles, the tight-wire fence, the electric gates.&nbsp;</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more datacentre dives</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Datacentre-dive-Inside-nlightens-Bristol-edge-datacentre">Datacentre dive: Inside nLighten’s Bristol edge datacentre</a>: We visited nLighten’s BRS1 datacentre, and travel from gritty city centre fringe to a high-tech overhaul that makes the case for reusing legacy infrastructure over new construction.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366643633/Datacentre-dive-From-rust-belt-to-megawatt-AI-factory">Datacentre dive: From rust belt to megawatt AI factory</a>: We visited Terawulf’s Lake Ontario 750MW datacentre development. Photos and recordings weren’t allowed, so we took notes and wrote them up in more traditional ways.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> We visit London’s Docklands datacentre cluster, where former docks now house windowless, aluminium-clad monoliths and Telehouse South is Thames-side fortress of edge connectivity https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/DCConstructionWorkersAA.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Datacentre-dive-Through-the-looking-glass-at-Telehouse-South Fri, 17 Jul 2026 07:15:00 GMT <p>Eleven organisations, including NatWest, have joined <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366626055/Digital-Catapult-explores-quantum-innovation-for-advanced-connectivity">Digital Catapult’s Quantum Technology Access Programme (QTAP)</a>, delivered in collaboration with the National Quantum Computing Centre’s (NQCC) SparQ programme.&nbsp;</p> <p>QTAP provides UK-based companies with a guided pathway to understand quantum technologies, assess their sector-specific value and move from concept to practical application through expert guidance and experimentation. This latest cohort of businesses are focusing on combinatorial optimisation and quantum machine learning.</p> <p>Simon Plant, deputy director for innovation at <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Cliff-Sarans-Enterprise-blog/Quantum-Computing-A-UK-moon-shot-or-670m-research-indulgence">NQCC</a>, said: “Through SparQ, we’re helping organisations move towards practical exploration of quantum computing. This cohort demonstrates growing confidence in quantum computing across UK industry, building the expertise, evidence and partnerships needed to accelerate responsible adoption and strengthen the UK’s quantum capabilities.”</p> <p>Digital Catapult said the focus on <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/UAE-eyes-quantum-computing-for-financial-services">financial services</a>&nbsp;reflects growing demand for quantum innovation and its role in building the UK’s sovereign capability while identifying new practical use cases for the technology.&nbsp;</p> <p>NatWest plans to explore how quantum can be deployed to help detect fraud and illicit activity across large transaction networks, while CTA Fintech Solutions is assessing the use of quantum technologies for cross-system optimisation of legacy-to-cloud transaction flows to improve cost efficiency and strengthen resilience in highly regulated environments.</p> <p>Other firms participating in the QTAP programme include the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), and Health Innovation North West Coast, part of the UK’s Health Innovation Network.&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>In healthcare, through QTAP, quantum computing is being used to improve diagnostic modelling, treatment pathways and outcome forecasting for thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), a rare and life-threatening blood disorder considered a medical emergency. Through its participation, Health Innovation North West Coast aims to improve health and care outcomes for patients with TTP, supported by innovation and technology consultancy and access to ORCA Computing’s PT-2 quantum computer.&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>The programme also includes trials and validation of use cases across defence and security, supply chains and logistics, and transport and infrastructure. Digital Catapult said the latest cohort will demonstrate how quantum as a frontier technology can be applied to all the high-growth sectors outlined in the UK government’s Industrial Strategy, underpinning economic growth. &nbsp;</p> <p>Previous participants include Vodafone, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, the Port of Dover and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Now in its third year, the programme’s latest phase will combine Digital Catapult’s expertise with the NQCC’s expanding national capability in quantum computing and testbeds.</p> <p>Paul Ceely, director of technology strategy at Digital Catapult, said: “Quantum Computing is no longer a theoretical concept but a technology that is demonstrating its potential value through a variety of industrial and commercial applications. The UK’s sovereign quantum capability is world-leading, but to maintain this it’s critical to demonstrate real-world business use cases.</p> <p>“This is why our work here in partnership with NQCC is vital, demystifying quantum innovation and demonstrating how it can drive commercial success for those that embrace it. Quantum adoption cannot be done in isolation, but in bridging the gap between quantum experts, experienced technologists, and industry leaders.</p> <p>“As such, I’m excited to see the novel solutions trialled and validated by our new cohort on a real quantum computer deployed at NQCC, which will translate deep tech into a commercial reality.”&nbsp;</p> <p>The programme will run until February 2027, supporting new commercial and collaborative partnerships that will help advance quantum innovation across UK industry. This includes continued collaboration with NQCC and technical partner ORCA Computing, enabling deep tech companies to scale across the UK economy.</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more quantum stories</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li>HSBC collaborates on noisy <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366642575/HSBC-collaborates-on-noisy-qubit-real-world-application">qubit real-world application</a>: Researchers have demonstrated that usable results for financial modelling are achievable even on current noisy quantum computers.</li> <li>UAE eyes quantum computing for <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/UAE-eyes-quantum-computing-for-financial-services">financial services</a>: Middle East financial firms are investing heavily in quantum computing, with one of the world’s top quantum research centres in Abu Dhabi.</li> </ul> </div> </div> The retail bank is one of 11 organisations testing quantum technologies as part of Digital Catapult’s quantum technology access programme https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/HeroImages/NatWest-Bank-Editorial-Use-Only-Shawn-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645980/NatWest-signs-up-to-quantum-trial-for-fraud-detection Fri, 17 Jul 2026 07:05:00 GMT <p>“I sold my vinyl collection to buy CDs. Now my children are buying vinyls, and I’m buying vinyl records and reading real books again,” says <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-minahan-6902a74/">David Minahan,</a> director of digital data and technology at Young Lives vs Cancer.</p> <p>It’s a common experience for people of a certain age who lived in the era when <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/digital-transformation">digital began taking off</a>. There does appear to be a tendency, particularly among people who enjoy new tech, to try the new thing, give it a go while the gremlins are ironed out and, at some point in the future, return to the thing that it replaced.</p> <p>For Minahan, technology has a funny way of going almost full circle: “I can remember 25 years ago, trying to convince social workers to move away from writing their case notes on a paper file to input them into a database and use an email system.”&nbsp;</p> <p>He recalls there was a reluctance to collect information in workflow systems for structuring reporting. “What the social workers wanted to do is just write a really long case note, because that’s easiest for them,” he says.</p> <p>Technology is now able to match more closely the way people want to work. For instance, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is making it more straightforward to collate and record long case notes without the need for someone to learn an entirely new system for case management.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="The silos that curb digital transformations"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>The silos that curb digital transformations</h2> <p>Minahan has worked both in the public sector and private sector. What both sectors share, in his experience, is the difficulty in driving digital transformation in organisations that are naturally siloed.</p> <p>“When I worked at <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252522935/Lambeth-maps-future-with-cloud-applications">Lambeth Council</a>, for example, every department and every directorate – children’s social care, adult social care, housing, waste and recycling, environmental service – had its own IT department,” he says. “The silos arose as a result due to the vertical ways of working. They were not working towards any kind of horizontal vision or organisational agenda.”</p> <p>The silos exist in the private sector, but for different reasons. Minahan says: “When I worked in the private sector many years ago, competitiveness in some private sector organisations would drive a silo. Often people are less willing to share, less willing to collaborate – output and outcome is driven by reward, which is often personal rather than team-based.”</p> <p>He believes this drives different types of incentive, “a more Machiavellian approach to types of behaviour in an organisation where trust and the type of trust you need to collaborate well to deliver digital transformation doesn’t manifest”.</p> <p>While workers in the private sector can be aligned to an executive vision, he says: “Alignment to a vision is one thing; siloed working is something slightly different.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Building a new foundation"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Building a new foundation</h2> <p>Prior to joining Young Lives vs Cancer, <a href="https://www.younglivesvscancer.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-people/">Minahan was CIO of Goldsmith’s College</a>, University of London. In his current role, Minahan leads the digital transformation team which, among other things, involves updating a 30-year-old finance system and 25-year-old customer relationship management (CRM) system.</p> <p>“The CRM system didn’t let you delete information, so I was really knocking on an open door. The organisation realised that unless we change this, we can’t meet our own organisational ambitions,” he adds.</p> <p>“The challenge is getting the right solutions and strategy to allow the board to understand where we’re going, what that vision looks like and what the end state might look like. This has to be a bit iterative because the technology world changes every night.”</p> <p>Young Lives vs Cancer’s focus is to provide support for young people diagnosed and being treated for cancer and their families. Minahan says: “There isn’t another organisation in the country that has the same direct contact with that many young people with cancer.”</p> <p>This puts Young Lives vs Cancer with an opportunity, which Minaham hopes to leverage to provide more direct support for the young people who connect to the charity. He says: “We’ve got quite a unique data set, which we’ve never quite leveraged in the right way.”</p> <blockquote> <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/David-Minahan-YoungLivesvsCancer-140px.jpg" alt="Headshot of David Minahan."> </div> <p><strong><span style="color: #34495e;">“The challenge is getting the right solutions and strategy to allow the board to understand where we’re going”</span></strong></p> <p><em><span style="color: #34495e;">David Minahan, Young Lives vs Cancer</span></em></p> </blockquote> <p>Minahan’s goal is to have an app that uses this <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/tip/How-to-keep-data-silos-from-damaging-your-AI-projects">data and is powered by AI</a>: “If we have people tell their stories to us, we can use that information to train a model that can then support other young people, based on the real experience, talking their age-appropriate language.”</p> <p>He says Young Lives vs Cancer is getting the data foundations right and is looking to capture different types of data, along with the unique dataset it can train the model on: “You could get every child that wants to tell their story, document it and write it, and you could feed that back into the model, which could then be used to help another child.”</p> <p>The end goal is to have an app that Young People vs Cancer can deploy to all its users as soon as they are introduced to the charity. He says the app would provide all of the information they need and the services available to them.</p> <p>Minahan sees a massive opportunity in the proliferation of &nbsp;low-code/no-code tooling, citizen developers, and AI and digital skills outside of IT. “If you get your platform decisions right and you get your IT architecture decisions right, then you can empower your whole organisation to be developers, which means you can do whatever you want [with digital technology] without needing third parties anymore,” he adds.&nbsp;</p> <p>Nevertheless,while the barrier to entry for software development is lowered, people may not actually feel a desire to develop software themselves. Minahan is concerned that young people seem less interested in understanding what is driving the technology they interact with or how it is built.</p> <p>“I’ve grown up understanding how to build things and make things work, but my kids don’t care about that – they’re not interested in computer science in the way that I was, they just want it to work and do what they tell it to do,” he says.</p> <p>While today there is more choice than ever before, Minahan believes there is definitely a difference in what now motivates young people. He says: “Do you want to buy vinyl, a CD or use Spotify? It’s a really exciting time, but I’m not sure that this generation will understand how to build things and make things work.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more CIO interviews</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li>How the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645015/Interview-How-the-CIO-of-Unilever-delivers-business-empathy">CIO of Unilever delivers business empathy</a>: Reema Jain, who recently became CIO of Unilever, says IT leaders should build a culture where IT people can ‘play’ with new tech.</li> <li>How a startup mentality <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644833/Interview-How-a-startup-mentality-helps-keep-pace-with-AI">helps keep pace with AI</a>: The pace of change in artificial intelligence can be overwhelming. We speak to Thomson Reuters CTO Joel Hron about how to innovate at pace.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> David Minahan, director of digital at Young Lives vs Cancer, discusses data silos and how new tech is offering a more natural user experience https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/HeroImages/music-vinyl-records-ilyabolotov-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645693/Interview-Reflections-on-tech-revolutions-and-silos Fri, 17 Jul 2026 07:00:00 GMT <p>The range of opportunities in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) means now is an exciting time to be a CIO. However, this level of excitement doesn’t come without challenges – with a number of pioneering digital leaders recognising that the rate of change brings new complexities.</p> <p>That’s something that resonates with <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639330/Interview-Nick-Pearson-CIO-Ricoh-Europe">Nick Pearson, CIO at technology specialist Ricoh Europe</a>, who recognises the ever-widening number of responsibilities. He says the CIO used to be the most knowledgeable IT expert in the room. Now, to a certain degree, being the most tech-savvy person is impossible because of the breadth of changes associated with AI.</p> <p>“The challenge in the digital leadership space is that you’re everything from the AI strategist, the expert on running services in the cloud, through to overseeing operations, understanding the latest cyber security risks and managing suppliers,” he says. “The plethora of topics is massive and could be overwhelming.”</p> <p>More than anyone else in the C-suite, other business leaders look to the CIO for expert guidance on technology. Yet the rapid release of new AI models and agents means other people in the business are likely to be aware of up-and-coming technologies and might even come to the IT department with solutions for their challenges.</p> <p>However, as Pearson and his peers attest, there are ways to lead digital successfully in an era of almost constant change. Smart CIOs create strategies to embrace this pressure. Rather than just surviving, CIOs use strategies, from becoming ambassadors for change to working with trusted lieutenants and embracing innovation, to thrive in their new positions of power.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Spread the burden"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Spread the burden</h2> <p>Pearson says one of the key success factors is that CIOs need to act as ambassadors, rather than the centre of technological knowledge. He gives the example of managing AI roll-out. Pearson has created an AI Council to ensure that emerging technology is embraced safely and effectively. Crucially, it’s a cross-organisation leadership group.</p> <p>“I was never going to stand the AI Council up on my own inside of Ricoh,” he says. “One, it’s too big; two, it would ostracise half the business. So, dual management of topics is crucial. We’re a team here on AI – it’s not my solution set, it’s not an application. You spread a bit of the burden and get co-sponsorship across the board.”</p> <blockquote> <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/Jem-Walters-Vanquis-140px.jpg" alt="Jem Walters headshot."> </div> <p><strong><span style="color: #34495e;">“The role shifts in the modern age from being the person who’s fixing stuff and making it work better to an enabler of new and exciting business opportunities”</span></strong></p> <p><em><span style="color: #34495e;">Jem Walters, Vanquis</span></em></p> </blockquote> <p>Pearson suggests this joined-up management approach will become the norm. “We’re going to see more co-sponsors, rather than people just thinking, ‘Well, it’s the IT guy’s job to deliver this, or it’s the sales leader’s job’,” he says. “It’s going to be more a case of, ‘It’s both our jobs, and you need to lean in as much as I do on the tech side.’ And I’m seeing that shift already.”</p> <p>As an example, he says HR professionals at Ricoh invested in AI tools to scan labour markets and find talent.</p> <p>“Now, that technology stack is fairly bespoke to HR to a certain degree. So, they have to lean in a lot more to technology than they used to with an old-fashioned HR system, where we’d run it,” he says.</p> <p>“It’s really about professionals saying, ‘How do we want the solution to work for our business?’, which is going to share the burden a little bit more. One of my ideas to manage the overwhelming breadth of change is to partner a lot more closely with the board members on most of this innovation.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Focus on the finishing line"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Focus on the finishing line</h2> <p><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366628079/Interview-How-ITSM-helps-deliver-results-at-McLaren-Racing">Dan Keyworth, executive director of performance technology and systems at McLaren Racing</a>, says it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of options out there. Successful CIOs scan the horizon and help the business find solutions to its problems from multiple directions.</p> <p>“As a digital leader, it’s a good idea to look inwards as much as outwards,” he says. “You must think about the actual business objectives the organisation is truly trying to achieve. And comparison, in my view, is the biggest element to focus on.”</p> <p>Keyworth gives an example of this process in action. “So, if you compare your sector to another industry and are doing something that looks cutting edge, but it’s not relevant to your business, then that shouldn’t be a focus,” he says. “Your process should be very much about focusing on yourself. Think about what your win looks like.”</p> <p>To that end, Keyworth encourages other CIOs to ensure their digital strategies and the activity supporting those plans are commensurate with broader business objectives. “Suddenly, you feel like you’re in more control of your destiny than perhaps being influenced too much by external factors,” he says.</p> <p>Keyworth says a focus on business objectives is crucial in his sport. Rather than being viewed as a cost centre, IT is now seen as a critical success factor in helping his team gain a competitive advantage. His ability to communicate the benefits to business peers can help make the difference to on-track performance.</p> <p>“We say that for every pound you spend on the car, there’s a pound on tools as well,” he says.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Take a pragmatic stance"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Take a pragmatic stance</h2> <p><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366643836/Interview-Clare-Hickie-EMEA-CTO-Workday">Clare Hickie, CTO for EMEA at software provider Workday</a>, says there are many conflicting stresses in the world of technology, especially for digital leaders. However, most senior tech managers have grown used to the complexity of their roles.</p> <p>“Technology leaders have a level of pragmatism,” she says. “And so what’s important for them is that, once they understand and can look at the business and manage it from a prioritisation perspective, then they can be successful.”</p> <blockquote> <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/Clare-Hickie-Workday-PR-140px.jpg" alt="Headshot of Clare Hickie."> </div> <p><strong><span style="color: #34495e;">“Before, everyone saw the CIO as an implementer, but now you’re the maker of IT”</span></strong></p> <p><em><span style="color: #34495e;">Claire Hickie, Workday</span></em></p> </blockquote> <p>While AI brings new demands, Hickie says it’s important to recognise that the CIO role has been evolving for years. “The position has gone from being the owner of cost centres to being the orchestrator of AI and supporting the strategic goals of the operation,” she says.</p> <p>“It’s not even just about managing from a strategy perspective, although that’s our role too. Before, everyone saw the CIO as an implementer, but now you’re the maker of IT.”</p> <p>Hickie says good digital leaders offer specialist advice to their line-of-business colleagues. Rather than allowing emerging technology to become an intractable challenge, CIOs work with their peers across the organisation to ensure that people can exploit digital and data effectively.</p> <p>“We perform and take away the distractors every single day,” she says. “A huge aspect of the role at the moment is supporting organisations as they move more towards the world of AI, because businesses are looking to the CIO for that level of guidance. So, if I think about how I operate&nbsp;and our teams operate, we’re very good at saying what needs to happen as opposed to letting the noise sit around us.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Create a great environment"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Create a great environment</h2> <p><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366640503/Interview-Jem-Walters-CTO-Vanquis">Jem Walters, CTO at banking group Vanquis</a>, is another executive who recognises the inherent complexity of modern digital leadership.</p> <p>“A lot is coming at us at the moment,” he says, before outlining his coping strategy. “The role of a CIO is to create the best environment possible so that great people can do great work.</p> <p>“That’s my philosophy, really. The role shifts in the modern age from being the person who’s fixing stuff and making it work better to an enabler of new and exciting business opportunities.”</p> <p>Walters gives the example of cross-organisation interoperability. Vanquis uses MuleSoft’s integration platform to help ensure systems are joined up. “Now our ability to integrate with other businesses, data sources, and products and services is infinitely better, quicker, and faster than in the past,” he says.</p> <p>“Ensuring the underlying foundations are in place opens up a lot of opportunity for us in terms of business model development, exploring opportunities to partner with other people, and bringing in other products and services that could be Vanquis-branded or not. So, modern CIOs must be a strategic enabler for new business opportunities.”</p> <p>Walters says digital leaders continue to encounter new challenges, particularly in fast-moving areas such as IT security. “For those of us who manage cyber, we’ve got to do all our other work and make sure everything stays secure,” he says.</p> <p>“It’s an arms race, isn’t it? Can the good guys stay ahead of the bad guys? We’ve got to keep investing in new tooling and defensive capability to keep ourselves safe and resilient.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Become an adaptable leader"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Become an adaptable leader</h2> <p><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639074/Interview-Ankur-Anand-group-CIO-Nash-Squared">Ankur Anand, group CIO at recruitment specialist Harvey Nash</a>, says adaptability is a key success factor for effective CIOs in the digital age. “Everyone is going through the journey and asking questions,” he says.</p> <p>“You must recognise that no question is a foolish question. Be conscious of where your weak areas are, understand them from the point of view of the broader community and then, through that process, you move up the curve.”</p> <p>Anand says your ability to progress depends on a broad range of factors, including wider technology and business concerns. More specifically, and despite the potential for decentralised purchasing from line-of-business professionals, CIOs will play a crucial role in overseeing the roll-out of AI across the organisation.</p> <p>“That process is changing the role of CIO, where they’re not only responsible for the delivery of the technology, but also the enablement of the technology,” he says. “Not many people can understand what needs to be done, so that is challenging the traditional role of the CIO.”</p> <p>Like other digital leaders, Anand recognises the importance of staying on top of cyber security concerns, especially as errant outsiders change their tactics in response to emerging technology capabilities. Effective CIOs will ensure their teams are upskilled to help reduce the digital leadership burden.</p> <p>“AI means your target operating model has to be changed again,” he says. “Different people are solving this challenge in different ways. Discussing solutions with them, conversin and getting inputs from your peers is the way CIOs will be able to deal with the challenges.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about the role of the CIO</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366638959/CIOs-discuss-friction-between-legacy-IT-and-innovation">CIOs discuss friction between legacy IT and innovation</a> – While it may not be something IT leaders want to talk about, managing technical debt is critical to moving forward with IT innovation.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-digital-leaders-playbook-A-guide-for-IT-chiefs-by-Paul-Coby">The digital leader’s playbook: A guide for IT chiefs by Paul Coby</a> – In this extract from his book, ‘<em>The digital leader’s playbook</em>’, CIO Paul Coby offers expert advice for established IT leaders and IT professionals who have set their sights on digital leadership.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645015/Interview-How-the-CIO-of-Unilever-delivers-business-empathy">How the CIO of Unilever delivers business empathy</a> – Reema Jain, who recently became CIO of Unilever, says IT leaders should build a culture where IT people can ‘play’ with new tech.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> Responsible for everything from keeping the IT lights on, to digital transformation, AI strategy, fostering cross-organisation relations and managing complexity, the modern CIO has their plate full. Top CIOs share their tips for success https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/Complex-Decision-maze-choice-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-modern-CIO-role-is-almost-overwhelming-heres-how-to-survive-and-thrive Fri, 17 Jul 2026 06:55:00 GMT <p>Earlier this week in the House of Lords we had the second reading of the UK government’s <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366643176/MPs-propose-kill-switch-to-shut-down-rogue-AI-systems">Cyber Security and Resilience Bill (CSRB)</a>.</p> <p>The bill is intended to "make provision about the security and resilience of network and IT systems used or relied on in connection with the carrying on of essential activities" and includes amending the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252512224/Updated-cyber-security-regulations-proposed-for-managed-services-sector">Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations</a> 2018.</p> <p>As the UK’s first law with “cyber security” in its title, it is clearly important. As the debate ably demonstrated though, it requires substantial amending on its parliamentary journey if it is to become significant and consequential.</p> <p>The government has stated it sees the bill as essential for bringing cyber rules governing critical infrastructure in line with modern threats, economic realities and technological developments. And, that it must also retain flexibility to keep pace with the ever-changing cyber landscape.</p> <p>In opening the debate, the minister highlighted that "the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644872/Hostile-states-launched-200-attacks-on-UK-infrastructure-in-five-months-says-NCSC-chief">UK is now the most targeted country in Europe for cyber attacks</a>."</p> <p>So, while under those attacks, probably, at this point, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the time the bill has been under consideration and its key provisions.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="New sectors"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>New sectors</h2> <p>First consulted on in 2022, the CSRB updates the NIS regulations. The first change brings new sectors into scope of NIS regulations including datacentres, managed service providers, energy flexibility providers and designated critical suppliers. The government will also get the power to bring other sectors into scope in future.</p> <p>Incident reporting rules for affected NIS-regulated organisations are expanded, so that cyber breaches that have the potential to cause significant impacts need to be reported to regulators. An initial notification must be made within 24 hours and a fuller report within 72.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> It's curious that a cross-sector approach is considered necessary with cyber security but not with AI. Why this lack of consistency? </figure> <figcaption> <strong>Chris Holmes</strong> </figcaption> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>The secretary of state is given new powers to set duties and security requirements, issue a code of practice to aid compliance with those regulations, and set the priority outcomes regulators will have a duty to seek to achieve.</p> <p>A new cost recovery framework is introduced to expand the options regulators have for recovering costs – for example, through a periodic fee placed on regulated entities.</p> <p>The maximum financial penalty is materially raised - up to £17,000,000, or 4% of worldwide turnover, whichever is higher.</p> <p>The government will be permitted to direct regulators or regulated entities to take targeted and proportionate action in response to imminent threats that risk UK national security.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Urgency and peril"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Urgency and peril</h2> <p>Key questions asked of the minister throughout the debate tested all of the bill’s provisions and highlighted how much work there is to be done if it is to shape up to not only its claims but the urgency and peril of the current UK circumstances.</p> <p>I and many colleagues asked, how will the government ensure that incident reporting requirements under the bill are aligned with existing regulatory regimes and do not create unnecessary duplication for organisations responding to cyber incidents? It is this point where the bill makes its first departure from the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/How-UK-firms-can-get-ready-for-the-implementation-of-NIS2">EU NIS2 requirements</a> without any sense of how such divergence helps or what it attempts to achieve.</p> <p>The bill requires a full notification at 72 hours. NIS2 - which the government's impact assessment says it aims to align with where appropriate - requires only an assessment report at 72 hours, with the full report at one month. The Bill therefore demands at three days what the EU allows a month for. I won’t labour the point, only to add that cyber professionals body <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366637377/Cyber-body-ISC2-signs-on-as-UK-software-security-ambassador">ISC2</a> has asked for NIS2 alignment.</p> <p>It was also important to ask how the government will ensure that reporting thresholds and other requirements are clear, practical, proportionate and sector-specific, particularly where organisations may not know the full scale or downstream impact of an incident within the first 24 hours. So, there are difficulties with the 24 and 72 hour requirements for different but important reasons.</p> <p></p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366634283/IT-services-companies-and-datacentres-face-regulation-as-cyber-security-bill-reaches-Parliament">IT services companies and datacentres face regulation as cyber security bill reaches Parliament</a> - The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will require large IT services companies, including datacentres, to report security incidents within 24 hours.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/The-cyber-law-that-could-change-everything">The cyber law that could change everything</a> - The aim of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill is to target critical infrastructure operators and essential service providers.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Challenges-persist-as-UKs-Cyber-Security-and-Resilience-Bill-moves-forward">Challenges persist as UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill moves forward</a> - Elements of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill are welcome but questions remain about how best to act in the face of persistent challenges like geopolitical chaos and threats to critical infrastructure.</li> </ul> </div> </div> <p>There are further vagaries surrounding the proposed reporting thresholds and thus problems with their consistent application in practice. Just one illustration - terms such as “significant impact” are highly contextual and risk driving defensive over-reporting, where organisations may well choose to submit precautionary notifications simply to avoid regulatory scrutiny. This could overwhelm regulators with low-value reporting while providing limited national security benefit.</p> <p>This challenge is especially acute for managed service providers, which may be able to identify disruption to their own services but often cannot assess the wider operational or societal impact on individual clients. Complex digital supply chains, are, as their name suggests, complex.</p> <p>There is a similar lack of clarity in the current draft of the bill when it comes to the new security and resilience requirements, not least in terms of whether they are outcome-focused, measurable and operationally effective.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Lack of consistency"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Lack of consistency</h2> <p>The minister argued for a cross-sector approach to cyber and yet the bill does not currently achieve this. Key sectors, such as space, are - extraordinarily - not included.</p> <p>Curious that a cross-sector approach is considered necessary with cyber <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/AI-legislation-in-the-UK-has-anybody-seen-any">but not with AI</a>. I asked the minister directly, why this lack of consistency?</p> <p>It is also abundantly clear that, in the cyber context, we need a single or lead regulator if we are to achieve precision, effectiveness and efficiency in the reporting and regulating process. I would suggest that the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366642032/Nation-states-responsible-for-nationally-significant-cyber-attacks-against-UK-says-NCSC-chief">National Cyber Security Centre</a> should have a key voice in this decision.</p> <p>The CSRB must deliver practical resilience outcomes in the real world. It is important we ensure that through the committee and report stages it becomes consequential, significant, adaptable and aligned. That’s substantial change before it reaches statute.</p> <p>Even then it is but part of what is required, we need a deep, cross-economy, cross-society stance if we are to succeed.</p> <p>I would welcome your thoughts on changes you’d like to see to the bill before the next parliamentary stage in early September – please contact me through the usual channels.</p> </section> The UK government's latest cyber security regulations are hugely important but remain riddled with inconsistencies and vagaries - substantial changes are needed before it becomes law https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/German/Hero-Regulations-Gesetze-by-InfiniteFlow-Adobe-10.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Does-the-Cyber-Security-and-Resilience-Bill-make-you-feel-secure Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/CW-60-anniversary-logo-white-400px.jpg" alt="Computer Weekly 60th anniversary logo" width="226" height="117"> </div> <p><i>On 22 September 2026, Computer Weekly turns 60. To mark the milestone, we asked some of our friends - experts, parliamentarians, IT leaders and suppliers - for their perspectives on how tech has changed their lives over six decades. What's changed the most for you since then?</i></p> <p>At one of our earliest <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/WITsend/Everywoman-announces-2026-tech-awards-finalists">Everywoman</a> events in 2000, we looked around a room full of talented, ambitious women and thought about how much effort it had taken to bring the 250+ of them together, including individual invitations and days on the phone to fragmented networks. The day was made up of brilliant conversations that largely ended when the event did.</p> <p>Today, this same community is connected long before they walk into a room and long after they leave.</p> <p>That shift, from contained connection to continuous, global community, captures how technology has changed all our lives.</p> <p>While Everywoman has been part of this journey for the past 27 years, we sit within a much broader 60-year evolution, one that has fundamentally redefined access to opportunity. Technology has moved from being a tool, to becoming the infrastructure of modern life, reshaping who gets seen, heard and ultimately, who gets ahead.</p> <p>For us, it has been a powerful enabler of our mission to <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639850/UK-Government-announces-package-to-get-more-women-in-tech">advance women in business</a> and ensure leadership better reflects the world we live in.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Creating opportunities"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Creating opportunities</h2> <p>When we started out, progress depended heavily on proximity. Networks were built in rooms in towns and regions, opportunities flowed through introductions and visibility was limited to those already inside established circles. Technology dismantled many of those barriers.</p> <p>Over the past couple of decades, Everywoman has delivered leadership development training to over 200,000 women globally, scale that would not have been possible without digital platforms. Technology has enabled us to reach women wherever they are, providing flexible, accessible development that reflects the reality of modern careers.</p> <p>It has also transformed visibility. Through digital channels, we can <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252526202/Why-the-Most-Influential-Woman-in-UK-Tech-2022-created-a-book-of-role-models">showcase role models to the widest possible audiences</a>, not just those already in established networks, but to those who might never otherwise have had access. Visibility shapes ambition, confidence and progression - it is a critical driver of change.</p> <p>Technology has equally enabled us to connect and be seen. It has allowed us to communicate our mission at scale and engage with leaders, partners and organisations we would not have reached through “pre-digital” routes. Social and digital networks have flattened hierarchies in ways that were previously unimaginable. But <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366627982/AIs-uneven-distribution-widening-diversity-divide">access alone does not equal equity</a>.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Hardwired bias"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Hardwired bias</h2> <p>If anything, the next phase of the digital revolution, particularly the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366623774/Girls-more-concerned-about-AI-bias-than-boys">risks hardwiring bias at scale</a>.</p> <p>AI systems reflect the data they are trained on and the perspectives of those who build them. Without diverse representation, we are not just mirroring inequality, we are accelerating it. This is not a future risk - it is already happening.</p> <blockquote> <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src=" https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/Max-Benson-Karen-Gill.png " alt="Photo of Maxine Benson and Karen Gill" width="200" height="197"> </div> <p><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong><span style="color: #34495e;">“The future of tech will not be defined by the tools themselves, but by the diversity of the people shaping them. Ensuring those people are seen, heard and supported is where the real work and the real opportunity lie”</span></strong></span></p> <p><span style="color: #34495e;"><em>Maxine Benson &amp; Karen Gill, Everywoman</em></span></p> </blockquote> <p>This is why the focus must now shift from participation to influence. It is not enough for women to use technology. They must shape it. They must be designing systems, leading organisations and influencing how technology is applied.</p> <p>At the same time, there is a misconception that technology will replace the human elements of leadership and connection. Our experience tells us otherwise. Technology can scale access, but it cannot replicate presence. It can enable communication, but it cannot replace empathy and connection.</p> <p>Some of the most powerful moments in our work still happen in a room. This is why in 2024 Everywoman merged with AllBright, recognising that the greatest opportunity lies not in choosing between digital and physical, but in leveraging both. Today our newly formed business, Allbright Everywoman, looks to digital to enable reach and in-person to create depth. Together, they create lasting impact.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Celebrating women"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Celebrating women</h2> <p>Nowhere is that impact more evident <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366640389/Everywoman-announces-2026-Women-in-Technology-Awards-winners">than at the Everywoman in Technology Awards</a>. For 16 years, these awards have brought together leaders from across the tech industry to celebrate the achievements of women shaping its future. With Computer Weekly as our longstanding media partner and supporter, the awards have consistently ensured these stories are seen and heard. But their impact goes far beyond recognition.</p> <p>In the room at the Everywoman in Technology Awards, leaders do not just hear about the importance of diversity in tech, they experience it. They see the talent, the innovation and the scale of <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365533393/Everywoman-in-Tech-Forum-2023-What-it-means-to-be-an-authentic-tech-leader">contribution women are making across the industry</a>. They hear the stories behind the success and understand the barriers that still exist.</p> <p>Time and again, we have seen these moments change perspectives. Leaders leave with a different view of what the industry looks like and with a stronger commitment to changing it. That is something technology alone cannot achieve.</p> <p>Looking ahead, the role of women in tech is set to grow significantly over the next decade but not by default. The opportunity is vast. Technology will continue to shape every sector, from AI to climate tech, from fintech to health innovation. These industries are being built now and women must be part of that build. Not on the margins, but at the centre as founders, engineers, investors and leaders.</p> <p>The next decade must be about more than participation. It must be about influence, ownership and decision-making power.</p> <p>Progress is happening, but not at the pace required. Which is why the combination of technology, visibility and community is so powerful. Digital platforms can scale access and amplify voices but we at AllBright Everywoman firmly believe it is human connection that turns it into impactful action.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Human connections"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Human connections</h2> <p>As we reflect on 60 years of technological change, the question is no longer what technology can do but who it enables.</p> <p>For us, the focus remains clear. Technology should be used to scale opportunity, while creating the human connections that make that opportunity meaningful. Because the future of tech will not be defined by the tools themselves, but by the diversity of the people shaping them.</p> <p>Ensuring those people are seen, heard and supported is where the real work and the real opportunity lie.</p> <p>In 1999, as the founders of Everywoman, we never imagined the technology we would have today. We started by scanning hard copy articles onto our website, which were accessed by a temperamental dial-up modem. Today the team has access to all manner of tech that enables faster and more accurate processing and operations.</p> <p>They still, however, need real empathetic and supportive leadership that connects them as a team of humans who need to communicate, explore thoughts and have fun as they deliver their great work.</p> <p><i>Maxine Benson and Karen Gill are co-founders of Everywoman. They have been members of the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252471166/Most-Influential-Women-in-UK-Tech-2019-Entrants-to-the-Hall-of-Fame">Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in UK Tech Hall of Fame</a> since 2019. </i></p> </section> Everywoman founders Maxine Benson and Karen Gill highlight the importance of diversity and why women's voices need to be heard more widely in tech https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/Women-businesswomen-team-diversity-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/CW60-Creating-connections-through-technology-and-empathy Fri, 17 Jul 2026 03:00:00 GMT <p>A global index looking at the challenges faced by mobile network operators (MNOs) in 10 countries has revealed the UK compares poorly against other countries.</p> <p>The <a href="https://www.vodafonethree.com/mmi/mobile-market-index.html"><em>Mobile market index</em></a> from VodafoneThree shows that UK operators face the third-highest commodity energy prices. The average score UK MNOs gave for volatility in the energy market was 64%, 10% more compared with the average across the 10 countries in the index.</p> <p>The index shows that challenges in the operating environment for MNOs, high energy and property costs, infrastructure obligations and planning friction translate to suboptimal outcomes for the UK in relation to performance on download speeds, 5G coverage and connection quality, with those metrics trailing nearly every other country in the index.&nbsp;</p> <p>Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639059/UK-government-calls-for-review-into-mobile-market">the UK government announced</a> its <em>Mobile market review </em> as it plans where the UK should be in terms of high-speed connectivity by 2030. It is currently looking for input from interested parties regarding how mobile network connectivity in the UK can evolve as part of the review. At the end of March, when the call for evidence for the <em>Mobile market review</em> was announced, Liz Lloyd, minister for digital economy, said: “If we want a more prosperous, innovative and inclusive UK, world-class connectivity is not optional, it is essential.</p> <p>“Mobile connectivity sits at the heart of this mission,” she said. “Fast, reliable and secure mobile networks will support everything from remote healthcare to cutting-edge manufacturing, from smart cities to the everyday services that we all now rely on. That is why we are setting out a framework so that everyone in the UK can benefit from high-quality mobile connectivity, delivered by the latest technology – standalone 5G by 2030.”</p> <p>What is clear from the VodafoneThree index is that mobile network operators look like they are pushing for a less regulatory environment, easier planning permission and lower energy costs to support further investment in the UK’s mobile network infrastructure.</p> <p>According to VodafoneThree, the cumulative impact of the pressures UK MNOs experience is impacting the service they are able to provide compared with MNOs in other countries. It said the current environment limits operators’ ability to monetise the full extent of their network and invest sustainably in the digital infrastructure the UK needs to meet the demands of the future.</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about mobile network expansion</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Virgin Media O2 to switch on <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366643852/Virgin-Media-O2-to-switch-on-O2-Satellite-for-iPhone">O2 Satellite for iPhone</a>: Leading UK operator offers satellite comms links direct to leading Apple devices, initially supporting messaging and data across a range of apps.</li> <li>More than 2,000 global organisations deploy <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644379/More-than-2000-global-organisations-deploy-private-mobile-networks">private mobile networks</a>: Private mobile network sector continues to show growth in enterprise LTE and 5G customer deployments, with research showing 2,003 organisations deploying networks with a contract value above €100,000.</li> </ul> </div> </div> <p>Commenting on the investments Vodafone has made since its merger with Three in May 2025, VodafoneThree networks director Andrea Dona said: “Since the merger, we have raised the bar for connectivity in the UK, eliminating thousands of not spots and providing millions of people with access to our fastest 5G speeds.”</p> <p>The index shows that affordability and competition remain central, but they need to sit alongside a stronger focus on investment, resilience, security and advanced network capability. VodafoneThree said it wants the government to consider <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366633582/VodafoneThree-network-sharing-unlocks-significant-coverage-improvements">modernising the planning</a> system for the roll-out of 5G connectivity. It is also calling for energy reform to recognise MNOs’ status as providers of critical infrastructure. VodafoneThree said that mobile network operators deliver critical national infrastructure, but they are not covered by the various industrial schemes supporting other sectors that deliver CNI.</p> <p>From a regulatory standpoint, Vodafone described the UK as an outlier on 5G regulations, with significant barriers to using network slicing technology to boost speed and bandwidth.</p> <p>“Fast, reliable and quality mobile networks are a fundamental driver of economic growth and prosperity,” said Dona. “Which is why we support the UK government’s efforts to examine the barriers holding back our mobile networks. Bringing the UK’s investment environment up to the standard of our international peers could help to support public services, eliminate digital divides and enable communities to thrive.”</p> Mobile network operators in the UK are battling with energy costs, planning red tape and regulations, all of which are impacting their investment plans https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/telecoms-tower-mast-closeup-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645957/VodafoneThree-calls-for-policy-changes-to-drive-UK-mobile-growth Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT <p>Founded in 2003 with seed funding from the CIA’s venture arm, In-Q-Tel – a body whose explicit purpose is to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and the US intelligence community – <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/resources/Enterprise-software">Palantir Technologies</a> now holds <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644966/Met-Palantir-pilot-The-DPIA-that-raises-more-questions-than-answers">contracts with the Metropolitan Police</a> and runs <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645814/MPs-call-on-NHS-to-scrap-Palantir-and-its-Federated-Data-Platform">the NHS Federated Data Platform</a> (FDP), a system that touches the health records of 67 million people.&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/ezine/Computer-Weekly/The-Met-Police-and-Palantir-more-questions-than-answers">At the Met police</a>, its Culture Standards and Integrity Ecosystem (CSIE) pilot – a Palantir Foundry-based platform – ingested sickness records, complaint histories, custody data and stop-and-search records across more than 50,000 current and former staff.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the NHS Federated Data Platform is a £480m, seven-year contract to connect data across NHS trusts that aims to track and optimise data points such as patient flows, bed occupancy, theatre utilisation, waiting lists and discharge pathways.&nbsp;</p> <p>This has not been without some pushback, however. Two Parliamentary committees have urged the government to scrap the NHS deal, while the London Mayor’s block on the Met’s deployment will soon be contested in court by Palantir.</p> <p>But in both cases, the claim from government buyers and the supplier provides a consistent theme: Palantir delivers capabilities no other can match.</p> <p>This article examines what Palantir is, how its technology works at the component level, which UK and European suppliers offer comparable – and, in some cases, identical – capabilities, and whether the claim that “only Palantir can do this” survives a detailed comparison.&nbsp;</p> <p>The answer matters because the UK is now at a decision point: in February 2027, the government can exercise a break clause in the FDP contract – and the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee has urged it to do exactly that.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="From In-Q-Tel to NHS"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>From In-Q-Tel to NHS</h2> <p>Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen and Joe Lonsdale. Thiel’s vision, articulated across years of essays and interviews, framed technology as a geopolitical weapon – an instrument of national power, not a neutral utility. In-Q-Tel’s $2m investment in 2004 embedded the company inside the US intelligence community from its first days.</p> <p>The original product, Gotham, was built for and deployed by the CIA and special forces. It fused data from signals intelligence, human intelligence and geospatial sources into a single analytical environment to enable analysts to perform link analysis, pattern-of-life surveillance and target identification.&nbsp;</p> <p>It was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan for counter-IED [improvised explosive device] operations. In 2016, Palantir successfully sued the US Army when it was passed over for contracts. In 2019, it took over Project Maven, the Pentagon’s AI-driven drone targeting programme, when Google withdrew after an employee revolt.</p> <p>Today, Palantir’s government footprint spans all six branches of the US military, 36 federal agencies, the Israeli military – which has used the technology to plan attacks in Gaza and Lebanon – and police forces in the UK, Germany, Australia and Denmark. In a <em>New York Times</em> profile, CEO Alex Karp said: “Our weapons software is in every combat situation I’m aware of.”</p> <p>The company’s financial trajectory reflects this government-first orientation. In FY2025, Palantir reported $4.5bn in revenue – up from $2.9bn the prior year – with 54% from government customers. It serves 954 customers, with 74% of revenue from the United States.</p> <p>In the prior fiscal year, the top 20 customers generated an average of $64.6m each, while total remaining deal value grew 40% to $5.4bn. The numbers describe a company with extreme customer concentration, overwhelmingly dependent on US government spending, but rapidly diversifying into international and commercial markets.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="What Palantir really sells"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>What Palantir really sells</h2> <p>Palantir’s product offer spans four platforms, but the one deployed at the Met and NHS is named Foundry. Understanding what Foundry does – at the component level – is essential to evaluating whether it is genuinely unique.</p> <p>Pipeline Builder is Foundry’s data integration layer. It ingests structured and unstructured data from databases, application programming interfaces (APIs), spreadsheets, sensor feeds and legacy systems. It transforms, cleans and models that data into a consistent format. This is a well-understood category: Informatica, Fivetran, dbt, Azure Data Factory, AWS Glue, and UK-founded suppliers such as SnapLogic and Matillion all perform the same function.</p> <p>“The Ontology” is Palantir’s architectural centrepiece and the source of most claims about uniqueness. Unlike a traditional data warehouse – where data lives in tables defined by schemas – the Ontology maps digital objects to real-world counterparts: a “hospital bed”, a “police office”, a “waiting list”, a “complaint.” It defines semantic relationships between these objects. An analyst – or an AI agent – does not query table joins, they work with concepts that correspond to how the organisation thinks about its operations.&nbsp;</p> <p>The Ontology also provides a write layer: applications built on Foundry can trigger transactional updates back to source systems, not merely read data. This read-write semantic model is what Palantir means when it describes Foundry as an “operating system for the enterprise”.</p> <p>Workshop is the application layer. It provides a low-code application-building layer for operational applications – such as “hospital operations” for the NHS – that run on the Ontology. These are workflow tools where users can schedule interventions, flag risks, update records and trigger actions that write back to underlying systems.</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">What is Ontology – and who else builds one?</h3> <p>In enterprise data platforms, three terms describe different levels of the same idea as we move from raw data to a model of the real world.</p> <p>A knowledge graph stores data as a network of entities (nodes) and relationships (edges). Instead of tables with rows and columns, it represents “Officer A (a node) is connected to Complainant X (a node), which involves Incident M (an edge)”. The leading graph database is Neo4j (Sweden/US); others include TigerGraph (US), Amazon Neptune and Microsoft Graph Engine.</p> <p>A semantic layer sits on top of a knowledge graph – or any data source – and defines what those entities mean in business terms. It translates database columns into concepts such as “bed occupancy rate” or “officer sickness pattern.” Suppliers include AtScale (US), Cube.dev (US) and dbt Semantic Layer (US).</p> <p>Ontology – in Palantir’s usage – combines both, plus an operational workflow layer. It not only models the world but allows applications to act on that model – flag a risk, schedule an intervention, update a record. Palantir’s Ontology is a read-write semantic knowledge graph that human analysts and AI agents interact with.</p> <p>This is not magic. It is a well-understood architectural pattern that combines graph storage, semantic modelling and API-driven operations which Palantir has pre-integrated more tightly than any competitor.&nbsp;</p> <p>But sovereign alternatives exist:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>DataWalk (Poland) – explicitly positions its ontology-based link analysis as a Palantir alternative for government intelligence.</li> <li>Scrydon (EU) – sovereign ontology platform designed to run on open table formats inside the customer’s own perimeter, from air-gapped on-premise to cloud.</li> <li>Itemis Analyze (Germany) – European governance layer for data-driven decision-making, marketed as a sovereign alternative to Foundry.</li> <li>d.AP (EU) – ontology-driven operational intelligence platform.</li> </ul> <p>None matches Palantir’s full breadth of pre-integrated components – but none carries US Cloud Act jurisdictional exposure either.</p> </div> </div> <p>Apollo handles deployment. It delivers Foundry and Gotham to multicloud, hybrid-cloud, on-premise, air-gapped and edge environments – managing CI/CD [continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment], updates and failover autonomously. This is the infrastructure layer that lets Palantir deploy to environments where internet connectivity is intermittent or prohibited.</p> <p>Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) adds LLM-augmented agents and automations on top of the Ontology. Rather than dropping raw data into a language model – the approach that creates the governance nightmares most enterprises fear – AIP gives LLMs governed, access-controlled queries to semantic objects. The model asks the Ontology for what it needs, under the same permissions as any human analyst.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="How it works in UK practice"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>How it works in UK practice</h2> <p>The Met Police CSIE pilot, which ran from October 2025 to April 2026, brought together data from Centurion – the force’s system for recording public complaints, conduct allegations, grievances and civil claims – alongside sickness records, HR data, duty-rostering, custody data and stop-and-search interactions. The target population exceeded 50,000 current and former staff. Foundry ingested this data, built an Ontology mapping officers to behaviours, complaints and organisational units, and surfaced approximately 90 metrics across three tiers of prevention.</p> <p>The results were dramatic. Within a week of roll-out, the Met’s Professionalism Directorate identified hundreds of potential misconduct breaches and several alleged criminal offences including abuse of authority for sexual purposes, fraud and sexual assault. Two officers were arrested. Another 98 were assessed for misconduct and 500 received prevention notices after being flagged for abusing the IT duty-rostering system.</p> <p>A Met spokesperson told Computer Weekly: “Our pilot with Palantir allows the Met, for the first time, to bring together data it already lawfully holds in one place.”</p> <p>But the Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) – <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644966/Met-Palantir-pilot-The-DPIA-that-raises-more-questions-than-answers">obtained by Computer Weekly in June 2026</a> – revealed significant governance gaps, and the Met’s data protection officer noted it was “not currently clear” whether Palantir would retain Met Police data after the pilot or use it for its own AI model training.</p> <p>The NHS Federated Data Platform contract was awarded in November 2023 to a consortium led by Palantir that includes Accenture, PWC, Carnall Farrar and NECS. The contract was originally reported at £330m over seven years, later described as £480m. It is a cloud-based SaaS platform built on Foundry’s Ontology that maps NHS concepts – patients, beds, appointments, clinicians, Trusts – as linked objects.</p> <p>NHS England estimated the FDP will deliver returns of five times its cost. But Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board reported the FDP “does not currently have any system-level products that offer the same or better functionality compared to the custom-built system already in use for NHS GM”.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the British Medical Association (BMA) voted to oppose the roll-out at its June 2025 annual meeting. South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust has declined adoption. In July 2026, the Health and Social Care Select Committee urged the government to scrap the contract entirely.</p> <p>The future of the FDP contract with Palantir is under scrutiny. Cross-party MPs, including the Health and Social Care Select Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, have pushed for the NHS to invoke a break clause in February 2027 to replace Palantir with UK-based alternatives or an in-house alternative.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="The comparison test: who else can do this?"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>The comparison test: who else can do this?</h2> <p>Here, we are not looking at the question of whether the company’s platform works – it does, although <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645814/MPs-call-on-NHS-to-scrap-Palantir-and-its-Federated-Data-Platform">MPs have questioned reported outcomes</a>. The question is whether it contains unique components – and whether any UK or European supplier could assemble equivalent capability without the jurisdictional baggage of a US-headquartered company whose CEO describes it as a weapons software provider.</p> <p>The answer, broken down by component, is outlined in the table below:</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Palantir-Alts-Table-1200px.png"> <img data-src="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Palantir-Alts-Table-1200px_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Palantir-Alts-Table-1200px_mobile.png 960w,https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Palantir-Alts-Table-1200px.png 1280w" alt="Palantir alternatives: US/Global &amp; UK/EU suppliers: Palantir’s platform by component, plus comparable offerings from US/gobal vendors and UK/EU-headquartered suppliers. The table lists components and their Palantir offerings, contrasted with US/Global alternatives and UK/EU sovereign alternatives. Source: Computer Weekly research, July 2026. Vendor positioning verified against public company websites and product documentation. " height="383" width="560"> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>The conclusion this table supports is nuanced but clear. Palantir’s individual components – data integration, warehousing, graph-based semantic modelling, machine learning, workflow applications, deployment automation – are all available from other suppliers.&nbsp;</p> <p>No single European supplier ships them all pre-integrated in the way Palantir does. But the capability to assemble equivalent platforms from sovereign components exists. Germany’s decision to award ChapsVision a domestic intelligence contract over Palantir is evidence of that.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="The lock-in mechanism"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>The lock-in mechanism</h2> <p>The Ontology is Palantir’s greatest technical achievement and its most powerful lock-in mechanism. As an organisation feeds more data sources through Foundry’s Pipeline Builder, maps more objects into the Ontology, and builds more operational workflows on top, the cost and complexity of exit increase.&nbsp;</p> <p>The Met’s DPIA warned of “risk of lock-in with multiple data sources routing outside of EDP”. But to transition away from Palantir means unpicking an Ontology-based deployment, reconstructing the semantic model, re-mapping every relationship and re-building every operational application that depended on it.</p> <p>Tom Bartlett is founder of Bartlett Data and former deputy director of data engineering at NHS England, where he led the approximately 150-person engineering team that built the national FDP products. His argument is that the individual components do not equal the end-to-end provision that Palantir provides. He said alternative suppliers “cannot replicate the Palantir ontology. The ontology stores the data alongside the semantics, in what Palantir calls the object store.”</p> <p>Describing the way Palantir packages the entire stack required, Bartlett added: “Within each object there are not just the data and the semantics, but also predefined rules that encode the write actions that an application or AI sitting on the ontology can take with the data in that object. It contains a security model that is enforced not only in the objects but in any derived object. It contains active link types which mean no query has to run for the objects to be connected. Nothing like this exists in any other software platform and this is what makes Foundry the market leader.”&nbsp;</p> <p>Analyst Tony Lock, director of engagement and distinguished analyst at Freeform Dynamics, argues the challenges of migrating away from an existing deployment are nearly always the same irrespective of what you are moving away from: “Namely, how do you ensure your new solution, or package of linked tools, delivers what you need today, and expect to need tomorrow, how much effort will building and testing the new solution require, especially in this context ensuring its resilience, availability and security, and do you have the funds and resources available to make the migration in your required timeframe?</p> <p>“Then you have to consider the two biggest – namely, how do you minimise the risk of the migration, and what’s the risk of staying with what you have in place? To make the migration work, you need answers to all of these.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Lock-in and structural risks"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Lock-in and structural risks</h2> <p>Four structural risks compound the lock-in concern.</p> <p>First, jurisdictional exposure. Palantir is a US-headquartered company subject to the US Cloud Act and FISA Section 702. US agencies can compel disclosure of data – even data held outside the United States – without notifying UK authorities. The DPIA’s advice section flagged unresolved questions about data retention and Palantir’s potential role as an independent controller. Computer Weekly separately raised the Cloud Act and FISA jurisdictional exposure with the Met in a second tranche of questions, which the force declined to answer.</p> <p>Second, opacity. The NHS FDP contract is 586 pages and heavily redacted. Also, when Computer Weekly submitted questions to the Met covering the absence of competitive tender, the jurisdictional risk assessment and the final disposition of MPS data held by Palantir, the force declined to respond.</p> <p>Third, democratic accountability. The Met’s CSIE pilot marked workforce consultation as “Considered and not required”. The FDP was opposed by the BMA, the Doctors’ Association UK, patients’ groups and privacy campaigners – but the contract was awarded regardless. The Fable 5 kill switch affair of June 2026 – a US government emergency directive that forced Anthropic to disable its flagship AI models globally – demonstrated in real time what happens when a critical service depends on a single foreign supplier subject to emergency directives outside UK control.</p> <p>Fourth, there is the question of what alternatives were considered. The Met’s DPIA dismissal of all alternatives in a single unsupported sentence – “considered but not viable”, without naming a single evaluated supplier – raises uncomfortable questions about the rigour of procurement governance for high-risk data processing in UK policing.</p> <p>The <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366643883/SIT-Committee-urges-Palantir-exit-in-push-to-end-US-cloud-grip">SIT Committee’s June report</a>, which was published as MPs scrutinised the government’s digital strategy, proposes specific remedies – a cloud consumption dashboard to publicly track contract awards by supplier, mandatory SME spending targets, mandatory break clauses in foreign supplier contracts, and a requirement for the Procurement Act 2023 to prioritise open-source solutions. The EU’s <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366643862/EU-unveils-full-stack-sovereignty-package-to-build-Euro-tech-muscle">four-level cloud and AI sovereignty framework</a> – ranging from data residency (Level 1) to full independence from third-country interference (Level 4) – aims to provide a template for sovereign procurement.</p> <p>So, it seems, an honest assessment is this: Palantir sells the tightest pre-integration of data ingestion, ontology-based semantic modelling, analytics, AI agents, operational applications and multicloud deployment on the market. No competitor replicates the full stack exactly – but no competitor needs to. The individual components are commodity or near-commodity capabilities available from UK and European-headquartered suppliers. The question for the UK public sector is whether the convenience of pre-integration is worth the sovereignty cost.&nbsp;</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about Palantir, NHS data and digital sovereignty</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645336/Data-dive-Kill-switch-and-catch-up-can-Europe-close-the-sovereignty-gap">Data dive: Kill switch and catch-up – can Europe close the sovereignty gap?</a> As the US demonstrates it can wield an AI ‘kill switch’, the EU and UK unleash a wave of sovereign tech measures. Can state-led industrial policy bridge a $2tn revenue chasm?</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644966/Met-Palantir-pilot-The-DPIA-that-raises-more-questions-than-answers">Met Palantir pilot: The DPIA that raises more questions than it answers</a>: Computer Weekly’s investigation into the Data Protection Impact Assessment for the Met's Foundry pilot, exposing governance gaps around surveillance, transparency, and staff consultation.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> Palantir is a US defence-intelligence company, born from the CIA's venture arm that now operates inside the UK public sector. We examine the claim that its technology does what no other supplier can https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/Palantir-EdUseOnly-Adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645878/Palantir-Can-anyone-else-do-what-it-does Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:30:00 GMT <p>Two members of the Scattered Spider hacking collective, Owen Flowers and Thalha Jubair, aged 18 and 20 respectively, have been sentenced to five years and six months each in prison at Woolwich Crown Court in London for their involvement in the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366609247/Transport-for-London-hit-by-cyber-attack" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2024 cyber attack on Transport for London</a> (TfL).</p> <p>The Scattered Spider attack on TfL’s systems originated through social engineering targeting the organisation’s helpdesk. Although it did not halt London’s tube or bus networks, it caused severe disruption to technical services such as customers’ Oyster payment accounts and third-party application programming interfaces (APIs). To date, it has cost TfL almost £40m, and it has since emerged that <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639589/Scattered-Spider-attack-on-TfL-affected-10-million-people" target="_blank" rel="noopener">data on 10 million travellers was stolen</a>.</p> <p>The NCA said that its impact was likely mitigated to some degree by TfL’s swift response – for which it has been widely praised – and the fact that the transit agency had undertaken a series of cyber wargames shortly prior to the attack.</p> <p>Today’s sentencing marks the culmination of a major investigation involving the National Crime Agency (NCA), the City of London Police and partners from the US – including the FBI – and other countries.</p> <p>Deputy director Paul Foster, head of the NCA cyber crime unit, hailed a significant moment for law enforcement cyber crime investigations. He said that the complexity and challenging nature of the probe likely surpassed the NCA’s <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366619310/A-landscape-forever-altered-The-LockBit-takedown-one-year-on" target="_blank" rel="noopener">successful takedown of the LockBit ransomware crew in 2024</a>.</p> <p>“This is the biggest ever criminal prosecution of cyber crime actors in the UK. It’s the culmination of nearly two years of painstaking, time-consuming and detailed investigatory work and risk management by NCA officers and our policing colleagues,” he said.</p> <p>“Not only that [but] Scattered Spider has, over the last two years, been the biggest criminal cyber crime threat to the UK. Their activities and their impact has now been severely degraded as a result of this action that’s been taken. I have no doubt that UK citizens and interests are significantly safer as a result, and that applies to other countries around the world too.”</p> <p>TfL commissioner Andy Lord added: “We welcome the news that two people charged in relation to the cyber incident which impacted our operations in 2024 have now been sentenced. The security of our systems and customer data is extremely important to us, and we continually monitor our systems to ensure only those authorised can gain access and continue to take the necessary actions to protect TfL. We thank the hard work of our staff and of the National Crime Agency and partners for their investigations into this incident.”</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Lengthy investigation"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Lengthy investigation</h2> <p>Flowers was first arrested for the TfL attack on 6 September 2024, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366610286/Teenager-arrested-in-TfL-cyber-attack-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mere weeks after the incident unfolded</a> – although his identity was not officially revealed as he was a minor at the time. At that point, he was also found to be in the process of conducting a series of hacks against two US healthcare organisations named as SSM Health Care Corporation and Sutter Health.</p> <p>Police seized devices including laptops, hard drives and USB sticks, and found evidence including screenshots of the TfL attack and videos Flowers had recorded of Jubair accessing TfL systems. The pair had also been messaging over Telegram and an unnamed online collaboration tool.</p> <p>Flowers was later arrested again for breaching bail conditions relating to device usage, while Jubair was also charged for failing to hand over PINs and passwords from seized devices.</p> <p>As the investigation progressed, Flowers and Jubair were again arrested on 16 September 2025 and were <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366631424/Teen-hackers-charged-over-Scattered-Spider-attack-on-TfL" target="_blank" rel="noopener">charged with various offences</a> under Section 3ZA of the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 – which applies to situations where unauthorised acts cause or create a significant risk of serious damage, or the person intends or is reckless as to that damage.</p> <p>Both men changed their pleas to guilty on 22 June 2026, the day they were due to stand trial.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Under the radar"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Under the radar</h2> <p>Although millions of pounds worth of crypto assets flowed through accounts they controlled, unlike their peers in the Russian-speaking cyber criminal underground, neither Flowers nor Jubair were especially flashy with their ill-gotten gains.</p> <p>Both young men came from comparatively normal backgrounds – Flowers, who lived with his grandmother and uncle, spent most of his time in his bedroom playing videogames and using online chat forums, and appears to have been motivated more by a desire for fame or notoriety within the community.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Jubair, who is of Bangladeshi descent, lived with his mother and father, both employed as care workers, in a council flat in Bow, East London. <a href="https://www.londoncentric.media/p/thalha-jubair-scattered-spider-hack-transport-for-london" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Described as something of a loner</a>, he too spent much of his time online and unsupervised in his room – according to US court filings, a significant breakthrough in the investigation came about when he made the mistake of ordering a takeaway delivery using gift vouchers bought via a crypto wallet that police had already linked to Scattered Spider.</p> <p>Both Flowers and Jubair are autistic, which is understood to have been a factor in their sentencing, and had been known to police for some time beyond their involvement in the TfL attack.</p> <p>Flowers had committed several lower stakes hacks prior to hitting TfL and was visited by officers at home in 2023, to no apparent effect.</p> <p>Jubair, meanwhile, had previously been subject to an 18-month rehabilitation order that went largely ignored, and has been linked to the Scattered Spider-adjacent Lapsus$ syndicate as an associate of key gang member Arion Kurtaj, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366549673/Teenage-Lapsus-ringleader-was-responsible-for-crime-spree-UK-court-rules" target="_blank" rel="noopener">who attacked Rockstar Games and Uber</a>, among many others.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="New controls"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>New controls</h2> <p>Following today’s sentencing, the authorities acknowledged that previous attempts to rein in Flowers and Jubair had proven largely toothless, and suggested that the government’s proposed Cyber Crime Risk Order (CCRO) – <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366642884/Computer-Misuse-Act-reform-to-move-forward-in-National-Security-Bill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trailed in May during the King’s Speech</a> – could have been a valuable tool that may even have diverted them from outright criminality.</p> <p>CCROs are intended to equip law enforcement with a flexible set of restrictions that courts can set based on the risk level an individual poses, such as limiting devices, access to online services or other technology that may be useful to a cyber criminal.</p> <p>City of London Police commander Ollie Shaw described the core concept of a CCRO as something like a “digital prison”, adding:&nbsp;“The aim is not just to punish offenders, but also to help them rebuild their lives and use technology safely and legally – as the vast majority of people already do. The measures would be overseen by the courts and reviewed regularly to make sure they remain fair and proportionate.</p> <p>“As more crime is enabled by digital technology, it’s really important that policing has modern powers to prevent offenders from causing further harm.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about Scattered Spider</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li>The 2024 Scattered Spider attack on Transport for London affected approximately 10 million people, many of whom remain blissfully <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639589/Scattered-Spider-attack-on-TfL-affected-10-million-people" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unaware their data was compromised</a>.</li> <li>Another arrest of a teenage hacker associated with the Scattered Spider gang has been made, this time in relation to two 2023 <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366631506/Teen-charged-with-Las-Vegas-casino-cyber-heist" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cyber attacks on Las Vegas casinos and resorts</a>.</li> <li>ReliaQuest researchers present new evidence that firms up a potential link, or outright partnership, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366629157/Researchers-firm-up-ShinyHunters-Scattered-Spider-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">between the ShinyHunters and Scattered Spider cyber gangs</a>.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> Owen Flowers and Thalha Jubair, the hackers behind the 2024 TfL cyber attack, have been sentenced to five-year prison terms at Woolwich Crown Court https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/London-transport-tube-train-2-adobe.jpeg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645859/Scattered-Spider-hackers-sentenced-over-TfL-attack Thu, 16 Jul 2026 09:56:00 GMT <p>Analysis of data collected by Lansweeper has found that almost 22% of devices are still running Windows 10, in spite of Microsoft officially ending support last October. The data, collected from millions of devices across tens of thousands of active Lansweeper customer sites, shows that Windows 11 now accounts for 78.8% of Windows devices.</p> <p><a href="https://www.lansweeper.com/blog/insights/windows-10-holdouts-carry-three-times-the-risk-of-windows-11/">Lansweeper reported</a> that the majority of organisations still using Windows 10 were small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Last year, in a blog post looking at the end of support of Windows 10, Omdia analysts Greg Davis and Kieren Jessop said cost was the defining constraint for SMBs.</p> <p>“Even moderate fleet refreshes often compete with other operating expenses, making purchase timing unpredictable,” they wrote in the blog post. “Manageability and security rank second, but are focused on simplicity and reliability, not enterprise-level IT control.”</p> <p><a href="https://omdia.tech.informa.com/blogs/2025/oct/microsoft-has-ended-support-for-windows-10-now-what">According to Omdia</a>, migration activity in SMBs will continue well into 2027. In both consumer and commercial segments, Omdia predicted that premium IT buyers will focus on buying PCs as they refresh devices for Windows 11.</p> <p>Davis and Jessop noted that the shift to premium PCs costing $800 or more is driven by commercial buyers who increasingly prioritise security, manageability and device longevity over upfront cost.</p> <p>Lansweeper reports that the highest concentration of Windows 10 devices is found in those industries that are built on long-lived, certified and physically embedded hardware where an operating system is integrated with a machine that cannot easily be upgraded. Its data shows that among the organisations that have Windows 10 still running, 23% are in healthcare and 18% are in manufacturing. Its data also shows that 23% of consumers have remained on Windows 10.</p> <p>Esben Dochy, principal technical evangelist for SecOps at Lansweeper, said: “SMBs face unique challenges when it comes to migrating off Windows 10. Migration often requires new hardware, and without bulk purchasing power or dedicated IT staff, that cost falls harder on smaller organisations. SMBs also tend to face less compliance pressure and are less likely to carry insurance policies that require active lifecycle management, so there’s less external pressure forcing the issue.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more Windows upgrad stories</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterprisedesktop/tip/When-is-Windows-10-end-of-life-How-to-extend-support">When is Windows 10</a> end of life? How to extend support: The Windows 10 end-of-support deadline forces IT teams to choose between Windows 11 migration, ESU enrollment and broader desktop lifecycle planning.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Windows-10-end-of-support-Time-to-go-virtual">Windows 10</a> end of support: Time to go virtual: With Windows 10 no longer supported, IT leaders need to consider how to manage the devices that haven’t yet been upgraded to Windows 11.</li> </ul> </div> </div> <p>Looking at the challenges of the healthcare sector, he said the migration to Windows 11 is slowed down by long-lived, certified equipment, where the operating system is often tied to certified medical devices or systems. “Any OS change can trigger regulatory recertification, making updates slow and costly rather than a simple technical task.”</p> <p>In retail, Dochy said that many devices are locked to specific OS versions for compliance or warranty reasons. “Changing the underlying OS isn’t always possible, and where it is, it can be costly, which is why a meaningful share of that hardware simply can’t be migrated without full replacement,” he added</p> <p>Last year, when Windows 10 reached end of support, Microsoft took the decision to offer <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/extended-security-updates?r=1">consumers free extended support</a> until October 2027, if they update the operating system to at least Windows 10 22H2 and set up a Microsoft account with admin privileges.</p> <p><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Windows-10-Microsoft-Extended-Support-Upgrade-programme-explained">Commercial organisations</a> can also continue to receive support through Microsoft’s Extended Support programme, but for commercial users, the cost starts at $66 for the first year and doubles each subsequent year.</p> While support ended in October 2025, community-driven insights from Lansweeper has found that smaller businesses are still using Windows 10 https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/German/article/system-error-3-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645847/A-fifth-of-PC-devices-still-on-Windows-10 Thu, 16 Jul 2026 06:45:00 GMT <p>Ask any technology decision maker of the last decade why they want to move to public cloud and <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/resources/Software-as-a-Service-SaaS">elastic scalability</a> will likely be in the top three reasons. That’s because of the promise of effectively infinite available capacity on demand, for as long as you might need it.</p> <p>It doesn’t actually matter if new customers make use of that scalability, and in fact most of them have probably not done so (especially if they simply lift-and-shifted non cloud-native apps to the cloud). The key decision point was that the capacity was there, ready and waiting at your command.</p> <p>However, there are growing signs that – for Microsoft at least – this open-ended supply of cloud resource might indeed be limited, and potentially <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366641533/Azure-customers-up-in-arms-over-full-UK-South-region">even restricted in some markets and sectors</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p>The most recent sign of this are reports that instead of continually growing out their planned Azure platform for GitHub, Microsoft have been using AWS to bolster their capacity and improve GitHub’s resilience, which has suffered multiple outages since Redmond took it over.</p> <p>GitHub has cited multiple issues around tight coupling of services to the underlying infrastructure as well as simple capacity constraints. These are issues that, arguably, transfer directly across to normal cloud platform users and are often accused of driving vendor lock-in.</p> <p>Other areas of Microsoft’s empire also show signs of scaling challenges. These include their roll back on November commitments to deploy fully <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645913/Reeves-speaks-up-about-UK-sovereign-AI">Sovereign AI</a> inferencing. That’s now down to just four of their cloud product areas, with delays of up to two years for Japan, whilst generalising specific national promises to Germany, Italy, Spain,&nbsp; Sweden, Poland and Switzerland, who will now have to share an EU and EFTA regional service.</p> <p>Taken together, it is fair to wonder if Microsoft has – as has been the case before – simply overpromised on what it can deliver?&nbsp;</p> <p>The signs that it has are hard to ignore.</p> <p>If so, the obvious customer response might be to broaden cloud landing options and diversify into a multi-cloud model – though Microsoft’s decision to shed some resources over to AWS for GitHub suggests you might already be multi-cloud but not fully realise it.</p> <p>The positions of the UK CMA who are investigating <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645004/The-1100-lock-in-CMA-Microsoft-probe-exposes-software-ecosystem-at-a-crossroads">possible Strategic Market Status (SMS)</a> and EU regulators who appear close to applying gatekeeper status to Microsoft and AWS, are that you ought to be able to do so – but saying that is a lot different to being able to actually do so.</p> <p>Moving from one cloud platform to another remains a difficult task – this isn’t like having an open ticket and stepping off an overloaded train to an adjacent service run by another operator. Cloud vendor lock-in is a very real thing, and far too many of us today ride on a restricted “this service only” cloud ticket.</p> <p>Technical issues that prevent simple transfers also start well away from the cloud itself. At the desktop, the corporate identity you rely upon for laptop login is often the same one that governs all your cloud services and isn’t directly and openly interchangeable with other cloud providers. Whoever holds your digital user identity is immediately in a preferential position.</p> <p>This is why the CMA investigation under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) is so important and complex. Cloud selection and mobility is more often than not rooted in internal desktop, identity and server room infrastructure and that gives Microsoft a heavy bias.</p> <p>The pressure to move between clouds and mix and match to best commercial and technical fit has never been greater, but whether the CMA and EU regulators can find a way to move us from “this service only” to “use any cloud” nirvana remains unclear.</p> <p>They have the levers to do so, but need to examine the full stack effect and consider whether moving between clouds – while also considering potential scaling limitations from Microsoft – are sufficient reasons to open the market up in the interests of the end user.</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about cloud</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366641533/Azure-customers-up-in-arms-over-full-UK-South-region">Azure customers up in arms over ‘full’ UK South region</a>. Microsoft customers report being refused capacity, migration projects stuck halfway, and accusations that AI is being prioritised over ‘bread and butter’ offerings</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645540/UKs-largest-businesses-dangerously-exposed-to-cloud-outages">UK’s largest businesses dangerously exposed to cloud outages</a>. British businesses, particularly those in the FTSE 100, are dangerously dependent on large cloud providers, with hypothetical large-scale outages at AWS or Azure regions likely to cause major economic damage, according to the Cyber Monitoring Centre</li> </ul> </div> </div> <p></p> <p></p> Microsoft promised "infinite" cloud scalability, but signs of capacity strain and regional rollbacks suggest it may be overstretched, forcing customers to rethink vendor lock-in https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/security-identity-access-locks-tostphoto-2-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Has-Microsoft-overstretched-its-cloud-elasticity Thu, 16 Jul 2026 06:26:00 GMT <p>Security analysts are struggling to reckon with the sheer volume of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) addressed in Microsoft’s July <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/Patch-Tuesday" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patch Tuesday</a> update, which contains fixes for at least 600 flaws, rising to well over 1,000 when Chromium and Chromium Edge issues are counted.</p> <p>With the latest drop <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644117/Microsoft-smashes-record-for-biggest-ever-Patch-Tuesday-update" target="_blank" rel="noopener">obliterating last month’s record</a>, which in turn blew the previous record to pieces, attention is focusing less on the most immediately addressable flaws, and more on the artificial intelligence (AI-)induced crisis in vulnerability and patch management.</p> <p><a href="https://www.action1.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Action1</a> director of vulnerability research Jack Bicer said: “Microsoft has warned that organisations should expect security updates <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/blog/2026/05/a-note-on-patch-tuesday" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to become more frequent</a> as the company expands its use of AI to uncover vulnerabilities and accelerate patch development, while continuing to rely on human engineers for final validation and release decisions.&nbsp;</p> <p>“For defenders, this means the challenge is no longer just keeping up with attackers, but also keeping pace with an accelerating stream of security fixes. With three zero-days already being exploited in the wild, this month’s updates should be treated as a high priority.”</p> <p><a href="https://www.ivanti.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ivanti</a> vice-president of security product management Chris Goettl said it was not just Microsoft facing the pain: “In general, the <a href="https://www.ivanti.com/blog/patch-apocalypse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patch Apocalypse</a> continues to drive a faster pace for detection of high-risk exposures and fast and continuous remediation capabilities.”</p> <p>Goettl noted that besides Microsoft’s rapidly-growing updates, Adobe is now shifting from monthly to twice-monthly update bulletins, as has Cisco; while Mozilla is now on a weekly update cadence, as is Google. Additionally, last month the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) lowered the remediation target for the highest-risk flaws in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (Kev) catalogue to just 72 hours.</p> <p>However, Nick Carroll and Rain Baker of <a href="https://nightwing.com/cyber-defense/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nightwing’s ShadowScout</a> Team said the term Patch Apocalypse was unhelpful.</p> <p>“We think it should be seen as a healthy evolution in software security. As AI tools help vendors like Microsoft, Adobe, SAP and Oracle discover more issues, customers will naturally see a higher volume of security updates,” they wrote.</p> <p>“We urge organisations to move away from rigid, time-based patching schedules and adopt continuous, risk-based workflows. Leverage tools like Microsoft Intune and Azure Update Manager, automate your updates where possible, and always prioritise actively exploited vulnerabilities first.</p> <p>“By mapping your specific risk landscape and relying on timely vendor releases, your organisation can stay ahead of the curve, secure your vital data and thrive in this new era of threat intelligence,” they said.</p> <p>Goettl also shared some words of advice for security teams. “Consider shifting to a more continuous remediation approach if you have not already done so. The continued increase in both CVE discovery and update frequency due to AI accelerated vulnerability discovery is going to continue to increase and regulatory pressure to resolve highest-risk exposures in a matter of days to hours will become the new normal,” he said.</p> <p>“[Also], update your browsers. All of them. They are on a weekly basis at this point, but consider checking for and updating twice a week, if not daily, to reduce the exploit window for known exploited vulnerabilities.”</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Not just an AI problem"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Not just an AI problem</h2> <p>But AI is not the only disruptor in play, as <a href="https://www.rapid7.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rapid7</a> principal software engineer Adam Barnett pointed out: “After years of relative stability, the Patch Tuesday process has experienced significant turbulence so far in 2026. As well as the AI-fuelled exponential growth of vulnerability reporting and discovery, Microsoft is grappling with the emergence of a series of vulnerabilities disclosed in such a way as to <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366643646/Microsoft-hits-out-over-irresponsible-vulnerability-disclosure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bring maximum discomfort for Redmond</a>.</p> <p>“Pseudonymous researcher Nightmare Eclipse dropped another Defender elevation of privilege vulnerability in the hours following Patch Tuesday June 2026, which Microsoft subsequently published and patched as <a href="https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/en-US/vulnerability/CVE-2026-50656" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CVE-2026-50656</a>, along with a terse acknowledgement of the vulnerability’s celebrity nickname of RoguePlanet,” said Barnett.</p> <p>“Recently, Nightmare Eclipse has given conflicting estimates of what sort of surprises Microsoft can expect today, as well as claiming that the CVE-2026-50656 patches introduce a new avenue for a disk exhaustion attack. Today, a new proof of concept for a further vulnerability nicknamed LegacyHive has emerged from the same source, which appears to allow a non-privileged user to mount another user’s user hive.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Zero-days"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Zero-days</h2> <p>Amid the chaos, three zero-days – two of them exploited in the wild – stand out. These are <a href="https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-50661" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CVE-2026-50661</a>, a security feature bypass (SFB) flaw in Windows BitLocker; <a href="https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-56155" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CVE-2026-56155</a>, an elevation of privilege (EoP) flaw in Active Directory Federation Services; and <a href="https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2026-56164" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CVE-2026-56164</a>, another EoP flaw in Microsoft SharePoint Server.</p> <p>As usual, the Action1 team ran the rule over the impact of the latest zero-day flaws. Company president and co-founder Mike Walters explained how the BitLocker flaw could enable an unauthorised attacker with physical access to a device to defeat the device encryption features, gaining access to data stored on encrypted system drives.</p> <p>“The vulnerability does not impact system availability but has a high impact on both confidentiality and integrity of protected data. Organisations relying on BitLocker to protect sensitive information on laptops, desktops, and servers face an increased risk if devices are lost, stolen or accessed by unauthorised individuals,” said Walters.</p> <p>“A successful attack could expose confidential business data, regulated information, intellectual property or credentials that organisations expect to remain protected by disk encryption. Systems deployed in remote locations or shared environments may be particularly vulnerable.”</p> <p>Turning to CVE-2026-56155 in Active Directory Federation Services, Action1’s Bicer described how insufficient granularity of action control would allow an attacker who has authorised to the affected system to elevate to admin rights and take complete control of it.</p> <p>“Once elevated, an attacker could execute privileged commands, modify system settings, install malicious software, create additional administrative accounts or disable security controls,” said Bicer. “In environments using AD FS for authentication and identity services, administrator-level compromise can lead to unauthorised access to sensitive business resources, disruption of critical services, deployment of ransomware, theft of credentials and broader compromise of enterprise infrastructure.”</p> <p>And finally, Action1 CEO and co-founder Alex Vovk addressed the SharePoint Server flaw, which stems from a missing authentication issue allowing an unauthenticated attacker to elevate their privileges over the network. Since it is remotely exploitable and needs to user interaction, attackers can also target vulnerable servers directly.</p> <p>“An attacker can send specially crafted network requests to access functionality that should require authentication, resulting in privilege escalation,” said Vovk. “Organisations using SharePoint for document management, collaboration, and business workflows face increased risk if vulnerable servers are exposed.</p> <p>“With elevated privileges, attackers can modify SharePoint content, compromise collaboration environments and establish a foothold for further attacks against enterprise infrastructure. Since SharePoint often stores sensitive corporate information, compromise of these systems can have significant operational and security consequences.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about Patch Tuesday</h3> <ul style="list-style-type: square;" class="default-list"> <li><strong>June 2026:&nbsp;</strong>Microsoft has obliterated the record for the largest ever Patch Tuesday drop, with its June 2026 update addressing <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644117/Microsoft-smashes-record-for-biggest-ever-Patch-Tuesday-update" target="_blank" rel="noopener">approximately 200 flaws and three zero-days</a>.</li> <li><strong>May 2026:&nbsp;</strong>No zero-day flaws were addressed in May’s Patch Tuesday update but as usual there is much for admins to chew over&nbsp;<a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366642908/Microsoft-releases-rare-zero-day-free-Patch-Tuesday-update">in the coming days</a>.</li> <li><strong>April 2026:&nbsp;</strong>Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday update may be one of the largest in history,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366641679/April-Patch-Tuesday-brings-zero-days-in-Defender-SharePoint-Server" target="_blank" rel="noopener">with more than 160 issues in scope</a>.</li> <li><strong>March 2026:&nbsp;</strong>Zero-days in .NET and SQL Server, and a handful of critical RCE bugs, form the nucleus of Microsoft’s&nbsp;<a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366639784/Microsoft-patches-zero-days-in-NET-and-SQL-Server">March Patch Tuesday update</a>.</li> <li><strong>February 2026:&nbsp;</strong>Microsoft releases patches for six zero-day flaws in its latest monthly update,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366638958/February-Patch-Tuesday-Microsoft-drops-six-zero-days" target="_blank" rel="noopener">many of them related to security feature bypass issues</a>.</li> <li><strong>January 2026:&nbsp;</strong>January brings a larger-than-of-late Patch Tuesday update out of Redmond, but an uptick in disclosures&nbsp;<a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366637296/Microsoft-patches-112-CVEs-on-first-Patch-Tuesday-of-2026">is often expected at this time of year</a>.</li> <li><strong>December 2025:&nbsp;</strong>The final Patch Tuesday update of the year brings 56 new CVEs, bringing the year-end total&nbsp;<a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366636275/Microsoft-patched-over-1100-CVEs-in-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to more than 1,100</a>.</li> <li><strong>November 2025:</strong>&nbsp;An elevation of privilege vulnerability in Windows Kernel tops the list of issues to address in the&nbsp;<a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366634166/Microsoft-users-warned-over-privilege-elevation-flaw">latest monthly Patch Tuesday update</a>.</li> <li><strong>October 2025:</strong>&nbsp;Windows 10 is no longer supported, but that does not mean it is not impacted&nbsp;<a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366632872/Patch-Tuesday-Windows-10-end-of-life-pain-for-IT-departments" target="_blank" rel="noopener">by the latest Patch Tuesday update</a>.</li> <li><strong>September 2025:</strong>&nbsp;Nearly half the CVEs Microsoft disclosed in its September security update, including one publicly known bug,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/eop-flaws-again-lead-microsoft-patch-day" target="_blank" rel="noopener">enable escalation of privileges</a>&nbsp;(Dark Reading).</li> <li><strong>August 2025:</strong>&nbsp;Microsoft rolls out fixes for over 100 CVEs&nbsp;<a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366629273/Eight-critical-RCE-flaws-make-Microsofts-latest-Patch-Tuesday-list" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in its August Patch Tuesday update</a>.</li> <li><strong>July 2025:</strong>&nbsp;Microsoft patched well over 100 new common vulnerabilities and exposures on the second Tuesday of the month, but its latest update is&nbsp;<a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366627196/July-Patch-Tuesday-brings-over-130-new-flaws-to-address">mercifully light on zero-days</a>.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> Another mammoth Patch Tuesday update, likely topping 600 flaws in total, sends defenders into the weeds https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/German/article/update-keyboard-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645974/Chaotic-July-Patch-Tuesday-threatens-to-overwhelm-defenders Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:34:00 GMT <p>The <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/ezine/Computer-Weekly/Zooming-in-on-police-technology-plans">Home Office</a> has accepted key recommendations from an independent review of how digital material submitted to courts can be managed more effectively.</p> <p>London barrister Jonathan Fisher, who specialises in corporate and financial crime, produced the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disclosure-in-the-digital-age/disclosure-in-the-digital-age-independent-review-of-disclosure-and-fraud-offences-accessible#recommendations"><em>Independent review of disclosure and fraud offences</em></a>, which was presented to the UK Parliament in March 2025. His review covers a number of areas where the disclosure process for digital material across the criminal justice system has caused bottlenecks.</p> <p>At the time, Fisher noted that the largest investigation case on the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252438919/SFO-expands-use-of-AI-after-successful-trial-in-Rolls-Royce-investigation">Serious Fraud Office (SFO) system</a> has 48 million documents (6.5 Tbytes of data). “With this volume of digital material, it is inconceivable that the totality of unused material generated in the investigation can be accurately reviewed and scheduled by investigating officers manually, in the traditional way,” he said. “It is also a gross waste of resources for investigating officers to spend time on banal and unproductive activity.”</p> <p>Fisher recommended an assessment of safe and ethical use of advanced technology in an open and transparent manner. “As has been the case with many previous technological advancements, the use of technology has the potential to reduce administrative burden and increase accuracy,” he said.</p> <p>“We must have a system that takes a pragmatic approach to disclosure, using ethical, secure and accurate advanced technology to streamline the processing, redaction and scheduling of large volumes of digital material. This will effectively free up resources to focus on the complex aspects of investigation and prosecution rather than arduous administration, increasing the speed of justice for both victims and defendants.”</p> <p>Under the current system, police officers manually process and provide a written summary for every file that could be relevant to an investigation. The new regime proposed by the Home Office will mean that police officers will be able to use technology to identify, sort and compile millions of files that are currently reviewed manually.&nbsp;</p> <p>Graham McNulty, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said: “Modern fraud, bribery and corruption cases involve vast amounts of digital data, and our disclosure regime must keep pace with that reality. I welcome the government’s response to disclosure reform, which marks a positive step forward. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>“I’m particularly pleased that the government will be exploring opportunities to pilot a new intensive disclosure regime, and look forward to continuing to work with others to bring disclosure practice fully into the digital era.”</p> <p>According to an estimate from the <em>Policing productivity review</em>, officers spent approximately 532,000 hours in 2022/23 undertaking disclosure work and building case files which were later assessed by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as requiring no further action. PoliceAI, the government-backed initiative launched in June, aims to free up an estimated six-million hours of police time per year by 2028 – equivalent to 3,000 extra officers.&nbsp;</p> <p>Through PoliceAI, the Home Office said it will fund piloting of AI tools that are capable of automatically generating summaries of digital material, which it stated would save investigators countless hours spent carrying out administrative tasks, with a view to scaling across all police forces in 2027.</p> <p>Al Murray, interim director of PoliceAI, said: “The disclosure process is an essential safeguard in our justice system, but the scale of digital evidence involved in modern investigations means we need modern solutions. Used responsibly, AI can help officers and investigators manage vast amounts of material more efficiently, allowing them to spend more time supporting victims, pursuing offenders and exercising the professional judgement that technology can never replace.”</p> <p>Minister for policing and crime prevention Sarah Jones said: “Police officers are wasting thousands of hours trawling through phones, emails, messages, videos and cloud storage because of outdated regulations. By embracing AI and new technology responsibly, we will boost productivity, bring policing into the 21st century and free officers to focus on the frontline.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more UK policing stories</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li>UK police to upgrade <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366632638/UK-police-to-upgrade-illicit-asset-recovery-system">illicit asset recovery system</a>: A new system is being developed by the Police Digital Service and NEC Software Solutions to help manage the recovery of criminal assets, replacing 20-year-old legacy infrastructure.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644838/Civil-society-Police-facial-recognition-must-be-strictly-limited">Police facial recognition</a> must be strictly limited: Digital rights groups map out ‘minimum, necessary’ human rights protections to be included in UK government’s upcoming legal framework for police facial recognition.</li> </ul> </div> </div> PoliceAI will be used to pilot artificial intelligence tools that are capable of automatically generating summaries of digital material, saving ‘countless’ admin hours https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/HeroImages/police-kevers-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645936/Home-Office-proposes-AI-tooling-to-accelerate-digital-disclosure Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:31:00 GMT <p>A toxic workplace culture stemming from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) senior leadership team meant staff felt unable to raise concerns or push back on policy decisions, making it a “less effective” regulator, according to multiple sources close to the matter.&nbsp;</p> <p>Following the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644976/UK-information-commissioner-John-Edwards-resigns-after-HR-investigation">departure of disgraced former information commissioner John Edwards from the organisation in June 2026</a> – which came after an <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645105/Former-ICO-boss-found-using-vulgar-language-with-female-staff">independent workplace investigation upheld multiple allegations</a> of harassment and bullying against him – Computer Weekly has been told of “disparaging” remarks he made about staff at the ICO, “impugning their abilities”. In some instances, Edwards called staff “fucking useless”.</p> <p>An internal people survey conducted by the regulator from October 2025 previously found that 10% of ICO staff experienced or witnessed bullying and harassment, with women twice as likely to experience that as men, said Lawrence Dunne, an ICO staff representative at the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).</p> <p>Dunne added that “concerns about the culture within the ICO and its senior leadership were widely known among staff”.</p> <p>One staff member – speaking to Computer Weekly on condition of anonymity – said it was “inconceivable” that senior leadership were not aware of Edwards’ misconduct prior to his independent investigation being launched in February.</p> <p>“There is no way on Earth that, if not the whole of the executive team, then certainly [deputy commissioner and chief executive] Paul Arnold knew what was going on,” they said.</p> <p>“There isn’t enough challenge at the top [within the senior leadership team], and there isn’t enough psychological safety among the middle and more junior levels to challenge upwards.”</p> <p>Highlighting Edwards’ decision to not fine public sector bodies for breaches of data protection law as an example – <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366616135/ORG-urges-ICO-to-revise-public-sector-enforcement-approach">which has been heavily criticised by experts and civil society groups</a> – they said this “led to an awful lot of irritation among staff” who felt their voices had been ignored in determining that position.</p> <p>“John’s high-handed approach just shut down debate,” they told Computer Weekly, creating an internal dynamic that meant the ICO was “less effective as a regulator than we could be”.</p> <p>Computer Weekly contacted Edwards for comment but received no response.</p> <p>In an appearance before the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on 8 July, technology secretary Liz Kendall confirmed that Edwards is “preparing to serve legal papers on one of the women at the ICO who raised concerns about his behaviour”.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Senior leadership aware of Edwards’ behaviour"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Senior leadership aware of Edwards’ behaviour</h2> <p>However, sources said that the problems were not limited to Edwards alone, and extended to the wider leadership team.</p> <p>According to the staff member, “A lot of the executive team just go, ‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir,’ and they don’t really know why we’re doing anything. They can’t explain to the rest of the organisation why certain decisions have been taken. So, no one knows what the hell they’re bleeding doing or why they’re doing it.”</p> <p>Another anonymous source, who is well placed to comment, said: “There’s also a sincerely held belief that complaints about John’s behaviour were not taken forward as they should have been.”</p> <p>The source added that had the senior leadership dealt with complaints when they first started arising, they could have nipped Edwards’ behaviour in the bud.</p> <p>The lack of trust at the ICO was compounded by the senior leadership’s silence around Edwards’ departure in February. He requested Arnold to withhold the information from staff, in an internal memo revealed by <i>The Times</i>. Edwards wrote: “I do not believe that it is necessary to make any wider announcement to staff, or to make any external announcements or disclosures.”</p> <p>The staff member said if ICO employees were given an indication of the reason behind his departure, it could have emboldened more people to report their own experiences.</p> <p>Computer Weekly contacted the ICO about every claim made regarding the role of the wider senior leadership team, as well as its awareness of Edwards’ conduct, but received no direct response to many of the points raised. Its full response is included below.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Lack of trust at the ICO"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Lack of trust at the ICO</h2> <p>According to those Computer Weekly spoke with, the dysfunctional culture at the ICO existed prior to Edwards. “There weren’t issues like this [misconduct] with Liz [Edwards’ predecessor, Elizabeth Denham], but there were a lot of things wrong, structurally and organisationally, at the top of the office that stemmed from the culture,” said the staff member.</p> <p>After Edward’s resignation, the ICO published a statement promising to offer a “safe and supportive environment” for its staff.&nbsp;</p> <p>In response, the staff member said: “A significant proportion of staff would say that’s not true.”</p> <p>The lack of trust and safety at the organisation has meant staff feel unable to disagree with senior decisions.&nbsp;</p> <p>“We can’t say we don’t want to do it because we disagree with it,” they said. “We’ll just get a bollocking if we do that.”&nbsp;</p> <p>They added that “there’s not an effective two-way feedback mechanism”, leading to “poor decision-making at the top, and disaffection and poor implementation further down … That disaffection or implementation can relate to good ideas, as well as bad ones, because it just bleeds through like a virus.”</p> <p>The poor communication has resulted in staff having “little or no confidence” in the ICO’s senior leadership, said a source. “It’s pretty clear that they’re at a very low ebb and extremely disillusioned with the ‘leadership’ of the ICO at present,” said the staff member.</p> <p>“For some, it’s the culmination of years of poor management and an ivory tower executive team led on the corporate side by Paul Arnold. There is anger that they were kept in the dark and a general feeling that the staff are patronised by them … ICO staff are a professional group of intelligent people. The executive team needs to treat them as such.”</p> <p>The source added: “I think more pressure needs to be put on DSIT [Department for Science, Innovation and Technology] or the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee to examine exactly how the situation was allowed to develop for so long, and why the executive team ignored it.”</p> <p>PCS <a href="https://www.pcs.org.uk/news-events/news/pcs-calls-action-keep-members-safe-ico">called for urgent action</a> to address concerns beyond Edwards’ resignation on 2 July. “The union remains concerned that efforts to improve the situation must focus on addressing the underlying causes of these problems rather than simply responding to their effects,” it said.</p> <p>“PCS’s concerns are reinforced by findings from ICO People Surveys, which have highlighted unacceptable levels of bullying, harassment and discrimination, alongside evidence that many staff do not feel psychologically safe at work.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Further independent review to take place"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Further independent review to take place</h2> <p>Dunne, who has acted as the ICO staff’s union representative since last year, said previous complaints against Edwards were made in the years prior to his leave. The complaints were put forward to the ICO and DSIT, who “failed to do anything significant about it” as far as PCS understands, said Dunne.</p> <p>Responding on behalf of DSIT to a Parliamentary question from Esther McVey on 23 June, Labour minister <a href="https://arc.net/l/quote/iahygsds">Ian Murray said</a> MPs were not informed of any complaints prior to 16 February, 10 days prior to Edwards stepping back from the ICO.</p> <p>In a letter to DSIT on 1 July 2026, Dunne wrote: “The ICO received a serious complaint about Mr Edwards’ behaviour in 2024, which was investigated and partly upheld but with no clear action taken against Mr Edwards, apart from a recommendation of training.&nbsp;</p> <p>“I wrote to DSIT Employee Relations on 12 June 2025, requesting that DSIT review the case and take over responsibility for decision making, given the lack of anyone in the ICO holding the power to impose misconduct sanctions. We also highlighted that there may be other staff who had been subjected to unacceptable treatment by the commissioner.</p> <p>“Unfortunately, I received a short response simply referring the case back to the ICO.</p> <p>“We had already expressed to them they did not have the authority or competence to take appropriate action,” said Dunne. “If DSIT claim that they had no knowledge of the concerns around the commissioner’s behaviour before February 2026, this claim is factually incorrect.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about the ICO</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644403/UK-data-regulator-slammed-over-lack-of-action-on-complaints">UK data regulator slammed over lack of action on complaints</a>: The UK data regulator is being threatened with legal action after it was accused of ‘ignoring’ thousands of data protection complaints, with critics describing its new approach to complaint triage and investigation as akin to a ‘digital bin’ for the public’s concerns.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366642365/UK-data-watchdog-accused-of-dragging-feet-on-eVisa-investigation">UK data watchdog accused of dragging feet on eVisa investigation</a>: Despite longstanding data protection issues with the Home Office’s electronic visa system being flagged five months ago, the UK’s data regulator is yet to take any action.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366642957/ICO-fines-Cl0p-victim-South-Staffs-Water-over-data-breach">ICO fines Cl0p victim South Staffs Water over data breach</a>: The ICO has levied a reduced fine on South Staffordshire Water following cyber improvements in the wake of a Cl0p ransomware attack.</li> </ul> </div> </div> <p>Technology secretary Liz Kendall has since announced on 8 July that she is launching an “independent review into the culture, accountability and governance of the ICO”.</p> <p>Additionally, DSIT will be appointing a new board of non-executive directors and a new chair for the information commission, “the majority of whom will be women”, said Kendall.</p> <p>She also confirmed the department will be launching the recruitment exercise for the chair of the new Information Commission next week, a role which would have otherwise been taken up by Edwards.</p> <p>Responding to Kendall’s intervention, Dunne said that while the comments and commitment to investigate are welcome, PCS is yet to receive a response from DSIT to its 1 June letter requesting an urgent meeting with the union.</p> <p>“We will be following this up and reiterating our request to meet as a matter of urgency,” he said. “PCS is clear that any review must be accountable to the Secretary of State and Parliament, genuinely independent, and have the authority to hold to account any members of senior leadership who failed in their responsibilities to ICO staff.</p> <p>“Crucially, the review must also ensure that the voices of former ICO staff are heard, particularly those who felt they had no option but to leave because of the toxic workplace culture that developed under the former commissioner’s leadership.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="ICO and DSIT responses"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>ICO and DSIT responses</h2> <p>Computer Weekly contacted DSIT about the PCS’s concerns and why it had not previously acted when the union raised these issues in mid-2025.</p> <p>“The ICO is operationally independent and is expected to follow its own policies and procedures for HR matters, escalating to the department where necessary,” said a spokesperson.</p> <p>“The matters referenced in the PCS letter were handled through ICO processes. When new and different allegations were raised in 2026, an independent investigation was commissioned.”</p> <p>Responding to a request for comment from Computer Weekly, the ICO confirmed that it will be involved in the “independent review” of its workplace culture and practices.</p> <p>“As the independent investigation found, John Edwards’ conduct was unacceptable and fell well short of the standards we expect and of the safe, respectful working environment our staff deserve,” said a spokesperson. “People at every level of the ICO felt the impact of this behaviour.</p> <p>“The role of Information Commissioner is extraordinary in that it is a Crown appointee and accountable to Parliament,” they added. “Despite the limitations of this governance structure, concerns were raised, action taken when necessary, and outcomes shared with DSIT when appropriate. Some of these concerns formed the basis for the recent workplace investigation.</p> <p>“We are committed to learning from these findings. We’re commissioning an independent review jointly with DSIT and will act on its recommendations to ensure lessons are learned, no matter how challenging. Enhancing our workplace support is an ever-present commitment and we’re determined to work with our staff to ensure something like this never happens again at the ICO.”</p> </section> Staff of the UK’s data protection watchdog say it was ‘less effective’ due to a toxic workplace culture upheld by senior leadership team https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/HeroImages/business-meeting-staff-office-alfa27-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645710/ICO-less-effective-as-a-regulator-due-to-toxic-culture Wed, 15 Jul 2026 05:00:00 GMT <p>The employment rate in the UK, if you are non-disabled, is 83%, according to the Office for National Statistics. If you are <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Tech-community-must-play-a-part-in-closing-the-employment-gap-for-blind-and-sight-impaired-people">blind or partially sighted</a> (BPS), it is 27%.</p> <p>This is a shocking statistic and behind it sit hundreds of thousands of human stories of un-enablement, un-empowerment and unemployment.</p> <p>It is for this reason that, this week, I published my report, <i><a href="https://lordchrisholmes.com/report-on-the-employment-gap-for-blind-and-partially-sighted-people-in-the-uk-out-of-sight-out-of-work/">Out of sight- out of work.</a></i> I wanted to shift the dial on an issue that has dogged our economy and our society for decades and, through lack of action from governments of all persuasion, has blighted individual lives, held back potential and caused harm where there could so easily have been hope.</p> <p>The situation is made even more sobering in that, currently, we have one of the highest employment rates in history – but not if you are BPS. In fact, since 2018 the numbers have got even worse.</p> <p>According to analysis by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) of the Labour Force Survey 2024, since 2018 the employment rate has been falling for people who describe themselves as having difficulties seeing, despite increasing for the broader population.</p> <p>The UK is losing billions in potential economic contribution because of inaccessible recruitment systems, inadequate employer support, and a lack of targeted government action.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Inclusion from the outset"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Inclusion from the outset</h2> <p>Figures of 27% employment versus 83% of the general population is not inevitable – it is systemic. <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Diversity-Think-Tank-Divesting-from-inclusion-is-a-tech-business-mistake">Inclusion must be designed from the outset</a> – inclusive by design – not retrofitted. The cost of getting it right is negligible compared to the cost of exclusion.</p> <p>If BPS people were employed at the same rate as the general population, UK GDP would rise significantly from increased tax receipts, reduced welfare expenditure, and the economic value of thousands of skilled, motivated workers. If it is not addressed, the gap will only widen as the number of people living with sight loss is set to double by 2050.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Technology can be such a positive force for inclusion. This is in no sense inevitable though because, if inclusive by design is not there from the outset, if the tech is not human-led, it can just as easily exacerbate existing exclusion </figure> <figcaption> <strong>Chris Holmes</strong> </figcaption> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>In the report, I highlight four key areas for action, with specific recommendations attached. These fall into issues around policy, funding and accountability; employer practices and workplace barriers; data or the lack thereof; and technology.</p> <p>The key ask is a specific focused taskforce with cross-departmental reach, led by the minister for disabled people.</p> <p>Computer Weekly readers will know that technology can be such an enabler, such a positive force for inclusion. This is in no sense inevitable though because, if <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Diversity-Think-Tank-Inclusion-matters-heres-why-you-should-care">inclusive by design</a> is not there from the outset, if the tech is not human-led, it can just as easily exacerbate existing exclusion.</p> <p>And, even if we get it right in the first instance, what about when a system upgrade or software switch-out happens? In my research for the report, I hear stories of accessible working on Friday, only for that BPS person to come in on Monday and, as a consequence of an upgrade, being completely shut out from the system. Exclusion, un-enablement and all of the practical and emotional consequences.&nbsp;</p> <p>Similarly, I heard “day one” situations where people were told assistive software was not yet available but could they just carry on for the time being - very much like asking a wheelchair user to just go up and down the steps until the ramp arrives. It’s more than unfortunate and, with an inclusive by design approach, completely avoidable.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Setting the standards"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Setting the standards</h2> <p>From a technology perspective, the report recommends, among other things, that the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366640721/UK-government-boosts-digital-access-for-more-than-a-million-people">government sets the standard</a> by making accessibility compliance a condition of public procurement; develops and publishes national interoperability guidelines; establishes baseline assistive technology standards for large employers; and invests in digital skills training – from schools to university to work.</p> <p>This is not about impairment. This is about systems, structures, leadership, attitudes and accountability.</p> <p>The report leads to a clear conclusion: creating a more inclusive and equitable employment landscape for BPS people requires the collective efforts of the UK government and employers. Both have a critical role to play in closing the gap.</p> <p>If the government is serious about its ambition set out in the <i>Get Britain working</i> white paper, to reach 80% employment for disabled people among the working age population, the crucial first step is to set up the proposed taskforce<b>.</b></p> <p>No nation can afford to waste the talent of hundreds of thousands of BPS people- the UK is no different in that.</p> <p>It’s more than high time to act, to enable, to empower all BPS people’s abilities into employment. It’s time to break the terrible truth that persists in the UK- talent is everywhere, opportunity is not.</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about digital inclusion</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Why-Inclusivity-is-the-Key-to-Britains-Deeptech-Future">Why inclusivity is the key to Britain’s deeptech future</a> - The UK is pushing to become a deeptech leader, but inclusion and diversity are the key to ensuring it is successful.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Realising-Britains-AI-ambitions-rests-on-digital-confidence-and-inclusion">Realising Britain’s AI ambitions rests on digital confidence and inclusion</a> - AI is increasingly being woven into every aspect of our lives - but the technology's full potential cannot be delivered without addressing shortcomings in digital inclusion.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Digital-ID-must-not-deepen-exclusion">Digital ID must not deepen exclusion</a> - UK government plans for a national digital identity scheme risk embedding further inequalities and barriers to public services for the 19 million people currently experiencing digital exclusion.</li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> Billions of pounds are being lost - and hundreds of thousands of people excluded from the economy - because so much of our technology and working lives are not inclusive by design https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/guide-dog-blind-lightfieldstudios-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Out-of-sight-out-of-work-Creating-opportunity-for-blind-and-partially-sighted-people Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/CW-60-anniversary-logo-white-400px.jpg" alt="Computer Weekly 60th anniversary logo" width="226" height="117"> </div> <p><i>On 22 September 2026, Computer Weekly turns 60. To mark the milestone, we asked some of our friends - experts, parliamentarians, IT leaders and suppliers - for their perspectives on how tech has changed their lives over six decades. What's changed the most for you since then?</i></p> <p>Computer Weekly turns 60 in September, and I recently turned 56. That means for more than half the magazine's life, I've been working in technology. Which still surprises me when I write it down.</p> <p>My relationship with computers started before I owned one. My friend Richard Kistruck had an <a href="https://www.tnmoc.org/adopt-artefacts/adopt-an-apple-ii">Apple II</a>, and we would spend hours at his house playing <a href="https://www.colossalcave3d.com/play-text-adventure/"><i>Adventure</i></a>, the original <i>Colossal Cave</i> text adventure. His family were wealthier than mine, so I watched and played at Richard's rather than at home. Every so often, I would also borrow a <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252506837/British-home-computing-inventor-Sir-Clive-Sinclair-dies">ZX81</a> from another friend, Gareth, and plug it into my telly.</p> <p>What <i>Adventure</i> did was something I hadn't encountered before. I was already a reader, had been since I was small. My dad read us <i>The Hobbit</i> at bedtime, which probably matters more than it sounds. But reading puts you at a remove from the story. You follow, you observe, you accompany. <i>Adventure</i> put me inside the story. I could shape it. I could make things happen, or fail to make them happen, which was usually more instructive. The computer asked what I wanted to do next and waited for my answer. That felt, in 1981, like nothing else.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Making myself understood"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Making myself understood</h2> <p>The moment I remember most vividly from those sessions is the frustration of trying to make myself understood through the software's limited vocabulary. You'd type what seemed like a perfectly clear instruction and get back SORRY, I DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT. The machine was patient. I was not. What I didn't know then was that I'd spend the next four decades watching that specific problem evolve - how do you get a computer to understand what you actually mean? In 1981, it was a vocabulary table in a text adventure. In 2026, it's the thing everyone is discussing.</p> <blockquote> <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src=" https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/Rik-Ferguson-Forescout-CW-Contributor.jpg" alt="Photo of Rik Ferguson"> </div> <p><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong><span style="color: #34495e;">“Technology turned out to be the one thing wide enough to hold both halves of me at once. Most careers make you choose. This one never did”</span></strong></span></p> <p><span style="color: #34495e;"><em>Rik Ferguson</em></span></p> </blockquote> <p>I got my own ZX Spectrum 48K after my grandmother died. My dad's family came into a small inheritance, enough for things that hadn't previously been possible. My brother got a Casio keyboard. I got the Spectrum. Both of us, it turned out, had identified the right thing. The keyboard headed him toward music. The Spectrum headed me somewhere I couldn't yet see: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1982_video_game)">the Hobbit game</a>, the platform games, the code I typed in laboriously from the centre spreads of <a href="http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/magazines/GetMagazine?name=Your%20Computer"><i>Your Computer</i> magazine</a>.</p> <p>What I couldn't have told you then was what it would eventually give me. Technology turned out to be the one thing wide enough to hold both halves of me at once. The helpdesk years in the mid-nineties fed something I hadn't had a name for - the ability to lose myself completely in a problem, to follow a fault down through every layer until I found the root of it. Later, presenting on stages around the world and making videos that won awards fed something else entirely, something that had been there since I was 11 and got bitten by the thespian bug in a school production. Most careers make you choose. This one never did.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="From a hobby to a career"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>From a hobby to a career</h2> <p>My headmaster's end-of-year report once described me as being “seemingly determined not to succeed”. He wasn't entirely wrong. I wasn't incapable - I was, as I'd put it now, untried. An interest became a hobby. A hobby became a job. A job, eventually, became a career, though not through any plan I could have articulated at the time.</p> <p>I started working in technology in 1994, without formal academic qualifications in the discipline. When I took my first professional security qualification years later, the <a href="https://www.comptia.org/en-us/certifications/security/">CompTIA Security+</a>, I passed with a perfect score. The capacity was always there. I just hadn't found the thing that made me apply it.</p> <p>Since 1994, I've been in the room for most of what's happened: the internet becoming a public thing, the mobile revolution, the long collapse from dozens of competing platforms into something close to monoculture, the arrival of connected devices that don't look like computers but behave like them, and now the moment we're in, where <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/How-can-enterprise-AI-be-made-less-sycophantic">AI is rewriting the assumptions</a> underneath everything else.</p> <p>The Spectrum is still somewhere at my mum’s house, I think. The <em>Adventure</em> - and the frustration - never went away. They just changed shape.</p> </section> Cyber security expert Rik Ferguson charts an unlikely career from The Hobbit through childhood thespianism to the cutting edge of cyber defence https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/map-pins-location-city-route-Tryfonov-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/CW60-An-adventure-into-cyber-security Wed, 15 Jul 2026 03:00:00 GMT <p><i>This investigation was led by <a href="https://www.investigate-europe.eu/">Investigate Europe</a>, a cross-border journalism collective. It was produced in partnership with the <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/journalism/initiatives/ai-accountability-network">Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network</a> </i></p> <p>At Howrah station in Kolkata, the trains never really stop, and neither do the cameras. At one of India’s busiest railway terminals, around a million people pour through it every day, with crowds so dense that following a single face can be near impossible, at least with the human eye.</p> <p>Yet mounted high above the entrance and exit gates, platforms, food courts and waiting rooms, around 100 live facial-recognition cameras silently keep track. The system, installed in the past year, lifts faces from the live feed and cross-checks them against a database of photos: wanted offenders, criminal suspects, missing people. A match alerts railway police to the exact spot a person was seen, and authorises police to approach them.</p> <p>Some commuters seem unaware that they are being surveilled in this way. Barnali Biswas, a private sector employee who passes through six days a week, was unbothered when questioned by a reporter, saying she thought it was probably good for safety. “People with nothing to do with crime had nothing to fear,” she said.<br><br>This kind of camera, enabled with facial-recognition software, is increasingly familiar across India. And in eastern India, one supplier of that software is the Spanish firm Herta Security.</p> <p>According to local partners and company documents, Herta supplies hundreds of railway stations across the region, Delhi’s largest prison complex, a pilgrimage site in Ayodhya, and the city control rooms of Ahmedabad.</p> <p>Herta confirmed the use of its technology in India but in a written statement said that it would “not disclose confidential customer information”. Its software may also be deployed at Howrah station itself, though local railway officials would not confirm this when asked.</p> <p>A source at one of Herta’s Indian partners told Investigate Europe that they estimated that more than 4,000 cameras across the world’s largest democracy are now powered by the Spanish firm’s technology.</p> <p>At least part of that roll-out is linked to the Nirbhaya Fund, a pot of public money created to tackle sexual violence after a shocking 2012 Delhi bus gang rape. Women’s rights groups in India argue the millions of euros earmarked for the fund have been spent on mass surveillance rather than on more direct victim protection and support.</p> <p>According to four leading legal scholars who specialise in EU artificial intelligence (AI) and biometrics law, two of these deployments would be deemed unlawful if they operated inside the European Union: the system on Indian Railways’ Eastern Region and a city-wide surveillance programme in Ahmedabad.</p> <p>Herta said it took such concerns seriously, adding that its products are “developed in line with European data-protection principles, regardless of the market in which they are deployed”. However, the company said that it could not “control how public authorities or system integrators implement the technology in specific environments”.</p> <p>Italian member of the European Parliament, Brando Benifei, however, said the findings raised troubling questions for European lawmakers: “The fact that surveillance technologies banned in Europe are being exported and deployed elsewhere, such as in India’s railway stations, exposes a dangerous double standard.”</p> <p>While the EU has heavily restricted similar surveillance on its own citizens, Investigate Europe has found that it funded the Spanish company to develop its technology. Since 2020, Herta has received more than €3.3m in EU research funding for projects involving “crowd behaviour analysis” and facial recognition.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Surveillance made in Spain"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Surveillance made in Spain</h2> <p>Herta Security was founded in Barcelona in 2009 by former Bosch employee Javier Rodríguez Saeta, a specialist in biometrics – automated identification based on people’s physical features or behaviour. “Back in 2005,” Rodríguez would later recall <a href="https://www.telecinco.es/noticias/economia/reconocimiento-facial-mas-rapido-mundo-encuentra-cara-miles-segundo-herta-espana_18_2862045375.html">in a 2019 interview</a>, “I already thought that in the future it would be necessary to identify people who did not want to be identified.”</p> <p>Today the company’s flagship product, BioSurveillance Next, is designed for what its own <a href="https://hertasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/datasheet_BioSurveillance-NEXT-min.pdf">marketing materials describe as </a><a href="https://hertasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/datasheet_BioSurveillance-NEXT-min.pdf">crowd-scale deployment</a>. Rodríguez has spoken of using it for “demonstrations, sports races, religious gatherings and airports”. The data sheet advertises real-time searches against databases of up to 100 million subjects.</p> <p>The technology is underpinned by graphics-processing units – the same chips that power most current artificial intelligence and accelerate facial recognition so it can be performed in real time. In 2015, AI chipmaker Nvidia recognised Herta as <a href="https://www.biometricupdate.com/201504/facial-recognition-firm-herta-security-recognized-at-gtc-summit">a top-emerging company </a><a href="https://www.biometricupdate.com/201504/facial-recognition-firm-herta-security-recognized-at-gtc-summit">in the sector</a>. By 2019, Herta claimed to have amassed more than 200 clients across 50 countries.</p> <p>The market Herta serves has expanded rapidly in recent years. Such technology is now used at sports stadiums in the United States, by police forces in the United Kingdom and has also been trialled by police forces across the EU.</p> <p>However, the technology is heavily restricted in Europe. Since 2025, the EU AI Act has <a href="https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/5/">largely prohibited the use of real-time remote biometric identification systems</a> – above all, facial recognition – in public spaces for law enforcement purposes. Those drafting the law identified this as one of the few uses of AI they considered unacceptable.</p> <p>The ban allows three narrow exceptions: targeted searches for victims of trafficking, sexual exploitation or kidnapping, or missing persons; the prevention of a specific, imminent terrorist threat; and the identification of suspects of a closed list of serious crimes including terrorism, murder and rape. Even then, each individual use must be authorised by a judge in advance and logged in an EU database.</p> <p>Herta has a track record of working with clients beyond EU borders. In a marketing presentation from 2021 and seen by Investigate Europe, Herta lists several projects. These include city-wide surveillance schemes known as “safe-city projects” in Jamaica, Thailand and Mumbai in India. Other uses of its software include police forces in Colombia and Indonesia; football stadiums in Belarus and Russia; and airports in Mexico, Nicaragua and Nigeria. It is not clear whether these partnerships are still active today.</p> <p>Herta’s software has also been used in Europe. Notably, the company’s technology was trialled by the German Federal Police in 2017 and 2018 <a href="https://netzpolitik.org/2018/ueberwachungstest-am-suedkreuz-geschoente-ergebnisse-und-vage-zukunftsplaene/">at a </a><a href="https://netzpolitik.org/2018/ueberwachungstest-am-suedkreuz-geschoente-ergebnisse-und-vage-zukunftsplaene/">Berlin train station</a>.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-3-1200px.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-3-1200px_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-3-1200px_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-3-1200px.jpg 1280w" alt="Sporting arenas to police forces: Herta’s global footprint. A selection of end users of Herta’s products, according to market materials. The map shows: Golden Globe Awards, USA; AICM Airport, Mexico; Nicaragua Airport, Nicaragua; Jamaica Eye, Jamaica; Colombian Police, Colombia; Estadio Centenario, Uruguay; Dutch Police, Netherlands; Spanish National Police, Spain; Benin Airport, Nigeria; German Police, Germany; Minsk Arena, Belarus; Samara Stadium, Russia; Sofia City Hall, Bulgaria; Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE; Ahmedabad Safe City, Easter Railways, Kakinada Smart City, Mumbai, India; and Phuket Safe City, Thailand. " data-credit="Investigate Europe" height="315" width="560"> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>In 2019, Rodríguez was <a href="https://www.telecinco.es/noticias/economia/reconocimiento-facial-mas-rapido-mundo-encuentra-cara-miles-segundo-herta-espana_18_2862045375.html">asked about the risk that Herta’s products might be misused</a>. “In Europe,” he said, “we are very well protected, we have very clear legislation that sets out the uses of this technology. There’s nothing to fear.”</p> <p>At that time, the EU-wide ban on real-time facial recognition in public spaces was not in place. The AI Act’s prohibition only took effect in February 2025. He did not address the protections available to citizens in his other markets such as India, where similar strict legislation is absent.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="The Indian portfolio: Railways, prisons and temples"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>The Indian portfolio: Railways, prisons and temples</h2> <p>Herta’s expansion into India has unfolded over a decade. Around 2014, the company supplied four or five cameras for the Mumbai Safe City project, according to a local business partner.</p> <p>A former senior researcher at Herta, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the data Herta acquired through its early Indian deployments was central to overcoming problems with the algorithm’s poor performance on non-white faces.</p> <p>Herta told Investigate Europe that it “does not use customer operational data from deployments as a default mechanism to train or improve its algorithms”. Any use of personal or biometric data for algorithmic training “would require a clear legal basis”.</p> <p>The real breakthrough came eight years later. In 2022, a Delhi-based company <a href="https://www.railtel.in/images/Contract-Details/SEP%20ER%202022.pdf">won an €11.5m tender contract for a video surveillance system</a> covering hundreds of train stations in eastern India. The facial recognition layer of the system runs on Herta software.</p> <p>Eastern Railway <a href="https://www.thestatesman.com/bengal/er-enhances-security-with-advance-video-surveillance-1503385192.html">announced last year</a> that 540 facial-recognition systems were operational at 143 stations. The full plan covers 392 stations, among them some of the largest stations in the region. Herta’s local partners said that the systems could be fitted in more than 1,500 cameras in the future.</p> <p>Authorities regularly cross-reference faces against a watchlist of people of interest. It is not clear what criteria are used to list people, but one of Herta’s local business partners said there were around one million subjects on the watchlist.</p> <p>The scale of the system is unlike anything available in Europe, they added: “On the busiest station, if I just implement one camera, you run 10,000 people in five minutes.” If the system returns a match, an alert is sent to an armed police force authorised to stop them, they claimed.</p> <p>In 2022, Delhi Police said it <a href="https://internetfreedom.in/delhi-polices-frt-use-is-80-accurate-and-100-scary/">treated facial-recognition matches at 80% similarity as positive </a><a href="https://internetfreedom.in/delhi-polices-frt-use-is-80-accurate-and-100-scary/">identifications</a>. With millions of travellers, even a small error rate is not insignificant. Significantly, the watchlist data is not public, nor are the criteria for inclusion, and there is no route to contest a false match.</p> <p>Herta’s presence on the Indian rail network is not confined to the Eastern Region. Under a programme run by the Railway Land Development Authority, which modernises stations nationwide, Herta’s software has reached terminals as far as Jaipur and Secunderabad, according to Herta’s local partner.</p> <p>Its software also runs facial-recognition systems across three of Delhi’s prison complexes – Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini – the local partner claimed. The government contract for the deployment is reportedly worth 352m rupees (€3.2m).</p> <p>The system is not confined to public or state infrastructure. It also runs at the Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya, where the local partner claims that the surveillance system alerts local police when individuals on a watchlist are identified. Similar deployments at two other temples are in progress, they added.</p> <p>Herta also operates in the context of safe-city programmes. In a marketing presentation obtained by Investigate Europe, the company claimed to have deployed 140 facial-recognition cameras in Ahmedabad, and lists further deployments in several other cities.</p> <p>Investigate Europe sought comments regarding the deployments by Eastern Railway, the authority implementing the Safe City Ahmedabad project, and the authorities responsible for managing Delhi’s prisons. All enquiries went unanswered.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="A rape and its consequences"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>A rape and its consequences</h2> <p>Herta’s expansion in India is apparently linked to a policy shift triggered by an infamous rape case. In December 2012 a young physiotherapy student, boarded a private bus in Delhi with a male friend after watching a film in the local cinema. Unknown to them, the bus was off-duty. Its driver and five other men had stopped to pick the two of them up under the pretence of carrying passengers.</p> <p>Over an hour, the six men beat the woman's friend, gang-raped her, and threw both of them, seriously injured, from the bus. She died of her injuries two weeks later. The case triggered widespread protests across India and forced a national debate about gender violence, public safety and the state’s failure to protect women.</p> <p>In 2013, the government <a href="https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/erelcontent.aspx?relid=95115&amp;reg=48&amp;lang=2">announced a new fund</a>. Civil society groups that campaigned in the wake of the case had asked for victim support, legal aid and shelter networks, recalled a human rights lawyer involved in the discussion at the time.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-1-1200px.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-1-1200px_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-1-1200px_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-1-1200px.jpg 1280w" alt="Source: India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development, Categorisation by Investigate Europe. Where the Nirbhaya Fund money went: Category-by-category spending under India’s Nirbhaya Fund reveals how much of the money was directed toward surveillance technology rather than direct support for cities. 2.3bn rupees/20.9m euros (4.2%) to ‘Other prevention and empowerment’. 8.2bn rupees/75.7m euros (15.1%) to ‘Courts and prosecution capacity’. 16.7bn rupees/153.1m euros (30.6%) to ‘Direct victim support’. And 27.3bn rupees/250.2m euros (50.1%) to ‘Surveillance and policing infrastructure’. " data-credit="Investigate Europe" height="315" width="560"> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>The initial commitment of 10bn rupees (€92m) was for “the empowerment, safety and security of women and girl children”. The fund came to be known by the same unofficial name the Indian press had given the young woman: Nirbhaya, meaning ‘Fearless’.</p> <p>Over the years, the Indian government allocated more money towards the fund. By March 2025 around 58bn rupees (€532m) had been disbursed. Indian government data published in February 2024 showed that roughly 50% went to surveillance and policing functions, versus 31% for direct victim support services and emergency helplines.</p> <p>Some argue these new surveillance systems have not made women significantly safer. In 2014, the year after the Nirbhaya Fund was established, 340,000 crimes against women in India were reported by <a href="https://ncrb.gov.in/">the National Crime Records Bureau</a>. By 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, that figure had risen by roughly a third to 450,000.</p> <p>Flavia Agnes, a Mumbai-based lawyer who estimates she has worked on around 100,000 cases of violence against women over a 40-year career, said the design of the response to the national outcry was wrong from the start.</p> <p>“I have not come across cases where this kind of surveillance has helped to identify the accused,” she said. Most violence against women in India does not happen in the places the cameras can see such as train stations, she explains, but in the home. “About 95% of the rape cases take place by known people.”</p> <p>Audrey D’Mello, who directs a centre providing legal aid to survivors of violence in Mumbai, has not seen evidence of the surveillance working in her field. The infrastructure built in the name of women’s safety, she said, has rarely been about women’s safety. She is more cynical about the government’s project. “They also realised that it’s easier to push in the name of women,” she added.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-2-1200px.jpg"> <img data-src="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-2-1200px_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-2-1200px_mobile.jpg 960w,https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/IE-SURVEILLANCE-HERTA-VISUAL-2-1200px.jpg 1280w" alt="Source: India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and National Crime Records Bureau. India is registering more crimes against women: The number of recorded cases has risen by more than 40% since 2013, reaching around 442,000 in 2024. The number in 2013 was 309,546. " data-credit="Investigate Europe" height="315" width="560"> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>There is no direct evidence suggesting that the use of surveillance cameras in public spaces have not increased women’s safety in the country.</p> <p>The Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development, which oversees the Nirbhaya Fund, did not respond to requests for comment.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Prohibited in the EU, deployed abroad"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Prohibited in the EU, deployed abroad</h2> <p>Four scholars who work on EU artificial intelligence and biometrics law said the deployments in the Indian Railways Eastern Region and the Safe City Ahmedabad programme would be unlawful in the EU.</p> <p>“Such a deployment in an EU member state would quite clearly violate” the EU’s AI Act, said Rita Matulionyte from Macquarie Law School in Sydney.</p> <p>Catherine Jasserand, of KU Leuven in Belgium, reached the same conclusion. “I don’t think these two cases constitute good examples of the live use of facial-recognition technology by police in public spaces,” she stated.</p> <p>“The two deployments are too broad to fall under one of the exceptions,” she said, referring to the carve-outs for searches for vulnerable people, terror threats and suspects of serious crimes.</p> <p>Even under those exceptions, EU law requires it first to pass a national statute authorising the practice, with detailed rules on supervision, reporting and judicial control. Spain, where Herta is based, has passed no such law, meaning the company could not legally run the system at home as in India.</p> <p>India’s own legal framework offers no comparable protection. India has no comprehensive data protection law in force, and what it has passed <a href="https://fpf.org/blog/the-digital-personal-data-protection-act-of-india-explained/">exempts policing and law enforcement so broadly</a> that deployments like these remain effectively unregulated.</p> <p>“India is definitely one of the leading adopters of facial recognition technology in the world without any safeguards,” said Apar Gupta, a Delhi-based digital rights lawyer and founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="EU-funded crowd control"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>EU-funded crowd control</h2> <p>Herta has received EU public money to develop the kind of technology that it sells in India. According to analysis by Investigate Europe, the company has received at least €3m in EU research funding over the past five years, with further support from Spanish national programmes. The largest single grant, worth €2.36m between 2022 and 2024, supported a Herta project called Future.</p> <p>The technology developed under the project was, according to Herta, designed to perform “crowd behaviour analysis to identify abnormal activities and potential threats in large gatherings, public events, and high-traffic areas”.</p> <p>A separate page <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240720185209/future-project.es/about-future">on the project’s website, since taken down but preserved in web archives</a>, described its facial-recognition layer as a tool for law enforcement agencies “to swiftly and accurately identify suspects and terrorists”.</p> <p>The use case described by Herta – real-time identification of suspects in crowded public spaces – is precisely the scenario the EU largely prohibited on its own soil soon after the Future project ended. However, it is a blueprint it appears to be adopting in India.</p> <p>“As with many technology companies, knowledge gained through research projects may contribute to the general evolution of our expertise, methodologies and product roadmap,” a Herta spokesperson said. “However, EU research funding is not used to finance, operate or subsidise specific commercial deployments in India or elsewhere.”</p> <p>The European Commission did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.</p> <p>Italian MEP Brando Benifei led negotiations for the European Parliament in finalising the AI Act. While the use of such facial-recognition technology is now largely banned at home, Benifei believes the law must go further and prevent exports outside the EU altogether.</p> <p>“The European Union cannot claim to be a global champion of digital rights if we allow our companies to profit abroad from tools deemed too dangerous for European citizens,” he said. “We should find arrangements to not allow the export and use abroad of systems we would not permit at home.”</p> <div align="center"> <hr align="center" noshade width="100%" size="0"> </div> <p><i>Editors: Ella Joyner, Mei-Ling McNamara.</i></p> <p><i>Additional reporting: Snigdhendu Bhattacharya and Shivnarayan Rajpurohit.</i></p> <p><i>This story was supported by the </i><a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/journalism/initiatives/ai-accountability-network"><i>Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network</i></a><i>. It is being published with media partners including Computer Weekly (UK), EUObserver (Belgium), InfoLibre (Spain), Tech Policy Press (US) and The Reporters’ Collective (India).</i></p> </section> India is rolling out facial-recognition technology to monitor millions of its citizens, with much of the software coming from a Spanish company – but critics argue the government promise of public safety is not the main aim https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/HeroImages/surveillance-CCTV-facial-recognition-AlinStock-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645826/Made-in-Spain-Surveillance-tech-banned-in-EU-booms-in-India Wed, 15 Jul 2026 01:00:00 GMT <p><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645629/Cyber-body-Crest-launches-AI-security-charter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The growth of artificial intelligence</a> (AI) as an analytical or defensive tool in the cyber professional’s arsenal appears to be having a significant impact on <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Businesses-are-paying-the-price-for-CISO-burnout" target="_blank" rel="noopener">workplace stress</a>, but the security workforce is divided on whether or not AI is elevating stress levels or lowering them.</p> <p>This is according to a study from cyber pro industry association <a href="https://www.isc2.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ISC2</a>, titled <i><a href="https://www.isc2.org/Insights/2026/07/rethinking-ai-impact-on-cybersecurity-roles" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rethinking AI’s Impact on cybersecurity roles</a></i>, which reveals the extent to which AI is reshaping the nature of security work. In particular, the study found, while AI is improving efficiency and enabling security teams to work more strategically, it is bringing new risks, increasing pressures and having a significant effect on early career pathways.</p> <p>“AI is not replacing cyber security professionals; it is changing what the profession requires of them,” said ISC2 CEO Scott Beale. “As AI takes on more repetitive tasks, as well as performing some complex cyber security analysis at speed and scale, cyber security roles are shifting toward higher-value work, from asking the right questions to validating findings, interpreting outputs and applying human judgement.</p> <p>“This evolution is not limited to entry-level roles. It changes how work is distributed across security teams, making continued investment in governance, validation practices, mentoring and skills development essential at every level,” said Beale.</p> <p>When it came to stress, a perennial occupational health hazard among cyber security workers, 48% of respondents to ISC2’s study said AI had reduced workplace stress, but 32% said it had increased it.</p> <p>The split into two distinct camps appears to reflect the nature of the work that people are being asked to do. Those who said they were experiencing more stress following the introduction of AI-enabled workflows were much more likely to spend increased time deciding when to trust AI-generated recommendations, or when reviewing or validating AI model outputs.</p> <p>ISC2 also found a strong correlation between those who were experiencing higher stress levels and concern over the impact of AI in cyber security systems. Those who were more worried about <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/feature/Human-in-the-loop-shouldnt-rubber-stamp-decisions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">how to explain or justify AI-related decisions</a>, accountability for outcomes influenced by AI, reduced human judgement at critical decision points, undetected AI issues causing cascading failures and overreliance on AI recommendations were all more stressed.</p> <p>ISC2 noted accountability concerns as particularly high impact in this regard. Many respondents reported that when AI-recommended actions lead to incorrect or outright damaging outcomes, organisations tend to hold human decision-makers accountable, and 90% of respondents said they had found themselves in a situation where an AI had given them guidance that turned out to be incorrect.</p> <p>Conversely, those cyber pros who claimed AI was decreasing their stress levels tended to be those whose roles were – perhaps ironically – becoming more hands-off as a result. Security workers who spent less time performing hands-on tasks and less time overseeing cyber systems or procedures since the introduction of AI were more likely to say they felt more at ease.</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Jobs for the grads"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Jobs for the grads</h2> <p>The ISC2 research also reignites the conversation over <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645533/Middle-East-urged-to-prioritize-prevention-as-cyber-workforce-gap-hits-300000" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the longstanding cyber skills shortage</a> and the need to do better at promoting security as a career option among young people, with evidence that AI is now changing the nature of early-career pathways in the cyber sector, and not necessarily in a positive way.</p> <p>Just under 60% of study participants said they felt that AI was reducing the need for entry-level roles, while 38% said it was significantly so, compared to just 4% who thought AI was significantly increasing the need for entry-level cyber professionals.</p> <p>Just over half of participants – 53% in all – said they thought that AI was creating new types of entry-level security roles. However, the report did not reveal what the precise nature of these new roles was, or how those performing them felt about them.</p> <p>But this said, 48% of respondents said they felt AI was making them more optimistic about their long-term prospects in the security sector, and 62% said that even though AI is changing the nature of the role, the need for foundational cyber security skills is still as pressing as ever.</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about security careers</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li>Tech leaders may be building up problems for the future by not sufficiently <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Are-tech-leaders-risking-a-cyber-resourcing-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rewarding their security team</a>.</li> <li>Three-quarters of women working in security say they feel comfortable in the field, but women are still much more likely to be laid off and face persistent <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366640014/Cyber-industry-welcomes-women-but-challenges-persist" target="_blank" rel="noopener">challenges around career advancement.</a></li> <li>If employers fail to nip the problem of their CISO’s chronic, unmanaged stress in the bud, there could be serious consequences, not just for cyber security leaders themselves <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/CISO-burnout-How-to-prevent-contagion-across-the-team" target="_blank" rel="noopener">but for their teams too.</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </section> AI is affecting the day-to-day careers of cyber security pros in regard to stress levels, but respondents to an ISC2 data-gathering exercise are split over whether or not their stress levels are going up or down https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/HeroImages/woman-career-choice-future-success-Oleksiy-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645892/AI-impacting-stress-levels-among-cyber-professionals Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:40:00 GMT <p>Dear Andy Burnham,</p> <p>I read recently in the <i><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5f2fce3c-7ae7-48e6-9d95-5ad7f49328df?syn-25a6b1a6=1">Financial Times</a></i>, that your team is looking at revamping the UK’s artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, as you prepare to become our new Prime Minister.</p> <p>This is an area of great importance – and I know from personal experience the strong interest you take in digital issues. I remember with great gratitude during my years in Manchester your stalwart support of The Federation, our ethical co-working space for technology startups and established tech firms who committed to working with shared co-operative values. Indeed, you launched the building itself and your own digital strategy for Manchester in The Federation some months later.</p> <p>You were there when one of our Federation companies, the wonderful <a href="https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/northcoders-opens-london-stock-exchange/">Northcoders, won the British Chambers of Commerce Business of the Year in 2019</a> and celebrated its success by ringing the opening bell in the London Stock Exchange.</p> <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Andy-Burnham-Credit-Emer-Coleman.png"> <img data-src="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Andy-Burnham-Credit-Emer-Coleman_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Andy-Burnham-Credit-Emer-Coleman_mobile.png 960w,https://www.computerweekly.com/rms/computerweekly/Andy-Burnham-Credit-Emer-Coleman.png 1280w" alt="Andy Burnham at a lectern at the London Stock Exchange during a British Chambers of Commerce event in 2019" data-credit="Emer Coleman" height="385" width="560"> <figcaption> <i class="icon pictures" data-icon="z"></i>Then mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham at the London Stock Exchange during a British Chambers of Commerce event in 2019 </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> <i class="icon" data-icon="w"></i> </div> </figure> <p>Your support endorsed what we were all trying to do in Manchester to demonstrate a better way forward for technology and a more ethical lens by which to observe how technology could be used to better society - not to look only at the bottom line and growth that benefited a small few, but rather how might a social-enterprise approach benefit Greater Manchester as a whole.&nbsp;</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Mainlining AI"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Mainlining AI</h2> <p>So you’ll be aware of course, of the UK government AI strategy - the one your predecessor <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Computer-Weekly-Editors-Blog/The-UK-governments-AI-plan-covers-all-the-bases-but-needs-a-dose-of-pragmatism?_gl=1*1k3fjo0*_ga*MTQyNTQ1NjY0NS4xNzQxMzYzOTc3*_ga_TQKE4GS5P9*czE3ODM5NTg1NDMkbzE2MTgkZzEkdDE3ODM5NTg5MDYkajI4JGwwJGgw">Keir Starmer suggested “mainlines AI into the veins of this enterprising nation”</a>.</p> <p>Why was he suggesting the UK needed that? According to the strategy, because “for too long we have allowed blockers to control the public discourse and get in the way of growth in this sector”.</p> <p>For “growth in this sector,” read Big Tech and their voracious demands for domination. The publication of the strategy followed what had been a frenzy of meetings between Starmer’s government and the tech industry.</p> <p>According to <i>The Guardian</i>, tech companies’ access to UK ministers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/17/tech-companies-access-to-uk-ministers-dwarfs-that-of-child-safety-groups">dwarfed that of child safety groups</a>, reporting that, “Google, the $4tn California company, had the greatest access, with more than 100 ministerial meetings, according to an analysis of meeting records for the two years to October 2025, which campaigners said showed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/17/from-nvidia-to-openai-silicon-valley-woos-westminster-as-ex-politicians-take-tech-firm-roles">the tech industry’s ‘capture’ of government</a>. The industry lobbying group TechUK met ministers at the rate of more than once every eight working days.”</p> <p>As per the FT, your team noted that the current government’s courting of US tech companies had been a “geopolitical failure that hasn’t delivered on its intended aims [and has] also put the Labour government at odds with its voters and the vast majority of the British public.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Citizens push back"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Citizens push back</h2> <p>This strongly accords with research on independent regulation from the <a href="https://www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/press-release/nearly-9-in-10-people-in-the-uk-support-independent-regulation-of-ai/">Ada Lovelace Institute</a> which suggests the real level of pushback by UK citizens against unregulated AI. Key findings of the institute’s research show:</p> <ul class="default-list"> <li>The public supports independent regulation. The UK public do not trust private companies to self-regulate. There is strong public support (89%) for an independent regulator for AI, equipped with enforcement powers.</li> <li>The public prioritises fairness, positive social impacts and safety. AI is firmly embedded in public consciousness and 91% of the public feel it is important that AI systems are developed and used in ways that treat people fairly. They want this to be prioritised over economic gains, speed of innovation and international competition when presented with trade-offs.</li> <li>The public feel disenfranchised and excluded from AI decision-making, and mistrust key institutions. Many people feel excluded from government decision-making - 84% fear that, when regulating AI, the government will prioritise its partnerships with large technology companies over the public interest.</li> <li>The public expects ongoing monitoring and clear lines of accountability. People support mechanisms such as independent standards, transparency reporting and top-down accountability to ensure effective monitoring of AI systems, both before and after they are deployed.</li> </ul> <p>So, Andy, it appears that on taking office as Prime Minister, you may be much more closely aligned on the AI issue with where citizens actually are than where Keir Starmer - and Big Tech - wanted them to be.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="More radical"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>More radical</h2> <p>However, one sentence in the FT article made me question whether the steps you and your team are proposing will be radical enough, as it suggests your strategy is based on “making tech work for people,” including ensuring that workers at risk of losing their jobs to AI have access to training so they can reskill.</p> <p>The inclusion of reskilling for job losses as a result of AI adoption assumes that AI is actually going to generate the kinds of job losses that all of the AI companies have spent the last few years trying to convince us was urgent, imminent and inevitable.</p> <p>Yet after scaring everyone senseless about the AI job apocalypse to push CEOs into AI adoption to procure all that efficiency, <a href="https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/sam-altman-dario-amodei-walking-back-ai-jobs-apocalypse-prophecies-ipo/">they have now suddenly changed their tune</a> – perhaps eyeing their upcoming stock market flotations. According to the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, public opinion of AI <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-workers-tech-ceos-job-losses-afc71e15">has shifted into negative and Big Tech has suddenly flipped on the AI Jobs wipeout scenario. </a></p> <p>It takes courage to go against the status quo but if anyone has demonstrated the courage to do just that, I would like to think it’s you. In the second of your recent <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-burnham-606179371/recent-activity/all/">Linkedin posts</a> you say: “I want to do things differently, to put power back in the hands of local communities and build an economy that works for everybody.” You could do no better than to reset the government's relationship with Big Tech.</p> <p>That starts by no longer passively accepting that AI is inevitable, but by pulling back and in the first instance shutting the door to Big Tech while concentrating efforts on unpicking the hype. You need a laser-like focus on what is real and what is snake oil, what AI can and can’t do and what the potential impact will be for the global and UK economy when this current AI bubble bursts.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Ways forward"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Ways forward</h2> <p>As a former senior civil servant in the Government Digital Service, I am more than aware of the pull on the attention, the noise, the urgency, the competing demands that greet any new Prime Minister and their team. To make things a bit easier, here are some possible ways forward and resources that might assist you with the necessary research to reality check where we really are, to inform future strategy.</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> I wish you well in your endeavours and hope you will be brave, bold and loaded with the sort of moral compass that is tragically missing in all things Big Tech </figure> <figcaption> <strong>Emer Coleman</strong> </figcaption> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>Get a 360-degree perspective - not just the views of Big Tech. As far back as 2019, computer scientist and ethicist Timnit Gebru co-authored a paper entitled: <i><a href="https://s10251.pcdn.co/pdf/2021-bender-parrots.pdf">On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big?</a></i> Her research then holds true today in identifying “a wide variety of costs and risks associated with the rush for ever larger language models (LMs), including: environmental costs, borne typically by those not benefiting from the resulting technology; financial costs, which in turn erect barriers to entry, limiting who can contribute to this research area and which languages can benefit from the most advanced techniques; opportunity cost, as researchers pour effort away from directions requiring less resources; and the risk of substantial harms, including stereotyping, denigration, increases in extremist ideology, and wrongful arrest, should humans encounter seemingly coherent LM output and take it for the words of some person or organisation who has accountability for what is said.”</p> <p>For the best economic and social analysis, subscribe to Ed Zitron's brilliantly incisive and excoriating calling-out of the whole AI Ponzi scheme in his newsletter, <i><a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/">Where's your Ed at</a></i>. Zitron, regarded as a doomer and naysayer only a few years ago, is gaining increasing traction as an authority across mainstream media channels in the US – for example, as a commentator on the AI industry appearing on a recent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmPccUTDP8">CNBC show</a>; and on Scott Galloway's podcast <i>Prof G</i> giving his insight on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okIHWPwRkms">future of the AI industry</a>.</p> <p>Follow also the work of Dr Joy Buolamwini, founder of the <a href="https://www.ajl.org/about">Algorithmic Justice League</a>, an organisation that combines art and research to illuminate the social implications and harms of AI. Buolamwini was one of the first technologists to identify racial bias in software. You can hear her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkS_4wPEbMw">talking here</a> or even better read her book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unmasking-AI-Mission-Protect-Machines-ebook/dp/B0C3YK7NSN?ref_=ast_author_mpb">Unmasking AI: My mission to protect what is human in a world of machines</a></i>.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Datacentre roll-outs"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Datacentre roll-outs</h2> <p>Look at how local communities are dealing with the environmental harms of unchecked datacentre roll-outs and how they are <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-great-datacentre-backlash-The-campaigners">organising to push back</a>. Learn how this is becoming a recurring doorstep issue for US politicians in the lead up to the US mid-term elections.</p> <p>As reported recently by <i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/03/datacenter-recall-elections">The Guardian</a></i>, “In just May and June, voters in states including <a href="https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/06/23/coachella-data-center-recall-drive/90667984007/?gnt-cfr=1&amp;gca-cat=p&amp;gca-uir=false&amp;gca-epti=z11xx04p116050l004450c116050e004400v11xx04&amp;gca-ft=48&amp;gca-ds=sophi">California</a>, <a href="https://www.fox13news.com/news/grassroots-group-launches-fort-meade-recall-petition-targeting-3-city-officials-over-ai-data-center-project">Florida</a>, <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2026/06/recall-effort-uncertain-after-role-switch-in-township-grappling-with-openai-oracle-data-center.html">Michigan</a>, <a href="https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-05-20/recall-petitions-filed-festus-mayor-three-council-members-data-center-votes">Missouri</a>, <a href="https://www.news9.com/recall-effort-targets-yukon-mayor-vice-mayor-amid-data-center-controversy">Oklahoma</a>, <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/18/hillsboro-mayor-absence-looms-large-heated-data-center-discussions/">Oregon</a> and <a href="https://ktxs.com/news/local/san-angelo-data-center-opponents-wrap-signature-drive-to-recall-mayor">Texas</a> launched efforts to recall elected officials over their handling of datacentre proposals.” States are also achieving moratoriums on further datacentre development, which shows that community pushback can and is being successful.</p> <p>Link in with the great work being done by <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Tech-bros-beware-Erin-Brockovich-is-coming-for-you">Erin Brockovich, who is leading the charge for transparency around datacentre builds in the US</a>. Her site is growing all the time and includes photographs submitted by citizens of the real-world impact on their lives, such as water and electricity supplies - the <a href="https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/#news">dirty water pictures </a>alone should give anyone pause for thought.</p> <p>Most importantly, learn about the culture, values and use of language by the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Im-from-the-technocracy-and-Im-here-to-help-how-tech-bros-are-taking-over-the-world">broligarchy</a> and be forensic in interpreting what they are really saying.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Pause for thought"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Pause for thought</h2> <p>Already this month, two announcements should give you serious pause for thought about the implications for the AI industry and where the truth lies.</p> <p>In the first instance, Meta has announced it is moving into the cloud space. Why does this matter? In 2026, <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/meta-platforms-spend-135-billion-215500767.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMRChhQLf-Q6G3InYAJj7tKf5yP-u5CthYXSJ6mRtaO4IFPPZn0uvViJwSdv2SM8w_VqnX67GXW7KCIcNP0T-b4rf6Rf3McByp7Oz-nuZNX-gb81S1nS6LWyjZ6QW8dDmk7mOyNBqqNXzbC-dCANGsy0pDifdQ45TsIlwIBdH8w7">Meta platforms were expected to spend $135bn</a> on AI, to build out infrastructure and develop front-end products and services. It doesn't look like the front-end products and services are being developed at all and now we learn they will instead become a cloud service, renting out its - already spare - compute capacity to other companies. If there is spare compute capacity at this stage of the game, that should be a big red flag about the over-promises and under-delivery of this sector.</p> <p>An even bigger red flag is the recently floated notion by OpenAI that the US government should take a 5% equity stake in the firm to create a wealth fund for the benefit of US citizens. Please read this as a government bailout, offered on the basis that OpenAI is too big to fail.</p> <p>To believe this is to fall hook, line and sinker for a failed narrative. Look no further than the comprehensive <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34836/w34836.pdf">survey </a>by the US National Bureau of Economic Research. Over 6,000 executives across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia were asked how they use AI and its overall impact on the business. Over the last three years, nearly nine in 10 firms said their use of AI had no impact on employment or productivity.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Chilling insights"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Chilling insights</h2> <p>Don’t take at face value what the leaders of these Big Tech companies tell you. Read Sarah Wynn Williams’ book <i><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Im-from-the-technocracy-and-Im-here-to-help-how-tech-bros-are-taking-over-the-world">Careless people</a></i> for a chilling insight into how bosses like Mark Zuckerberg really view politicians and world leaders and how the real push is - as Zuckerberg put it himself - for “companies not countries”.</p> <p>Understand their desire to destroy our concept of nation states and ultimately our democracies. Know that he means it when Peter Thiel says “freedom and democracy” are not compatible and watch him build out his “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(proposed_city)">network state</a>” concepts in places like Argentina, where he has now relocated, and <a href="https://www.prospera.co/en">Prospero </a>in Honduras where they can build cities run not by mayors but by all powerful tech CEOs. And if anyone should understand the importance and democratic importance of a mayor over a CEO, it's you Andy.</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="If it quacks like a duck…"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>If it quacks like a duck…</h2> <p>And finally watch closely all the time what these broligarchs are actually doing rather than what comes out of their mouths. And know that if they offer you a contract for a dollar remember what they say about ducks - if it looks, walks and quacks like one - it's a duck.</p> <p>That’s how a one-dollar contract with Palantir led to a contract worth £330m for work with the NHS over seven years. And always, always ask who benefits here - our nation or US tech overlords?</p> <p>I wish you well in your endeavours and hope you will be brave, bold and loaded with the sort of moral compass that is tragically missing in all things Big Tech.</p> <p>Yours sincerely,</p> <p>Emer Coleman</p> </section> Can our new Prime Minister bring a new approach to AI that treats the voracious Big Tech companies with less deference? https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/HeroImages/London-Westminster-Parliament-government-10-Downing-St-pcruciatti-ED-ONLY-adobe.jpg https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Dear-Andy-Burnham-a-word-about-the-government-AI-strategy Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:15:00 GMT 60 editor@computerweekly.com