#cybersecurity

#cybersecurity

Bryan Onel's father was a locksmith. As for Onel, he described himself as the digital equivalent. Ethical hacking was Onel's hobby growing up. He studied AI at university and then turned that hacking hobby into a profession. "I spent a decade performing penetration tests for over 150 companies across all sectors," Onel tells TechCrunch, adding that he kept easily breaking into companies that had passed their security checks.

A potential shutdown could stall modernization efforts if lawmakers and the White House aren't able to reach a deal to avert a funding lapse by Tuesday at midnight, former tech leaders and experts have told Nextgov/FCW. Even planning for a potential shutdown takes time and attention away from normal work in government technology shops, they say. "You have to divert what you were doing on the day-to-day to shut down," one former federal agency CIO, not authorized to speak on the record, told Nextgov/FCW. "Shutdown planning consumes all of your time. It does take a lot to shut the government down."

With no clear government agency acting as 'first responder' following a cyberattack, the country's cyber defenses are struggling to keep pace with its digital ambitions. "The government's approach to cybersecurity remains largely reactive, treating it as a crisis management issue rather than as critical national infrastructure," Brian Pak, the chief executive of Seoul-based cybersecurity firm Theori, told TechCrunch.

Curran's argument is that as we become more and more connected, we increase our collective vulnerability to mass-scale breakdowns and manipulation. While he certainly isn't the first to point out that our increasingly digital lives come at a cost, the scholar warn s that it will take a "systemic digital crisis" before anything changes. As Curran puts it: "there are good reasons to believe that little will be done about these risks until a massive society-wide crisis emerges."

The UK is one of the world's worst performers when it comes to protecting against bots - though most countries are pretty poor. That's according to DataDome, which states that only 1.8% of large UK domains are fully protected against bots, compared with a Europe-wide average of 2.5% and a global average of 2.8%. Bigger organizations are no better than smaller ones, with only 2% of domains with more than 30 million monthly visits fully protected.

"Many of us in cyber, we put our hearts into our job. There's a lot of passion involved." He had found it progressively harder to sleep, and to go into the office. Tony, who did not want his real name used, recalls the Wannacry ransomware attack in 2017. "It was a Friday and something came up on BBC News." The security team got on a call that evening and the decision was taken to remove every single device from the network.

A "widespread cybersecurity incident" at the Federal Emergency Management Agency allowed hackers to make off with employee data from both the disaster management office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to a screenshot of an incident overview presentation obtained by Nextgov/FCW. The hack is also suspected to have later triggered the dismissal of two dozen Federal Emergency Management Agency technology employees announced late last month, according to internal meeting notes and a person familiar with the matter.

Monsegur is well known as the reformed blackhat hacker called Sabu, who originally helped develop, and was the de facto leader of, the hacker group LulzSec - before becoming an informant and helping the FBI dismantle it. LulzSec famously targeted major organizations including Sony, the FBI affiliate InfraGard, and various government websites. The FBI operation resulted in several arrests in both the US and UK.

Two teenage boys were arrested in the Netherlands over suspicions of spying for pro-Russian hackers, Dutch authorities announced. The two 17-year-old boys were allegedly approached by the hackers on Telegram, a messaging application popular among cybercriminals and state-sponsored threat actors. According to local media, one of the boys was allegedly seen walking by Europol and Eurojust headquarters, and the Canadian embassy, while carrying a Wi-Fi sniffer, which is used to map Wi-Fi networks and intercept data.

Harrods has confirmed that hackers have stolen personal data from its online customers in a fresh IT security breach. The luxury department store said details such as names and contact information were accessed via a third-party provider. Harrods insisted that no payment details or passwords were compromised and described the incident as "isolated" and "contained". In an email sent to shoppers on Friday evening, the retailer reassured customers that its own systems had not been directly hacked, and that the issue was unrelated to a previous attempted cyber attack in May.

Fortinet (FTNT) stock achieved its fifth consecutive day of gains, resulting in a total increase of 6.9% during this timeframe. Over the past 5 days, the company has seen an increase in value of approximately $4.5 Bil, with its current market cap reaching about $65 Bil. The stock is still 9.7% lower than its value at the close of 2024. By comparison, year-to-date returns for the S&P 500 stand at 13.2%.

Having a good AI discovery process is the foundation of a versatile AI cyber security program. Use existing tools like web proxies and log management systems to discover what employees and app developers are already doing with AI,

AI agents - autonomous, task-specific systems designed to perform functions with little or no human intervention - are gaining traction in the healthcare world. The industry is under massive pressure to lower costs without compromising care quality, and health tech experts believe agentic AI could be a scalable solution that can help with this arduous goal. However, this AI category comes with greater risk than that of its AI predecessors, according to one cybersecurity and data privacy attorney.

Simpson joined The Electoral Commission - the UK's election oversight and political finance regulator - in June 2022 as head of digital, information, technology and facilities, to lead a wide-ranging digital transformation project which, alongside transitioning from on-prem to cloud, brought a plethora of cyber upgrades. But unknown to Simpson or anybody else, threat actors - possibly Chinese state cyber spooks, or a ransomware gang, or both - were already lurking within the Electoral Commission's systems.

Catena Clearing - $5M Seed Catena Clearing, an API-based data infrastructure platform for the freight and logistics industry, has raised $5M in Seed funding led by Floating Point. Founded by Jeremy Baksht, Mike Goynes, and Travis May in 2024, Catena Clearing has now raised a total of $8M in reported equity funding.

Over the weekend it was widely reported in French media that a group of hackers had breached the government's ANTS website, stealing personal data from between 12 and 13 million people. The unidentified group posted messages online claiming that the personal data was now for sale on the dark web, offering sample data to apparently prove that their hack had been successful.

Dependence on American cloud services entails significant risks. Minister Paul of Social Affairs warns of the consequences of a sudden denial of access. "An abrupt denial would affect essential support processes such as email, collaboration via Teams, document exchange, and security monitoring." In such a scenario, the Social Insurance Bank would face disrupted services and an affected communication structure. This vulnerability highlights the profound integration of American technology with government processes.

In today's competitive business landscape, technology is no longer a support function; it is central to driving growth and strengthening customer engagement. Companies across industries are increasingly adopting digital tools to streamline operations, better understand their audiences, and create personalised experiences. From artificial intelligence and data analytics to blockchain, marketing automation, and cybersecurity, businesses are leveraging innovative solutions to expand and deepen connections with clients.

Fundamentally, AI agents - also known as agentic AI models - are generative AI (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs) used to automate tasks and workflows. For example, need to book a room for a meeting at a particular office at a specific time for a certain number of people? Simply ask the agent to do so and it will act, plan and execute on your behalf, identifying a suitable room and time, then sending the calendar invite out to your colleagues on your behalf.