DeepSeek -- the Chinese AI that sparked a stock market panic
Today has seen millions of dollars wiped off US market tech stocks by the launch of DeepSeek, the latest Chinese AI that threatens US dominance in the sector.
This is partly because DeepSeek can run on much less powerful hardware than rivals such as OpenAI's o1. DeepSeek also says that its v3 model, released in December, cost less than $6 million to train, less than a tenth of what Meta spent on its most recent system.
Critical infrastructure security incidents up over 600 percent since 2022
Reported security incidents in critical infrastructure worldwide have grown by 668 percent since 2022 according to a new report from Forescout.
There have been 10 percent more incidents for critical infrastructure sectors than in 2023 and more than half of all incidents (57 percent) affected critical infrastructure sectors. Network infrastructure devices (routers, firewalls, VPNs, etc.) are the second largest category and increased from three percent (2022) to 11 percent (2023) and now 14 percent (2024).
Software-as-a-Service breaches surge 300 percent
A new report from Obsidian Security reveals an unprecedented 300 percent year-on-year increase in SaaS breaches between September 2023 and 2024.
This surge comes as organizations increasingly rely on SaaS applications with current spend on SaaS in the hundreds of billions, or approximately $8,700 per employee for tools such as Workday, Google Workspace, ServiceNow, and Office 365.
High-profile cyberattacks prompt boost in crisis simulation budgets
Following a number of high-profile cybersecurity incidents in 2014 CISOs are reassessing their organization's readiness to manage a potential chaos of a full-scale cyber crisis.
New data from Hack The Box shows many CISOs -- based on a sample of 200 across the UK and US -- are concerned about their organization's ability to handle a cyber crisis. This is down to a number of reasons, the rising volume of cyber incidents (31 percent), lack of incident response planning (20 percent), and a lack of realistic, stress-tested crisis simulations (19 percent).
The human-centric approach to moving to the cloud [Q&A]
Over the past decade, cloud computing has emerged as a transformative force, promising unprecedented efficiency and scalability.
However, despite the rush for businesses to adopt this technology, many cloud projects still fail to meet their stated objectives
80 percent of organizations are adopting passkeys but many face challenges with older systems
A new report finds that 80 percent of organizations are using or planning to adopt passkeys, as they offer a significant reduction in risks like phishing and credential stuffing, compared to traditional passwords.
However, the study from Keeper Security also finds that 40 percent of businesses continue to rely on hybrid authentication systems that blend both passwords and passkeys. These hybrid setups are often needed due to the use of legacy systems and specialized applications that have yet to support passkeys.
The rising tide of ransomware and what it means for small and medium-sized businesses [Q&A]
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are facing an escalating onslaught of cyberattacks as they evolve in both sophistication and speed. Among the most insidious threats are ransomware variants like QakBot and Black Basta, which operate in the shadows, often slipping past the radar of law enforcement and the media.
The consequences of these attacks can be devastating, leaving SMBs exposed and unprepared, with the potential to disrupt operations, damage reputations, and incur significant financial losses.
CISOs get more time in the boardroom but struggle with budgets
A new report from Splunk shows 82 percent of CISOs now report directly to the CEO, up from 47 percent in 2023, and 83 percent participate in board meetings somewhat often or most of the time.
However, only 29 percent of CISOs say they receive the proper budget for cybersecurity initiatives and accomplishing their security goals, compared to 41 percent of board members who think their cybersecurity budgets are adequate.
New AI assistant aims to streamline cross-platform UI development
Repetitive UI development tasks often don't involve coding and in order to free up developer time from these, Qt Group is launching Qt AI Assistant, an experimental tool for streamlining cross-platform user interface (UI) development.
It gives advice on building application UIs with Qt Framework and automates manual tasks like writing unit test cases, code documentation, and repetitive code. Users request this advice with a prompt window and quick-access commands inside the code editor of Qt Creator (used for creating and modifying cross-platform apps).
Continuous controls monitoring 'transformative' for security
According to a new report from RegScale and The CISO Society, 94.2 percent of CISOs believe continuous controls monitoring (CCM) has the potential to significantly enhance both compliance and security outcomes.
As organizations struggle with manual workflows, data silos, and limited integrations, CCM provides an effective way to improve visibility, automate processes, and better align security and compliance efforts.
Mobile intelligence APIs open up visibility into enterprise mobile security data
Mobile and cloud security company Lookout is launching new Mobile Intelligence APIs integrating critical security data from mobile devices into the solutions already in use by enterprise security teams -- those like SIEM, SOAR, and XDR.
This is aimed at allowing security teams to identify cross-platform attacks, risky trends or abnormalities, and potential risks.
Increasing business process complexity could lead to chaos
A new report shows 82 percent of organizations fear 'digital chaos' due to increasingly complex, interconnected, and automated processes. According to the report, a lack of control has increased compliance risks for 82 percent of organizations, while 77 percent report higher risks of core business processes failing.
The study from Camunda highlights that organizations now manage an average of 50 endpoints to execute tasks that are part of a process in their business. This is an increase of 19 percent over the past five years, and is contributing to growing business risk.
Why strong data foundations are essential to implementing AI [Q&A]
Lots of organizations are rushing to embrace AI and hoping to deliver business value. But AI is only as good as the data that underpins it.
We spoke to Julian LaNeve, chief technology officer of Astronomer, to discuss why it's important to fix the foundations before implementing AI solutions.
Scam eCommerce sites became a major threat in 2024
A new report from Recorded Future's Inskit Group looks at the emerging and evolving key fraud threats in the payments industry.
It identifies nearly 1,200 scam website domains linked to networks of scam merchant accounts. Most of the scam merchant accounts discovered were registered in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, and scam tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) grew more subtle and sophisticated throughout the year.
UK government set to make all your licenses and other official documents available via a digital wallet
Hot on the heels of its plans to turbocharge AI usage, the UK government has today announced that it wants to introduce a new GOV.UK Wallet, a digital wallet that will hold official documents.
Starting with Veteran Cards and Driving Licenses this year, it will expand to take in things like Blue Badges for disabled drivers, Personal Independence Payment (PIP) letters, Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks and every other credential issued by the government.
Ian's Bio
Ian spent almost 20 years working with computers before he discovered that writing about them was easier than fixing them. Since then he's written for a number of computer magazines and is a former editor of PC Utilities. Follow him on Mastodon
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