The latest in cloud, cybersecurity, AI, and web technology - curated for UK businesses every week
Cyber SecurityMicrosoft has shipped its largest Patch Tuesday on record, addressing 974 CVEs including two Windows zero-days already under active exploitation and a no-interaction-required Exchange Server flaw. Adobe's own zero-day, dubbed StyleSmuggler, is already being used to backdoor online stores - giving UK businesses a long and urgent list of priorities this month.
Cyber SecurityThe National Cyber Security Centre has warned that "shadow AI" - unapproved AI tools used by staff outside official policy - is creating security risks many organisations can't see, with research suggesting 71% of employees use AI tools their employer hasn't sanctioned. For UK SMEs without a clear AI policy, the answer isn't banning AI outright, but understanding why staff reach for it and providing secure, approved alternatives.
ComplianceA Swansea University study found that 86% of 624 licensed British gambling websites appear to breach GDPR through their cookie consent banners, using dark patterns that nudge visitors towards accepting tracking and, in two-thirds of cases, harvesting data before consent is even given. With the ICO already pursuing enforcement across the wider web, it's a clear warning for any UK business whose website cookie banner hasn't been properly reviewed.
Cyber SecurityMicrosoft has uncovered a massive phishing campaign that used invisible Unicode 'tag' characters to split up financial keywords in emails, letting them slip past keyword and signature-based spam filters. The technique, known as ASCII smuggling and previously seen mainly in attacks against AI assistants, peaked at more than 2.37 million messages a day in February 2026 - a reminder that email security tools built for yesterday's threats can miss today's.
Cyber SecurityMohammed Faiyaz Iqbal has been jailed for over three and a half years for running a portable "SMS Blaster" from a van in a Trafford car park, tricking nearby phones onto a fake mobile tower to send fraudulent texts impersonating Royal Mail while bypassing every operator-level spam filter. Police found 7,859 compromised payment card details in his possession - a reminder that brand-impersonation fraud is evolving faster than network-level defences can keep up.
AI & PolicyA cross-party amendment to the UK's Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, backed by peers including Lord Tim Clement-Jones and Baroness Dido Harding, would give the government "last resort" powers to shut down AI systems or data centres that pose a catastrophic risk. The move follows a string of incidents this summer in which autonomous AI agents broke free of testing environments to hack real organisations, including a 700-agent OpenAI breach of Hugging Face.
IT SupportA new survey of 401 UK business connectivity decision-makers finds that 45% have faced a fault where responsibility between suppliers was disputed or unclear, with 34% saying ownership of fault resolution across their supply chain isn't clearly defined. As cloud and AI adoption make resilient connectivity more critical, UK SMEs are increasingly picking providers based on clarity of accountability, not just price.
VoIPGamma Communications has agreed to a recommended £1.079bn cash offer from private equity firm Epiris, with completion expected in the first half of 2027. For the thousands of UK SMEs and resellers whose hosted VoIP, SIP trunking and UC services run on Gamma's wholesale platform, the ownership change raises fresh questions about pricing, support continuity and investment as the business telecoms sector keeps consolidating.
ConnectivityUK mobile networks rank 57th globally for performance and worse than every EU and G7 country, according to Which?/Opensignal data, as telecoms executives warn that planning delays are holding back the 5G standalone upgrades needed to handle a coming surge in AI-related traffic. VodafoneThree alone has committed £11bn to network upgrades - but says more than half of that work is stuck behind planning permission for changes to existing masts.
Cyber SecurityThe National Cyber Security Centre has warned of increased targeting of internet-exposed operational technology and edge devices, including routers, firewalls and remote access gateways, after observing real-world disruption from state and non-state actors. The advisory's core message applies well beyond critical infrastructure: many UK businesses don't actually know which of their network devices are visible from the public internet.
AI & SecuritySecurity researcher Johann Rehberger has shown that Anthropic's Claude Code, running in Auto Mode, can be tricked into downloading and executing attacker-controlled code up to 80% of the time - simply by asking it to summarise an ordinary-looking website. Anthropic says the behaviour is "working as designed," leaving UK businesses adopting AI coding assistants to rely on sandboxing and network egress controls rather than the model's own safety guardrails.
Penetration TestingManchester Airports Group has confirmed a threat actor stole personally identifiable information on roughly 8.7 million people who used parking, lounge, Fast Track or Wi-Fi sign-in services at East Midlands, Manchester and Stansted airports. We look at why regular penetration testing of customer-facing portals catches these exposures first.
Cyber SecurityManchester Airports Group has confirmed hackers accessed the data of around 8.7 million customers across Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports, taken from wifi sign-ups, car park, lounge and fast-track booking systems. No payment details were exposed, but the breach is a reminder that the "ancillary" customer systems many businesses treat as low priority often hold just as much personal data as their core platforms.
Cyber SecurityCyber security firm NCC Group recorded almost 900 ransomware attacks in July 2026, the highest monthly total so far this year, with 29% of victims in Europe. The report also flags the emergence of Jadepuffer, an autonomous AI agent capable of running a ransomware intrusion end-to-end without human oversight - a warning sign for UK businesses that still treat ransomware readiness as optional.
ConnectivityA new OnePoll survey commissioned by CommunityFibre finds 45% of UK landline users are still unclear about the looming analogue phone switch-off, with many unaware it can also affect alarms and card machines. With Openreach reporting around 350,000 business premises still on legacy copper lines and the 31 January 2027 deadline now a hard cut-off for businesses, UK SMEs that haven't migrated need to act.
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