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UK to face AI-powered cyber attacks within two years, warns NCSC The UK will face AI-powered attacks from nation-states and criminal groups targeting critical national infrastructure within two years. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) by hostile states and crime groups will increase the scale and speed of ransomware attacks, social engineering and the exploitation of vulnerabilities, according to an assessment published today. Russia and China will routinely use AI-powered cyber tools to achieve their geopolitical goals, according to an assessment by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ. The NCSC also predicts that between now and 2028, AI-powered malware will have been used in a ransomware attack on critical national infrastructure in the UK. In a worst-case scenario, the UK could face automated attacks from frontier AI capable of self-replicating and conducting cyber attacks at will. The UK is at a point of "enormous consequence" and faces "a moment of choice" over how to respond to AI-powered threats, the NCSC's CEO Richard Horne is expected to say in a speech today. Moment of choice "When food isn't on shelves, lights aren't on, businesses have gone under ... we may have to explain that we saw the warning signs, understood the risks, and still didn't make the right choices," he will warn. Organisations will need to make "significant" changes to protect critical systems and will no longer be able to rely on "technology on the cheap". That includes securing the technology that controls physical infrastructure, including electricity switches, dams, manufacturing lines, and heating and refrigeration controls, where investment in security and resilience has been less of a priority. Cyber attacks on hundreds of refrigerators in French supermarkets, which destroyed millions of euros of food last month, show that exposure of countries to cyber risks is "huge". Military networks targeted Military networks are subject to sustained, persistent attempts to penetrate communications by countries such as Russia, which is exploiting tactics developed in Ukraine against states and institutions. Hybrid warfare campaigns are "escalating", while intentionally falling below the threshold of armed conflict, according to the NCSC. Despite the pressures of the Middle East conflict, Iran is still carrying out malicious cyber operations targeting the UK and individuals seen as a threat to the regime. China is the best positioned to use AI for operations against UK critical national infrastructure and other strategic targets. It represents the most "sophisticated and sustained" cyber challenge faced by the UK, according to the NCSC. Unprecedented rise in cyber attacks "In the coming months, we face a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents," Horne is expected to say.   Organisations will need to make "different choices" with their technology. That means addressing past failures to adequately invest in security, not having technology unnecessarily connected to the internet, and building greater resilience. "We can be a nation where leaders of all organisations actively choose to invest with urgency ... and where all organisations make security and resilience a fundamental requirement, not an afterthought," he will say. Failing to make these choices will mean business leaders having to "look their investors, shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers in the eye and explain ... when food isn't on shelves, lights aren't on, businesses have gone under". The AI security divide AI has the potential to be one of the greatest opportunities in cyber defence, allowing technology companies to fix hundreds of vulnerabilities in a single update, the NCSC claims. Organisations with mature cyber security programmes, robust governance and sufficient resources will be able to detect threats, prioritise vulnerabilities and automate their defences, according to the NCSC's State of the cyber nation report. Weaker organisations are likely to struggle to keep pace with AI-assisted attacks, creating a widening gap between resilient and vulnerable organisations. Cost of cyber attacks to UK The NCSC estimates that malicious cyber activity costs UK organisations an estimated £14.7bn every year. The attack on Jaguar Land Rover had a direct impact on GDP, contributing to lower growth in the UK economy than expected. The centre received 1,830 reports of cyber attacks during the past year, of which 80 were classed as nationally significant. The bulk of state-backed attacks seen by the NCSC to date do not use advanced, autonomous AI, but exploit common vulnerabilities and exposures that are known to work, but that could change rapidly. Cyber Shield The NCSC's warning comes as the government is investing in the UK's defence and resilience capabilities, including the development of a national Cyber Shield that will use agentic AI to build a national-scale cyber defence capability. A National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability (NERV) Centre will use AI to identify security vulnerabilities across critical national infrastructure and the economy. Read more about cyber risks NCSC and pals call out company that backed Chinese state hackers. NCSC warns high-risk individuals of Signal and WhatsApp social engineering attacks. Hostile states launched nearly 200 attacks on UK infrastructure in 12 months, says NCSC chief.

Cold chain cyber attacks highlight lack of OT security in retail A series of renewed cyber attacks on retail refrigeration systems across has set alarm bells ringing across Europe, with reports of temperatures in some freezer units rising as high as 50° Centigrade, causing ruined food to have to be dumped. Although on a smaller scale, the latest incidents that took place across multiple countries are all strongly reminiscent of a serious incident that took place in France in October, which affected hundreds of branches of multiple supermarket chains, and come days after it emerged the US authorities are investigating a series of similar attacks that targeted freezers at American military bases. In Ireland, Musgrave, which backs the nationwide Supervalu chain, confirmed that a small number of stores had been impacted by an incident targeting certain refrigeration equipment models. The organisation told the media that its monitoring systems detected the incident early and said it pulled some chilled and frozen product lines as a precaution. A spokesperson said the situation was now returning to normal and it was working with suppliers and cyber specialists on its investigation. "We are working to ensure customers can get everything they need as quickly as possible," a spokesperson said. "We would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding Meanwhile, in Sweden, attacks on a small number of Co-op and Ica stores saw temperature settings altered "We can't adjust the temperatures; we can't change them. The freezers are blowing out heat. Everything is ruined," one Ica store manager told the press. In Belgium, stores operated by Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt under the Spar brand were also impacted, with freezer unit evaporators supposedly set to defrost mode overnight. According to the BBC, supermarkets in other countries including Estonia, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have also come under attack. James Neilson, global senior vice president at Opswat, said: "This is the second time in three weeks, and it won't be the last. When a remote management layer controls a physical process, it becomes a single point of failure for an entire retail estate, and one compromise can hit many stores at once. "The scale is smaller than in France, but for each affected store the damage is just as real. Stock has to be destroyed and replaced, suppliers and distribution centres must absorb a surge in demand, refrigeration technicians have to inspect and restore systems site by site, and retailers must reassure customers that what's back on the shelves is safe." OT blind spot In this instance, and as is often the case in cyber attacks involving critical sectors like energy and food distribution, connected operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) that offer threat actors an easy means to cause maximum disruption. Sweden's Nationellt Cybersäkerhetscenter (NCSC) – which has been closely monitoring the incidents and working with victims – said the event showed how important it is to protect systems that control and monitor physical processes. Unlike more regularly-updated IT environments, OT environments often include huge amounts of legacy technology that can be much harder, or even impossible, to patch when flaws emerge, leaving them highly vulnerable. "Retail is an easy target because retail chains run enormous estates of refrigeration controllers, building management systems, door access panels and point-of-sale gear, much of it installed by facilities contractors who rarely loop in the security team," said Tom Hegel, distinguished threat researcher and research lead at SentinelOne. "Grocery margins are thin and stock perishes within hours, so any disruption hurts quickly and in public. The gap between a nuisance and a serious incident often comes down to how much control a victim has exposed to the internet. With thousands of these interfaces still online, I expect more incidents like this." Indeed, scans of publicly-visible refrigeration units conducted by Forescout in the wake of the October attacks in France found almost 13,000 vulnerable services across over 6,000 public IP addresses in 99 countries all over the world, with France, Greece and Italy particularly badly exposed. Among some of the bigger names in the field, it found over 7,000 at risk Copeland/DIxell XWEB services, 4,500 Danfoss StoreView services, 550 Copeland Site Supervisor services, and 500 Carel pCOWeb services. Concerningly, said Forescout, 80% of scanned Danfoss AK-SM 800A StoreView services – a software platform that provides a user interface (UI) for web access to AK-SM800A refrigeration monitors – were affected by known vulnerabilities. Danfoss equipment was heavily-targeted during the October attacks in France. Russia link? Although Moscow has consistently denied any official involvement, hacktivist groups based in Russia and operating in its geopolitical interests have claimed at least 20 attacks against refrigeration systems so far this year, according to Forescout. Forescout's researchers said the most active groups behind these attacks were NoName057(16) and the associated Z-Pentest Alliance group. NoName057(16) has previously linked to a Kremlin-funded non-governmental organisation (NGO) called the Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment and allegedly operates the Z-Pentest Alliance in collaboration with a group known as the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn. Although NoName057(16) has tended to specialise in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, Z-Pentest Alliance has been seen focusing on OT environments within critical organisations. However, SentinelOne's Hegel said that in this scenario, attribution was harder than it seemed. "An attacker who logs into an exposed control panel leaves almost nothing behind, with no malware to analyse and few clues beyond an IP address that probably leads to a rented server," he said. "A teenager and an intelligence service would look much the same from the defender's side." Hegel continued: "These types of attacks typically fall into three main categories: ransomware extortion, political/ideological hacktivism, or nation-state level cyber operations. Ransomware groups usually try to get paid, and hacktivists usually want the public credit. "In this case, neither has happened which makes it start to look like the low-cost, deniable sabotage Europe has been dealing with for several years, from damaged undersea cables to warehouse arson and GPS jamming." Regardless, he added, the advice to retailers in the UK – which does not yet seem to have been targeted – and across Europe, is to take refrigeration system controllers off the internet, put vendor access behind strong authentication, and audit and replace any end-of-life units that no longer get updates. "Retailers don't need to know who did it before they act," he said. Read more about cyber security for retail A year on from the Marks & Spencer cyber attack, we look back at the incident, consider the lessons learned and ask if the retail sector is any more secure today. The UK Information Commissioner's Office has won an important appeal relating to data protection obligations arising from a 2017-18 cyber attack at electronics retailer Currys PC World. Cold chain services provider Peter Green Chilled, which supplies the likes of Aldi, Sainsbury's and Tesco, has been forced to halt operations after succumbing to a ransomware attack.

Who controls the technology we depend on? Being dependent on another country's technology and support carries risk, however close the relationship appears. Yet when we discuss nation state cyber threats, we tend to focus on hostile actors breaking into our systems. We should also examine who controls the systems we already depend on. For the UK, that means facing our reliance on US technology. Cloud infrastructure, business software and security services are deeply embedded in government and commerce. The CMA has identified significant market power held by Microsoft and Amazon in cloud services, alongside barriers that make switching difficult. This is a resilience issue as well as a competition issue. An alliance is a political relationship, and political relationships change. Continued US support and alignment with UK interests should no longer be treated as an unquestioned planning assumption. We need to assess what happens when commercial decisions, government policy or geopolitical pressure affect access to essential technology. Starlink in Ukraine makes that question painfully practical. In February, Ukraine introduced terminal authorisation to counter Russian use of the service. On 14 October, Ukrainian officials reported that restrictions affecting services used by military drones had disrupted missions without warning. Reuters reported that SpaceX had not immediately commented and the reason for the restrictions was unclear. We should be careful about attributing motives. Nevertheless, the lesson we draw is that effective technology can become a critical dependency whose operating conditions are controlled elsewhere. For government, defence and critical national infrastructure, that should prompt some uncomfortable questions about sovereignty and continuity. Where is our data? Who administers the service? Which jurisdictions govern the provider? Who can alter access, support or functionality? Crucially, could we continue operating if that service became unavailable? A second supplier offers limited protection if it depends on the same underlying infrastructure or jurisdiction. Meanwhile, espionage remains a persistent threat. The NCSC's warning about Integrity Technology Group describes activity combining AI tools, compromised devices and manual exploitation. Organisations need to understand why their information, research or supply chain position might interest a state actor, including the access they provide to others. Boards should bring these risks together. Technical protection, supplier assurance and geopolitical exposure need shared ownership across security, procurement, legal and operations. Strong authentication, controlled access, protected logging and network separation remain essential. So do realistic exercises that test loss of a major provider and the ability to detect an intruder using legitimate tools. AI adoption adds further dependencies. Organisations should know which providers process sensitive information, what access their systems receive and whether an alternative could actually be deployed. An exit plan that has never been tested offers little assurance. Public-private cooperation matters: act on NCSC guidance, report incidents and exchange intelligence through trusted channels. Government also has a role in supporting domestic capability and reducing barriers to switching. Businesses cannot remove every international dependency. They can identify concentrations of risk, challenge assumptions about continued support and invest in workable alternatives. Resilience requires understanding what we control, what we depend on, and what happens when circumstances change. Read more about nation state threats The NCSC's joint advisory names perennial offender Integrity Technology, accusing it of facilitating cyber attacks on behalf of Flax Typhoon, a Chinese state threat actor. Cyber attackers linked to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security are targeting opponents and opposition groups with Windows spyware.    A newly identified Russian state threat actor is using a novel zero-click phishing technique, likely developed with the help of an AI, to target Western users of Zimbra software products.

Gartner on AI ROI: A Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast There are plenty of horror stories of artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives not only failing to deliver a measurable return on investment (ROI), but also experiencing out-of-control costs. When asked whether Gartner was seeing any indication that its CIO and IT leadership clients were getting a measurable ROI on AI, Yogesh Bhatt, said: "The straight answer to that is no. Most enterprises are actually trapped in a severe profit and loss (P&L) gap." As enterprises start deploying more and more autonomous agentic AI, Bhatt says compliance-based governance is no longer enough to ensure IT costs are kept under control. "What is required is linking of AI FinOps directly to technical run-time controls. That's an urgent board priority." He says some organisations are unaware of their AI costs until they see the invoice. While organisations are still trying to experiment with AI and AI agents, in Bhatt's experience, they are not realising the value perspective of those agents. "There is cost attribution  and most IT leaders and enterprises are hiding behind colourful dashboards which show projected hours saved as productivity gains. But the challenge is that these gains are failing to show up in the financial statements." Unmonitored token spend is primarily attributed to AI agents continually retrying a task and shadow AI. Bhatt said these quietly destroy the expected margins. Gartner predicts that by 2030, failing to adopt adaptive run-time controls will triple AI deployment cost" As organisations build more complex systems using multiple AI agents, Bhatt warns that costs still increase, even when token costs are reduced. In the past IT leaders were presented with the idea of data democratisation where business intelligence tools are deployed widely to enable workers to make more informed, data-driven decisions. Bhatt says AI presents what he calls a more "non-deterministic world". He says organisations tend to overestimate how easily the soft productivity gained from AI can be turned  into hard profits. At the same tim he says they tend to underestimate how quickly unmonitored agentic workflows burn through the corporate budget. "Soft productivity metrics don't pay your bills," he says. Bhatt says CIOs should manage the ROI across all AI and agentic AI initiatives in their organisation. "They have to evolve their AI governance from passive administrative compliance into a more active runtime financial execution, which is embedded directly at the AI gateway layer itself." He urges CIOs to tie the ROI directly to profit and loss metrics. An example could be measuring sales bids to profit conversion or the volume of automated contract renewals. Looking at run-time controls, he says: " "You need to look at enforcing instance tagging, tracking who is using the token, for what purpose, and where they are actually using it. Then there is the invocation path of the AI agent, to trace where all the cost is being proliferated." "Currently, we are all looking at raw model cost only," he adds. The AI gateway needs instrumentation and the ability to separate the raw model cost from demonstrated value.  He says AI is not hitting a financial wall because the technology lacks power. Instead, it's failing because enterprises are managing autonomous AI with outdated passive compliance frameworks. "To capture real value, IT leaders have to bridge the profit and loss gap. The ROI has to be tied to P&L, because that's when you start seeing value." The bottom line, is to move from from lagging indicators and alerts to active policy run-time control which directly talks to an AI gateway layer and provides what Bhatt sees as "hard budget blocks", with the ability to downshift dynamically to lower cost models when needed. The Gartner IT Symposium is running 9-12 November 2026 in Barcelona. 

Wiltshire Ark datacentre project faces potential judicial review A Wiltshire-based campaign group is mulling a judicial review to reverse plans for a seventh datacentre at Ark Data Centres' Spring Park campus near Corsham. The group – Neston and Westwells Action Group (NWAG) – said flood risk evidence was not supplied. Wiltshire Council granted full planning permission in October and cites more than 1,000 objections to the scheme on the council's planning portal. The consent allows a freestanding datacentre building plus energy, power and water infrastructure on the 18-acre Donkey Field site, which sits in view of a nearby retirement village. Objections include potential for noise, traffic and reduced air quality as well as broader quality of life concerns (see below). Ark already runs five datacentres on the site and is building a sixth. The seventh would be the first outside the wire of former Ministry of Defence (MoD) land at Corsham, which hosts Crown Hosting Data Centres, a Cabinet Office-Ark joint venture that stores government data to top secret classification. The 18.7m-tall building would sit within 50 metres of local homes, on a field above a disused mine linked to an MoD Cold War bunker. The village suffered a once-in-a-generation flood in 2014. NWAG said it was not opposed to datacentres or economic growth. Its argument turns on whether evidence showing the site could be drained safely was in place before consent was given. Flood risk in dispute NWAG said infiltration testing, groundwater monitoring, hydraulic modelling and the behaviour of runoff during severe rainfall remained unresolved, despite the council concluding the development would not increase flood risk. It also questioned advice given to councillors, which said testing that steers development away from areas at higher flood risk no longer applied to surface water flooding. "The fundamental question is what evidence existed at the point of decision to demonstrate that the site could be safely drained without increasing flood risk elsewhere," said an NWAG spokesperson. "Further conditioned investigations should verify an established solution. They should not be the means by which we discover afterwards whether a solution existed in the first place." The group must lodge any challenge by 14 November 2026 and said it is still gauging public support and funding pledges before deciding whether to proceed. Its position, it said, is "prove it before you approve it". NWAG has separately asked the council to clarify how a proposed construction logistics use on adjacent land known as Donkey Fields was authorised, saying it could not find it in the application description. The dispute comes as the Burnham government puts its mark on the datacentre debate, with its recent launch of a datacentre covenant that makes priority grid connections for datacentres conditional on strict tests around community investment, local jobs and water supplies. The covenant calls on developers to co-design local benefit plans with residents and to protect local water and environmental resources. For the datacentre industry, the case is a live test of the evidential bar councils will demand before consenting schemes, as ministers push to accelerate construction of critical national infrastructure. Anatomy of the objections Wiltshire Council said objections were carefully considered alongside technical assessments and planning policy, and that conditions would address drainage, environmental protection, transport and other impacts. We analysed the 1,141 comments on the council's planning portal and found opinion runs heavily against the scheme: Against: 1,050 (1,042 objections and eight petition objections) In support: 15 (14 statements of support and one petition in support) Other: 76 (comments, conditional no-objections and mixed positions) The objections split between technical critiques and complaints about quality of life. The flood risk concerns underpinning the possible legal challenge appeared in fewer comments than noise or amenity complaints. Many raised several issues, so the figures overlap: Flooding and drainage – 354 comments Ecology and wildlife – 517 Air quality – 493 Power and energy – 111 Noise – 630 Traffic – 455 Broader quality-of-life – 782 The shortest submissions were blunt – "No", "Outrageous", "Not needed". Others carried professional weight and were lengthy. David Palmer, a chartered civil engineer and fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers with 37 years in flood risk management, wrote about shortcomings in flood risk assessment. Morgyn Davies of NWAG wrote that the application contained "extraordinarily little new information … [and was] primarily a rehash of all previous documentation", with flood risk questions "not addressed". Support was thin but present. One village resident wrote: "The need for this infrastructure is key to the nation." Commercial property consultancy CBRE backed the scheme in a letter of support, as did a handful of other residents. Read more about datacentres UK committed datacentre pipeline grows to more than 14GW: Barbour ABI data show UK's datacentre pipeline has grown to 173 projects and more than 14GW of capacity, driven by AI demand and large sites in Scotland and the North East. Autumn Budget 2026 – UK chancellor ties datacentre grid access to community tests: Healey's Autumn Budget covenant makes grid priority and on-site generation conditional on community investment, jobs and water protection, weeks after MSPs paused Scotland's pipeline. The image shown is a scaled artist's impression of the proposed datacentre, commissioned by Neston and Westwells Action Group (NWAG).

Workday Rising: Humans and AI must labour cheek by jowl There was a whole lot of hugging on stage at the recent Workday Rising event in Las Vegas. During the keynote presentation, executives often greeted each other with an embrace, and they even stressed their predilection for hugging. Whether intentional or not, this human connection matched Workday's key message of the event: the modern world of work is fast becoming agent-enabled, but humans remain crucial to success. "We envision a situation where humans and agents work side by side," said Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri during his firm's keynote presentation. "That is the role we're orienting in now. That's the role of the future. The goal: how do we offload repetitive tasks from teams to focus on what only humans can do – that judgement, that creativity, that leadership?" Workday's vision is a harmonious blend of humans and artificial intelligence (AI) agents – lots of them. During the keynote, Bhusri outlined how his company has pushed 17 agents to production. These agents cover a range of areas, including a "talent acquisition agent" that searches for qualified candidates and coordinates interview scheduling, and a "developer agent" that allows IT professionals to generate applications and workflows using natural language prompts. Of course, convincing employees that this new catalogue of agentic colleagues isn't coming to steal their jobs is another issue altogether. Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology at Workday, recognised during the keynote that most headlines today paint a far less harmonious picture of the rise of agentic AI. "It's one where the AI doesn't amplify people; it replaces them," he said. "It's a situation where increasingly powerful AI behaves totally unpredictably. Where even the leaders building the most advanced frontier models are warning us about the risks of their very own creations. More than a quarter of American workers worry that technology will make their jobs obsolete. That is a new record, and I say that's a sad record." Jobs are going to change; there's no question about it. Jobs are being redefined into skills and roles that are very different than what they were pre-AI. But let's embrace that ... learn AI, use the tools, embrace the opportunity Aneel Bhusri, Workday Kazmaier and his senior colleagues hope Workday can change that record. Yes, the world of work is transforming, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Rather than jobs with strict roles and responsibilities, the workplace of the future will be fluid and agile, where professionals fulfil tasks according to their skills, not their job titles. In this workplace transformation, Workday wants HR, finance and other line-of-business professionals to embrace agents. "Jobs are going to change; there's no question about it," said Bhusri, recognising that professionals understandably fear the rate of change. "Jobs are being redefined into skills and roles that are very different than what they were pre-AI. But let's embrace that. Let's all of us within the audience learn AI, use the tools, embrace the opportunity." Refounding the company During the event, Workday executives were eager to stress that the company is building agentic capabilities into its platform, rather than bolting them on. Like other tech firms responding to the rise of agents and application programming interfaces (APIs), the company is building an increasingly open platform with strong links to pioneer models, like Anthropic Claude. A core component of this agentic strategy is Sana. It's been a big 12 months for the AI platform, which Workday acquired in November 2025 and has spent the past year tweaking and integrating. In Las Vegas, it announced that Sana will sit at the core of the user experience for HR, finance and line-of-business professionals who interact with Workday. Known as Workday Home, the Sana user interface lets professionals use natural language for help with key operational activities, such as completing tasks and making decisions. Sana orchestrates Workday agents to complete these activities. Bhusri said in his keynote that this interactive approach lets users take control. "For too long, enterprise software forced you to do the work, searching for apps, data and processes," he said. "We're flipping that script with Sana, the new front door to Workday. Instead of hunting through menus, instead of looking for the work you need to get done, you simply ask, like it's a simple AI prompt." Workday also introduced Sana Concierge, a new HR and IT service agent that resolves employee requests, from onboarding and leave to password resets, before they become tickets. The new Sana Workday Home experience is available now. Sana Concierge is available to early adopter customers, with general availability expected in the first quarter of 2027. For customers aiming to get a handle on Workday's long-term roadmap, there was a lot to take in. A new Sana homepage, 17 agents, and a series of other releases and updates related to data platforms, security features and business intelligence. As Bhusri suggested in the keynote, Workday is eager to demonstrate its innovations. "The theme of this conference is 'Show, not tell'," he said. "I've watched a lot of AI conferences recently; just a lot of slideware. The most slides you're going to see are the ones from me, and I don't have that many slides. You're going to see a lot of products, and these aren't products that are in the labs. These are mostly products that are already in production." As the world of work changes, Workday is transforming to develop the agentic innovations it believes its customers need. Bhusri, who co-founded the company in 2005 and stepped down as chief executive in 2024, returned as CEO in February 2026. He acknowledged that he's overseen a hectic period of change since returning. For too long, enterprise software forced you to do the work, searching for apps, data and processes. We're flipping that script with Sana, the new front door to Workday Aneel Bhusri, Workday AI sits at the heart of this transformation. Bhusri sees the rise of emerging technology as an opportunity for Workday to shine in what he called the next chapter of the technology industry. To ensure his company is ready for this narrative shift, he's spent the past nine months building an internal startup-like culture. "We want to transform the enterprise," he said during his keynote. "I don't worry about the big companies like SAP and Oracle. Maybe I should, but I don't. I still think they're dinosaurs. I'll always think that. They're not bad people, but they're out of date. Startups – that's where it's at, and that's what we're paying attention to." Bhusri said it's best to portray this transformation as a "refounding" of Workday focused on AI, with a startup-like culture that's set up for success. When asked by Computer Weekly during a media panel session to define what this organisation might look like 12 months from now, he said, "Leaner, faster." This journey has already begun. As part of its reorganisation, Workday announced a global workforce reduction of approximately 2.5% in September 2026, affecting about 500 employees. Bhusri addressed the cuts in the media session. "There were, in some parts of the development organisation, 10 layers between me and the developer getting work done, and it was the individual contributors and developers themselves who said, 'I can't get anything done. There are too many layers of approval'." Delivering for customers The priority for Workday now is to ensure its customers understand the firm's fresh agentic direction. In a one-to-one interview with Computer Weekly at the event, Dean Arnold, Workday's vice-president of AI platform, said he hoped customers would recognise the firm is meeting them with agentic solutions to help them solve their key business challenges. "Even last year, we saw the proliferation of customers building agents," he said. "People were saying, 'I want more agents and AI, and I want it now.' We're still seeing that trend going on, but tokenomics and everything else is bringing it down to a rationalised field of, 'Okay, what's the outcome we're after?'" Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri envisages humans and agents working side by side CIOs have spent the past 12 months reflecting on agentic hyperbole. Now, with the board eager to see the benefits of agentic explorations, digital leaders are focused on tokenomics and the discipline of measuring, pricing and optimising how AI models consume tokens to create business value. Arnold believes the hard work that he and his colleagues have put into the Workday platform in the past 12 months will pay dividends for the business and its customers. "The way we're delivering agents is an evolution from the way we spoke about them last year," he said. "We're moving from a chat-style interface agent to something that's more interwoven into a natural part of how your business operates." The priority is to ensure Workday clients see the benefits. "We have to help our customers be enabled on the agents that we're producing," said Arnold. "Our agents are focused on their business problems. They should be aware that we're ready to help them." One customer already taking steps in this direction is Hezha Guimond, vice-president for HR technology and integration at Anew Health. Her organisation is using Workday's AI Talent Suite, particularly the "recruiting agent" and "candidate experience agent", to identify and hire staff faster. Guimond told Computer Weekly at the event that she was impressed by the firm's announcements, particularly regarding Sana. "I love coming to Rising because I get an opportunity to connect with like-minded people and see what Workday's roadmap looks like, which is exciting. You speak with other customers and realise you're doing well. It's such a great feeling because you come here, and you're like, 'Oh, we're a lot further ahead than we thought'," she said. "Even before coming here, I'd already contacted our Workday account manager, who's done some work for me on the investment, and I've already made it very clear that I want Sana. So, Sana for sure is something we're getting in 2027, as well as Workday Extend," which is the IT company's development platform that lets customers build applications inside its ecosystem. Adam Zaller, vice-president of global HR services at Cardinal Health, is another business leader impressed with Workday's strategic direction. His company went live with the platform in 2010 and has continued to evolve its implementation, including through agentic services. Like Guimond, he was impressed by Sana and believes the company's AI-enabled developments complement his organisation's ongoing digital transformation. "It's more affirmation that they're on the path that I want them to be on. I'm pleased with how they're progressing. I like the approach they're taking. It's not everything all at once. I wouldn't call it a slow pace. It's a nice, reasonable pace," he said. "Everything else is moving at light speed. I like the company that's running my people data to make well-thought-out moves. And I think they're doing that. I really like how they're operating. Also, I've been pretty pleased to see the progress with Sana. I think Sana is something that's really going to be a game-changer." Read more about Workday Workday expands agentic AI automation for HR teams: Workday has introduced AI agents for HR and finance workflows and previewed tools for workforce planning as enterprises look to automate administrative work. Workday majors on Sana acquisition to forward agentic AI programme: On a visit to Workday's Dublin EMEA HQ, we find the supplier aiming to leverage agentic artificial intelligence to improve enterprise operations with its Sana platform, said to enable automation and reskilling for an AI-driven workplace. Workday's Joel Hellermark on making everyone a Leonardo: Joel Hellermark, chief AI officer at Workday, argues that artificial intelligence and large language models will transform enterprise work, building company memory through agents, empowering humans and increasing their value.

Belfast journalists subjected to unlawful spying cannot claim costs over PSNI failures Two Belfast journalists placed under unlawful police surveillance expressed "deep disappointment" after the Court of Appeal found that police cannot be sanctioned for "late and inadequate disclosures" of evidence that led to two court hearings having to be abandoned. Investigative journalists Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney brought a case to the Court of Appeal in October, seeking to recover wasted costs after the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) repeatedly withheld and delayed the disclosure of important evidence, in some cases until the night before a court hearing. A panel of five judges at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal previously found that the tribunal had no statutory powers to impose sanctions against police forces or intelligence agencies if they delay or fail to follow orders from the tribunal to disclose relevant evidence. Lord Justice Bean agreed in a judgment last week that the legal proceedings were "dogged by late and inadequate disclosure" by the PSNI, which meant that two hearings in February 2025 and May 2025 were "ineffective" and had to be postponed at short notice. The judge acknowledged that the five Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) judges had previously found there was a strong case for the tribunal to have powers to award costs "against respondents, where there has been expenditure wasted as a result of their conduct and where, in particular, orders of the tribunal are persistently breached". IPT has no power to award costs The Court of Appeal found that the tribunal had no power to award costs under the existing statutory framework. The Investigatory Powers Act did not create a costs jurisdiction and there was no provision to award costs in the tribunal rules, it said. The court also rejected an alternative argument from the journalists that compensation awards could be increased to reflect their legal costs and found no error in law by the IPT for its decision not to increase the compensation already awarded. The tribunal heard in March 2024 that the PSNI had failed to disclose surveillance operations against the two journalists until the night before scheduled court hearings, in breach of the tribunal's orders.  In one case, the PSNI served key evidence at 11:19pm the night before a court hearing, forcing the journalists' lawyers to work through the night, and leaving no time to properly consider the evidence the next day. On another occasion, the PSNI failed to disclose a Directed Surveillance Order against the two journalists until the morning of a court hearing, when the journalists' legal representative was allowed to take notes from it but not allowed a copy. Public authorities have financial impunity Commenting on the Court of Appeal decision, Birney said the court's interpretation meant that public authorities "can obstruct, delay and breach tribunal orders with financial impunity". "The IPT itself described this lack of power as an unsatisfactory outcome," he said. "It cannot be right that state agencies can waste public funds and frustrate the course of justice without facing consequences." McCaffrey said they would continue their legal fight for proper accountability of state wrongdoing, "This case began because our homes were unlawfully searched to protect state secrets and expose our confidential sources," he said. "We proved the PSNI acted unlawfully. Today's ruling confirms a procedural flaw in the legal system, and we firmly echo the court's view that the rules need to be changed to prevent this kind of misbehaviour in the future." The IPT ruled in December 2024 that the PSNI unlawfully ordered an undercover surveillance operation that attempted to identify a confidential source who had supplied information to the journalists.  The tribunal judgment ordered the PSNI to pay £4,000 each in damages to Birney and McCaffrey, matching damages previously awarded by the European Court of Human Rights to journalists who were subject to state surveillance to identify their sources. Read more about Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney's case against PSNI Journalists subject to unlawful surveillance seek legal costs after 'unreasonable conduct' by PSNI. Tribunal criticises PSNI and Met Police for spying operation to identify journalists' sources. Detective wrongly claimed journalist's solicitor attempted to buy gun, surveillance tribunal hears. Ex-PSNI officer 'deeply angered' by comments made by a former detective at a tribunal investigating allegations of unlawful surveillance against journalists. Detective reported journalist's lawyers to regulator in 'unlawful' PSNI surveillance case. Lawyers and journalists seeking 'payback' over police phone surveillance, claims former detective. We need a judge-led inquiry into police spying on journalists and lawyers. Former assistant chief constable, Alan McQuillan, claims the PSNI used a dedicated laptop to access the phone communications data of hundreds of lawyers and journalists. Northern Irish police used covert powers to monitor over 300 journalists. Police chief commissions 'independent review' of surveillance against journalists and lawyers. Police accessed phone records of 'trouble-making journalists'. BBC instructs lawyers over allegations of police surveillance of journalist. The Policing Board of Northern Ireland has asked the Police Service of Northern Ireland to produce a public report on its use of covert surveillance powers against journalists and lawyers after it gave 'utterly vague' answers. PSNI chief constable John Boutcher has agreed to provide a report on police surveillance of journalists and lawyers to Northern Ireland's policing watchdog but denies industrial use of surveillance powers. Report reveals Northern Ireland police put up to 18 journalists and lawyers under surveillance. Three police forces took part in surveillance operations between 2011 and 2018 to identify sources that leaked information to journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal hears. Amnesty International and the Committee on the Administration of Justice have asked Northern Ireland's policing watchdog to open an inquiry into the Police Service of Northern Ireland's use of surveillance powers against journalists. Britain's most secret court is to hear claims that UK authorities unlawfully targeted two journalists in a 'covert surveillance' operation after they exposed the failure of police in Northern Ireland to investigate paramilitary killings. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is unable to delete terabytes of unlawfully seized data taken from journalists who exposed police failings in the investigation of the Loughinisland sectarian murders. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has agreed to investigate complaints by Northern Ireland investigative journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey that they were unlawfully placed under surveillance.

UK surveillance watchdog 'disappointed' over government investigatory powers failings The investigatory powers commissioner has raised concerns following failures by some government agencies to follow safeguards in their use of surveillance and covert powers. Sir Brian Leveson said that he was "disappointed and concerned" that a number of government bodies had failed to comply with safeguards under the Investigatory Powers Act, which governs surveillance and covert powers. The commissioner said that overall, oversight was working well but highlighted failures by the signal's intelligence agency, GCHQ, the National Crime Agency, the Prison Service and the Ministry of Defence in an annual report today. MI5 lied to courts over Agent X Leveson's comments came after an investigation by the oversight body revealed that MI5 had lied to the courts and had misled the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office over its handling Agent X, a violent neo-Nazi informer. The former senior judge said today that the case of agent X was "as serious as anything I have dealt with as Commissioner." MI5 had given false evidence to the High Court and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, he said. The failings identified in Leveson's 2025 annual report raise wider questions about whether parts of the investigatory powers framework, particularly under the older Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, "remain clear, coherent and fit for purpose." "None of these are minor administrative failures," he said. "Operational pressures are real, but they do not reduce the need for lawful consistent and well-understood safeguards," he added. GCHQ's lost devices The Investigatory Powers Commissioner criticised the signals intelligence agency GCHQ for failing to account for thousands of missing portable media devices that may contain secret data. The agency had failed to explain what had happened to removable media years after being asked to do so by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office (IPCO). The missing items include USB sticks, external hard drives, memory cards and other portable media storage devices used in GCHQ's work. GCHQ introduced a tool this year to monitor the issue, storage and location of removable media. "We remain very concerned about this issue and are disappointed with the time it has taken GCHQ to investigate," IPCOs report states. IPCO said that His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPSS) was "continuing to get the basics wrong" when intercepting prisoners communications, with inspectors finding "recurring compliance issues". In one case a prison wrongly intercepted calls between an inmate and their solicitor, causing significant "prejudice or harm" after misidentifying the phone number as the number of a social contact, though in that case the call was not listened to. NCA handling of sources fell short The National Crime Agency's handling of covert human intelligence sources fell "well short of what the law requires and what I expect," Leveson found. Inspectors found "systematic weaknesses in governance and oversight" over the agency's records of covert human intelligence sources and undercover work, held on computer systems and in manual files. Significant volumes of records were held beyond their scheduled review dates and material could not always reliably be linked to specific failures or subjects of interest, raising questions about the lawfulness of continued retention of records. Police Service of Northern Ireland The commissioner's report also identified problems in the Police Service of Northern Ireland's handling of confidential and sensitive material. The PSNI failed to inform IPCO inspectors of a surveillance operation against Belfast journalist, Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney, during an annual inspection, breaching the PSNI's statutory duty of candour to IPCO inspectors, as previously reported by  Computer Weekly.      The police force also failed to alert IPCO inspectors to a covert surveillance operation against investigative journalist Dónal MacIntyre, which sought to covertly monitor his social media posts. Levenson disclosed that IPCO had carried out an interim inspection of the PSNI in December 2025. Inspectors agreed with the findings of the McCullough Review that there was no evidence of the PNSI's anti-corruption unit using a stand-alone system to bypass the authorisation process for monitoring journalists' phone records. "We are considering carefully whether the Review's findings have any wider application, particularly in relation to levels of understanding, legal advice and training on confidential material across the law enforcement community," the report states. The report also highlighted that the Ministry of Defence had failed to properly apply safeguards to protect people detained overseas, who may be interrogated or interviewed to gather intelligence which is passed to the UK. Schedule 7 stops Other parts of the report reveal that GCHQ wrongly identified a number of people as suspects in terrorism-related activity, following an 'issue' with an undisclosed software application they were using, the report reveals. This led to police wrongly stopping and searching five people under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, who were detained, had their electronic devices downloaded and their biometrics taken. "We have concluded that, although the impact on those affected is highly unfortunate and regrettable, intelligence can sometimes simply be wrong," IPCO found. Serious errors Applications by police and intelligence services for communications data, which reveal who phoned or emailed who, the time and length of the call, had grown by nearly 9% between 2024 and 2025 to reach 28,000 applications. The report also reveals that there was a rise in the number of errors reported by the UK intelligence community and the National Crime Agency, including four "serious errors" related to communications data. In one case a person was mistakenly arrested and released on bail based on inaccurate data obtained in an investigation into sharing indecent images of children. In another case police wrongly searched a residence after obtaining communications data relating to the wrong person. Errors  in communications data linked to one mobile phone operator, led to 72 false positives and 88 false negatives in the identification of IP addresses. As a result two innocent people were arrested. A timing mistake by a telecommunications operator led to the police arresting the wrong person during an investigation to identify a caller who had threatened significant harm to local people. In another historical case it emerged that an innocent person had been arrested and detained for questioning and that three generations of the same family were mistakenly visited at separate addresses and questioned. In both cases police officers had failed to heed warnings from the telecommunications operator over the reliability of its data. Oversight is working Leveson said that demands on IPCO were increasing and that he was exploring how new technologies and automation can support the organisation. Despite raising serious concerns, Leveson said that his assessment was that independent oversight is working. "I remain satisfied that, across a demanding and fast-changing environment, the system of checks on the use of covert powers continues to operate with rigour and independence," he said. IPCO provides independent oversight of the use of investigatory powers by intelligence agencies, police forces and other public authorities, under the Investigatory Powers Act. It has a remit of 600 bodies. Read more about Investigatory Powers and IPCO Northern Ireland police kept inspectors in dark over surveillance of journalists - The Police Service of Northern Ireland failed to inform the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office about surveillance operations against journalists during annual inspections Watching the watchers: Is the Technical Advisory Panel a match for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ? - Dame Muffy Calder is chair of the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP), a small group of experts that advises the Investigatory Powers Commissioner on surveillance technology. Do they have what it takes to oversee the intelligence community?  Investigatory powers: Guidelines for police and spies could also help businesses with AI - Computer Weekly talks to Muffy Calder, technology advisor to the UK's investigatory powers commissioner, about privacy, intrusion and artificial intelligence Why the UK needs to rethink the Investigatory Powers Act and allow intercept evidence in court - The UK needs clear and unambiguous laws around the use of digital evidence in court. Counter-eavesdropping agency unlawfully used surveillance powers to identify journalist's source - More than 750 journalists had their communications data accessed by law enforcement and government agencies between 2018 and 2022

UK government drafts national policy statement for datacentres The government has published the first draft of its National Policy Statement (NPS) for datacentres. It plans to open England's Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime to datacentre schemes of 100MW and above and instruct the secretary of state to begin from a presumption of consent. The 94-page draft, from the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST), sets the framework the Planning Inspectorate and Secretary of State will use to decide applications for development consent for large datacentres. It adopts the five tests set out in the Data Centre Covenant, published the same day, as its assessment criteria.  Publication of the statement came alongside a call for views on the NPS that closes at 11.59pm on 8 January 2027. The document sets an indicative minimum of 100MW of rated IT load capacity for a project to be directed into the NSIP regime, a threshold it argues reserves the route for only the largest and most nationally significant sites. Projects below it would continue to pass through the Town and Country Planning Act. The statement must complete its parliamentary stages before it is designated and takes effect. Once designated, the Planning Inspectorate would examine applications for the secretary of state to decide them against its published criteria rather than through case-by-case judgement. The NPS sits in a wider policy stack that includes: Designation of the sector as critical national infrastructure; Five AI Growth Zones; A Ministerial Control Centre for the most strategic projects; Planning reform through the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and the National Planning Policy Framework published in August 2026. The NPS grounds its case in sovereignty, arguing that as AI and data become central to healthcare, defence and public services, Britain cannot depend on infrastructure located overseas. It cites £19.4bn of foreign direct investment in UK datacentres since July 2024, an estimated estate of more than 220 datacentres with about 2GW of capacity, and 73GW across roughly 315 projects sitting in the grid connection queue. It points to the government's Compute Roadmap forecast that the UK needs at least 6GW of AI-capable datacentre capacity by 2030 – about three times current capacity – and an increase in datacentre planning applications of more than 60% in 2025. Global demand projections by Goldman Sachs cited in the report suggest the market could grow by up to 165% by 2030. The statement also argues that not all UK datacentre needs can be met by overseas infrastructure. Sensitive government, health and financial data must be processed under UK regulatory and security frameworks, it says, adding that latency-sensitive sectors such as finance and university research depend on nearby capacity rather than remote compute. The presumption of consent means a development consent order is unlikely to be refused where a scheme meets the NPS requirements, applies the mitigation hierarchy and satisfies legal requirements. Exceptions include unmitigable harm to habitat sites, unacceptable risk to human health or defence, and sites in the Green Belt. Read more about datacentres and planning UK committed datacentre pipeline grows to more than 14GW: Barbour ABI data show UK's datacentre pipeline has grown to 173 projects and more than 14GW of capacity, driven by AI demand and large sites in Scotland and the North East. Can Britain's grid keep up with the datacentre boom? Mounting power demands and grid bottlenecks are reshaping the geography of the UK's digital infrastructure, pushing developers to wherever they can connect fastest. The document stresses that the presumption does not create a new need case or extra weighting. It applies only after normal consideration of the need case and satisfaction of the NPS and legal requirements, and applications must still satisfy the Habitats Regulations, including consideration of alternatives and compensatory measures. Applicants must still submit an Environmental Impact Assessment and a Habitats Regulations Assessment, and provide evidence on biodiversity net gain, water and grid connections. The assessment principles also cover climate change mitigation and adaptation, environmental regulation, safety and security. The NPS expects datacentres to capture waste heat "wherever practical", minimise water use, and publish annual energy and water data. It defines the scope of facilities it covers, distinguishing them from other digital infrastructure such as cloud services. The government published an Appraisal of Sustainability and a Habitats Regulations Assessment alongside the draft. The NPS applies to England only, and may be a material consideration for decisions in Scotland and Wales. It arrives weeks after MSPs voted to pause planning decisions on large Scottish datacentres until national guidance appears. The Chancellor introduced the datacentre covenant in the Autumn Budget, alongside the government's response to its grid connections consultation. It forms one part of a three-part push to make the planning and power system deliver datacentres faster. 

Datacentre covenant pleases developers more than campaigners Chancellor John Healey's announcement of a datacentre covenant drew fire from campaigners and industry alike after Wednesday's Autumn Budget. Critics branded the centrepiece of the government's AI infrastructure push a voluntary smokescreen that binds big tech to nothing. The covenant, published by HM Treasury on 28 October, made priority grid connections and, where necessary, permission to build on-site generation conditional on strict tests around local investment, jobs, water and the environment. Strategic datacentres will be expected to agree a Local Benefit Plan, protect water supplies, capture waste heat and pay their fair share of energy costs in return for a faster route to power. The covenant lists five tests. Datacentres should: Pay their fair share of energy costs so households and businesses do not pick up the bill. Invest in improving local communities. Adhere to the highest environmental standards. Create jobs, apprenticeships and reindustrialisation. Strengthen Britain's security.  The grid measures are reserved for strategic datacentres, whose definition is still to come. Healey framed the offer around sovereignty, arguing that when the NHS uses artificial intelligence (AI) to treat patients, or the armed forces use it to keep the country safe, that data should stay in Britain.  The government estimates the UK needs 6GW of AI-capable datacentre capacity by 2030 and casts the covenant as a clear offer – faster delivery of the datacentres the country needs in exchange for responsible development. Measures include reserving and reallocating grid capacity for strategic projects, and a tightly controlled framework that permits on-site generation only for exceptionally strategic sites. The covenant and a draft National Policy Statement (NPS), published the same day, are two parts of the same strategy. The covenant sets out the five tests datacentres should meet, and that strategic datacentres must meet to qualify for faster grid connections and on-site generation. The NPS, from the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, turns those tests into assessment criteria the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State will apply when deciding development consent for schemes of 100MW and above.  Campaigners unconvinced by covenant John Ridd, co-founder and chief executive of Greenpixie, said the covenant was "a smokescreen designed to appease local resistance to AI infrastructure", adding that the requirements Healey claimed were new "already exist, but Big Tech is never held accountable". He said the average datacentre "employs fewer people than a local supermarket" and urged the government to increase capacity through efficiency, "not just be railroaded into building more datacentres". Oliver Hayes, head of campaigns at Global Action Plan, said the chancellor "is in for a shock" if he thinks communities "will be hoodwinked by a voluntary 'covenant' that could have been written by Big Tech themselves and explicitly allows for power generation from heavily polluting on-site fossil fuels". He added: "Voluntarism doesn't work with these companies."  Foxglove head of communications Tom Hegarty said there "does not appear to be a single legally binding environmental commitment" in the document. He described it as "voluntary at best for Big Tech" while strategic datacentres would be handed "a golden ticket to skip the grid connection queue". He said the charity would keep challenging datacentres in court. One campaigner at the sharp end – currently battling a Wiltshire County Council decision to grant consent to the Spring Park datacentre being developed by Ark Data Centres – felt the covenant's provisions may make little difference. Morgyn Davies of the Neston & Westwells Action Group (NWAG) said: "When legal agreements between developers and councils are signed in secret, behind closed doors, something much tougher than a 'voluntary covenant' is needed to guarantee communities do not suffer a catastrophic tomorrow so the developer can make a massive profit today." Industry voices welcoming but uneasy James Hart, chief executive of BCS Consultancy, said the covenant was "a welcome recognition of the strategic importance of digital infrastructure" but "the deal is lopsided, with clear obligations for developers but less certainty around what government can deliver in return".  "A covenant doesn't build substations," he added. Chris Coward, BCS's chief operating officer, warned that continued grid uncertainty "pushes developers towards alternative power solutions, particularly on-site gas generation". Rich Kenny, managing director of datacentre efficiency specialist Interact and chair of the IEEE Water Resource Technologies Working Group, said the covenant was "a move in the right direction so long as it has enough teeth to ensure those local benefits are delivered when promised". Datacentre builders welcome elements  Giles Hanglin, chief executive of UK-based clean energy and datacentre developer Apatura Energy, said the proposed Ministerial Control Centre and its powers to reserve and reallocate connections was "the strongest measure set out" in yesterday's Budget, but warned that "if that takes months, the fast lane will not be fast". Matthew Baynes, vice-president of secure power and datacentres for equipment supplier Schneider Electric in the UK and Ireland, said the commitment to prioritising grid connections for critical datacentres was "particularly encouraging". The covenant lands weeks after MSPs in Scotland voted to pause planning decisions on large datacentres until national guidance arrives. Scotland's committed pipeline has grown to 14 schemes and 2.4GW, the fastest growth of any UK region, while the grid connection queue, rather than planning consent, remains the binding constraint on much of the UK pipeline. Ireland shows what happens when development outruns the grid. Read more about datacentres and planning Autumn Budget 2026 – UK chancellor ties datacentre grid access to community tests: Healey's Autumn Budget covenant makes grid priority and on-site generation conditional on community investment, jobs and water protection, weeks after MSPs paused Scotland's pipeline Data dive – government 2030 datacentre capacity targets look shaky: We analyse why DSIT's 6GW AI-capable capacity target for 2030 is out of reach unless operators accelerate delivery.

Having a PHP patch available does not mean you're protected The critical PHP vulnerabilities disclosed earlier in October are a stark reminder that a single flaw can trigger a global domino effect across borders and industries within hours, leaving organisations worldwide exposed to the same threat at once. Having a security patch available is essential. However, a patch is not a silver bullet solution. Turning patches into effective protection demands qualified professionals, clear responsibilities and the operational readiness to act. You can't protect what you don't know On 21 October, when European authorities issued a joint warning about two PHP vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to execute malicious code remotely on vulnerable servers without authentication, another issue was highlighted. While security updates have since been released, organisations were forced to confront the fact that they hadn't even realised which products and services depend on PHP. Authorities have urged businesses to identify affected applications, coordinate with providers and prioritise internet-facing systems. But unfortunately, cyber resilience isn't something organisations can switch on when a crisis hits. For many businesses, their greatest vulnerability may be a dependency they do not know exists. As we've recently seen, a company can have robust internal security procedures and still be exposed through a supplier, an application or a component buried several layers into its technology infrastructure. The challenge is no longer simply protecting the systems an organisation owns but also understanding the systems it depends on across its entire supply chain. From an alert to an accountable response For business leaders, the immediate question is whether their organisation can establish its exposure and demonstrate that it has addressed risk across its entire supply chain. A company may receive assurances that its external provider has updated a customer portal but have they checked whether the company's other applications rely on the same vulnerable components? Vulnerability management is a critical role in any business, and it needs clear ownership. Patching fast when vulnerabilities are identified is a challenge, especially as AI is increasing the pace of such identification. Technical teams must implement and test corrections in relation to the application and local architectural context for ensuring smooth operation after patching. Security managers must assess priorities, coordinate  resources and communicate the implications for the business. Auditors must independently evaluate whether the controls supporting that response are adequate and operating effectively. While these roles are critical, increased demand for security oversight is further weighing down stretched cybersecurity teams. In September, ISACA's State of Cybersecurity 2026 research found that 56% of European respondents report that their organisations' cyber security teams are understaffed, while 55% say they are underfunded. These constraints can make it harder to investigate exposure, coordinate remediation and verify that security fixes have been implemented effectively. In an environment that only gets more complex, cyber security professionals are expected to do more work, faster, and with small teams. Increased investment is non-negotiable if organisations want even basic cyber security. Read more PHP2Shell coverage What to do as critical PHP flaws put millions of websites at risk. PHP2Shell: 22M exposed servers at risk as emergency patches released. Critical PHP vulnerabilities expose most websites to potential compromise. (Cybersecurity Dive) PHP2Shell bugs signal red alert for security industry. (Dark Reading) PHP2Shell disclosure unravels after leaks forced early patch drop. Botched PHP2Shell disclosure revealed as panic continues. PHP exploitation moves at slower-than-expected pace, but millions remain at risk (Cybersecurity Dive) Exposed to PHP2Shell? Cyber experts weigh in with advice (Dark Reading) EU makes progress towards PHP patching, UK lags. Cisa, security researchers confirm successful exploitation of PHP flaws (Cybersecurity Dive). PHP2Shell: US updates Kev catalogue as exploits spread. PHP2Shell explained: Timeline of the global vulnerability crisis. Wave of PHP2Shell-style flaws coming, Nvidia security exec predicts. Insurance industry fears potential impacts from PHP2Shell. (Cybersecurity Dive) Building resilience before the next alert Cyber resilience must be built before a crisis hits. An accurate inventory of assets and dependencies, established supplier contacts and procedures for urgent changes give teams a foundation for action. They also need to know how to verify remediation and manage disruption if a service must be temporarily isolated. Business leaders should determine whether those capabilities receive sufficient investment. They must ensure that teams have the resources, skills and authority to monitor for vulnerabilities and act when needed. Unsupported systems must receive attention and processes must be introduced so that significant risks reach the people empowered to address them. Preparedness should be tested through exercises and reviewed after real incidents. Investment must also extend to the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. As AI accelerates vulnerability discovery, defenders need the skills to use it responsibly to identify weaknesses, assess findings and support remediation. Continuous learning, technical experience and professional judgement will be essential to translating that speed into better protection. Technology will never be completely free of vulnerabilities. The real test is whether organisations have the governance, expertise and operational readiness to prevent a software flaw from becoming a wider business crisis. In an interconnected economy, the quality of that preparation has consequences far beyond any single company. Chris Dimitriadis is global chief strategy officer at ISACA

Controversial Fujitsu contract extension on the cards at Post Office Fujitsu is set to see its relationship with the Post Office extended further as it takes longer than anticipated to unwrap the controversial 30-year relationship. Slower-than-expected progress transitioning from Fujitsu has cast doubt on whether the supplier's contract end date, when Accenture was due to take over the running of Horizon, will be met. Fujitsu's current contract with the Post Office will expire in March 2027, but there was an option to extend written into the last agreement that, due to slower than expected progress, looks more likely to be taken up. In November 2025, the deal was extended 12 months to March 2027, costing an additional £41m, which was criticised by Post Office scandal victims and campaigners. Another extension was always possible, with that tender including an option for up to another 12 months, which sources now believe will inevitably be taken up. The tender said: "… Based on the transition plan from replacement supplier, further extension of 6-12 months may be required." According to sources, things are also progressing slower than expected on the transfer away from Fujitsu. Even if just for months, an extension to Fujitsu's relationship with the Post Office, which began in the mid-1990s when it took over ICL, would mean millions more pounds being paid to Fujitsu.  There was also a delay in signing the contract for the software that will replace Horizon. As revealed by Computer Weekly, the signing of the Post Office's contract with OneView Commerce, a cloud-based electronic point of sale (EPOS) software supplier, was delayed six times and for nearly three months due to a legal dispute with the losing bidder, Escher. The contract was initially set to be formally signed on 3 June, but was not signed off until 24 August.  Read more about NBIT Post Office set to axe in-house-developed New Branch IT software. Post Office IT transformation project was 'set up to fail', chairman tells inquiry. Post Office spending £80,000+ a week on engineers who can't work, as IT project burns cash. Fujitsu set for further £180m deal as Post Office Horizon replacement delayed. Post Office Horizon replacement project labelled 'unachievable' as taxpayer bill reaches £1bn. A Post Office spokesperson said: "The Post Office signed a contract with Accenture in June to take on the day-to-day running of Horizon from Fujitsu. Work to transition the existing Horizon system over to Accenture is continuing collaboratively and at pace. In addition, working with our partners, our plans relating to what our new system would entail and how it could be rolled out across the network are ahead of schedule at present. The Post Office has previously stated to Computer Weekly that 'Fujitsu will be completely removed from its Post Office contract by the summer of 2027'. That remains our position." The Horizon replacement project was first planned almost exactly seven years ago, after the Post Office admitted defeat in the Alan Bates and Others versus Post Office group litigation, when it was proved Horizon errors caused the account shortfalls that subpostmasters were blamed and punished for. But nothing really moved, and it was only after the ITV dramatisation of the Post Office scandal in January 2024, amid public outrage, that things started to happen. This culminated in the £1.8bn New Branch IT (NBIT) project, but this ran into trouble and was eventually axed in May 2024, and was replaced by the current project, which sees an off-the-shelf EPOS system replace Horizon in a £169.2m contract with OneView Commerce, with Accenture providing outsourcing services through a £322.8m contract. There have been multiple Fujitsu extensions worth nearly £200m since 2019. Meaningless apologies With the Post Office scandal public inquiry's final conclusions expected early next year, the timing of an extention could also be highly controversial. Fujitsu is expected to be heavily criticized in the report, which will examine the causes of the scandal in detail. An initial inquiry report that looked at the human impact of the scandal, which was covered in Phase 1, found among many disturbing impacts that it could not be ruled out that 13 suicides were caused by the scandal. Despite its repeated apologies, Fujitsu has done little to convince victims of its regret and intention to make amends. Following the publication of the inquiry's first report, in summer 2025, Computer Weekly revealed that a senior Fujitsu executive told staff in a meeting that the report was "not that bad". His recorded remarks about the devastating inquiry findings are at odds with Fujitsu's apologetic statements. In stark contrast the report, which was published in July 2025, they were described as "profoundly disturbing" by the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry chair, Wyn Williams. Furthermore, in April 2024, just after the scandal and Fujitsu's role in it became wide public knowledge, the supplier promised, as a gesture, not to bid for government contracts. But through leaked comms, Computer Weekly revealed how the supplier's staff were instructed how to bid for government contracts during the self-imposed ban. Adding to the frustration and anger of victims, the supplier has repeatedly refused to commit to an amount it will pay towards the billions of pounds in costs associated with a scandal it was partly to blame for, waiting for the publication of the inquiry report. Read more: Fujitsu's role in the Post Office scandal: Everything you need to know Almost immediately after the ITV drama about the scandal made it headline news, opening it up to the wider public, the then Fujitsu European boss said the supplier had a "moral obligation" to pay towards the costs of the scandal. But an extention to the contract could see millions of pounds of taxpayer money heading Fujitsu's way before the supplier pays a penny towards the cost of the scandal. If an extension is required, it could come around the time of the main public inquiry report. This will look at phases 2 to 7 of the public inquiry, which will include forensic examination of the part Fujitsu and its staff played in what is often referred to as the widest miscarriage of justice in British history. Nothing surprises us Former subpostmaster Scott Darlington, who had his wrongful conviction for false accounting overturned in 2021, said nothing shocks him anymore when it comes to the scandal. "There are so many things that are hard to believe, this is just another one to pile on top," he said. Pete Murray, a former subpostmaster based in Northwest England, who lost his business and had his life shattered as a result of the Post Office scandal, said: "There is no surprise if the contract gets extended. It's just the same old story." Former subpostmaster Jo Hamilton, who had a wrongful conviction for false accounting overturned alongside Darlington, agreed that nothing comes as a surprise after years fighting the Post Office. "The whole thing is just a mess, but we are used to it, so no surprises," she said. Timeline: Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009 May 2009: Bankruptcy, prosecution and disrupted livelihoods – postmasters tell their story. September 2009: Post-masters form action group after accounts shortfall. November 2009: Post Office theft case deferred over IT questions. May 2010: A pilot of the new Horizon Online system at Royal Mail has been scaled back after connectivity problems and outages. February 2011: Post Office faces legal action over alleged accounting system failures. October 2011: 85 subpostmasters seek legal support in claims against Post Office computer system. June 2012: Post Office launches external review of system at centre of legal disputes. January 2013: Post Office admits Horizon system needs more investigation. January 2013: Post Office announces amnesty for Horizon evidence. January 2013: Post Office wants to get to bottom of IT system allegations. June 2013: Investigation into Post Office accounting system to drill down on strongest cases. July 2013: Post Office Horizon system investigation reveals concerns. October 2013: End in sight for subpostmaster claims against Post Office's Horizon accounting system. October 2013: Former Lord Justice of Appeal Hooper joins Post Office Horizon investigation. November 2013: 150 subpostmasters file claims over "faulty" Horizon accounting system. September 2014: Fresh questions raised over Post Office IT system's role in fraud cases. December 2014: MPs blast Post Office over IT system investigation and remove backing. December 2014: Why MPs lost faith in the Post Office's IT investigation, but vowed to fight on. December 2014: MPs to debate subpostmaster IT injustice claims. December 2014: MP accuses Post Office of acting 'duplicitously' in IT investigation. January 2015: MPs force inquiry into Post Office subpostmaster mediation scheme. January 2015: Post Office faces grilling by MPs over Horizon accounting system. February 2015: Post Office CIO will talk to any subpostmaster about IT problems, promises CEO. March 2015: Post Office ends working group for IT system investigation day before potentially damaging report. March 2015: MPs seek reassurance over Post Office mediation scheme. March 2015: Retiring MP aims to uncover truth of alleged Post Office computer system problems. April 2015: Post Office failed to investigate account shortfalls before legal action, report claims. April 2015: Criminal Courts Review Commission set to review subpostmasters' claims of wrongful prosecution. June 2015: Post Office looking to replace controversial Horizon system with IBM, says MP. July 2015: Campaigners call for independent inquiry into Post Office Horizon IT system dispute. October 2015: James Arbuthnot takes Post Office IT fight to House of Lords. November 2015: The union that represents Post Office subpostmasters has warned of a problem with the Horizon accounting system. November 2015: Post Office IT support email reveals known Horizon flaw November 2015: Group litigation against Post Office being prepared in Horizon dispute. February 2016: Post Office faces group litigation over Horizon IT as subpostmasters fund class action. June 2016: Post Office chairman Tim Parker says there would be "considerable risk" associated with changing its Horizon computer system. November 2016: The legal team hired by a group of subpostmasters will take their case to the next stage. January 2017: The group action against the Post Office that alleges subpostmasters have been wrongly punished for accounting errors gets green light from the High Court of Justice. March 2017: 1,000 subpostmasters apply to join IT-related group litigation against Post Office. April 2017: Investigation into claims of miscarriages of justice in relation to a Post Office accounting system has appointed a forensic accountant firm. May 2017: Hundreds of subpostmasters have applied to join IT-related legal action since March. July 2017: Post Office defence in computer system legal case due this week. August 2017: Campaigners submit initial evidence in group litigation against Post Office over controversial Horizon IT system. October 2017: Subpostmasters' group action against the Post Office reaches an important milestone. November 2017: An end is in sight for subpostmasters' campaign against alleged wrongful prosecution, which they blame on a faulty computer system. November 2017: High Court judge in subpostmasters versus Post Office case over a faulty system tells legal teams to cooperate. January 2018: Forensic investigation into Post Office IT system at centre of legal case nears completion. April 2018: Criminal Cases Review Commission  examination of Post office IT system has raised further questions. May 2018: Post Office branches unable to connect to Horizon computer system for several hours after morning opening time. October 2018: After over a decade of controversy, next week marks the beginning of a court battle between subpostmasters and the Post Office. November 2018: Case against Post Office in relation to allegedly faulty computer system begins in High Court. November 2018: High Court case in which subpostmasters are suing the Post Office has revealed a known problem with a computer system. November 2018: A High Court trial, where subpostmasters are suing the Post Office for damages caused by an allegedly faulty IT system, ends second week. November 2018: Post Office director admits to Horizon errors and not sharing details with subpostmaster network. November 2018: The High Court trial in which subpostmasters are suing the Post Office has reached an important stage. December 2018: CCRC may hold off subpostmaster decision until after Post Office Horizon trial. December 2018: Court case where subpostmasters are suing the Post Office set to span at least four trials and extend into 2020. January 2019: Subpostmasters' campaign group attacks Post Office CEO Paula Vennells' New Year honour amid ongoing court case. January 2019: Thousands of known errors on controversial Post Office computer system to be revealed. March 2019: Tech under spotlight at High Court in second subpostmasters versus Post Office trial. March 2019: Post Office considered Horizon IT system "high-risk", court told. March 2019: CCRC watching Post Office Horizon trial closely. March 2019: Judge rules that Post Office showed "oppressive behaviour" in response to claimants accused of accounting errors they blamed on Horizon IT system. March 2019: Post Office "lacked humanity" in the treatment of subpostmasters, says peer. March 2019: A High Court judge heard that the Post Office did not investigate a computer system error that could cause losses, despite being offered evidence. March 2019: The Post Office legal team in the case brought by more than 500 subpostmasters has called for the judge to be recused after questioning his impartiality. March 2019: A senior civil servant asked the Post Office to repay public money it had wrongly allocated to paying legal costs. April 2019: Subpostmaster claimants' legal team makes application for the Post Office to pay millions of pounds of costs associated with trial. April 2019: Post Office to appeal judgment from first Horizon trial. April 2019: The Post Office's claim that the judge overseeing the case concerning its controversial Horizon IT system was biased has been dismissed. April 2019: MP questions government over Post Office Horizon case. April 2019: Government says no conflict of interest in trial despite Post Office chairman's dual role. May 2019: The Court of Appeal has refused the Post Office's application to appeal a major decision in the Horizon IT trial. May 2019: The Post Office has applied for permission to appeal judgments from the first trial in its IT-related legal battle with subpostmasters. May 2019: The judge in the Post Office Horizon trial has ordered the organisation to pay the legal costs, and refused to give permission to appeal a major judgment. June 2019: Post Office asks Court of Appeal for permission to appeal judgment in first Horizon trial. July 2019: Post Office back-office error leaves subpostmaster with thousands of pounds extra July 2019: Post Office fixes technical problem causing accounting errors in Horizon August 2019: Subpostmasters suffering slow running and frozen terminals while Post Office searches for a fix to issues apparently caused by a software update. August 2019: The Post Office has fixed the latest problems with its Horizon system, affecting hundreds of branches.  October 2019: A High Court judgment for a trial that focused on the Post Office's IT system at the centre of a multimillion-pound litigation will be announced early next month. November 2019: The Court of Appeal has rejected a Post Office application to appeal judgments made in its multimillion-pound battle with subpostmasters over IT system failures. November 2019: Peer calls for clear-out of Post Office board after Court of Appeal confirms major court defeat. December 2019: The Post Office has settled its long-running legal dispute with subpostmasters, and will pay £57.75m in damages. December 2019: Subpostmasters ended their legal battle with the Post Office at the optimal time, according to the lawyer that managed the High Court action. December 2019: Subpostmasters proved right on IT system failures as calls for full public inquiry mount. December 2019: Criminal Courts Review Commission to review Horizon judgment "swiftly". December 2019: National Federation of Subpostmasters cries foul after court ruling on controversial computer system. December 2019: Former Post Office CEO apologises to subpostmasters over Horizon scandal. December 2019: Call for former Post Office CEO to step down from public roles after IT court battle lost. January 2020: Fujitsu must face scrutiny following Post Office Horizon trial judgment. January 2020: Subpostmaster group calls for government to pay legal costs for Horizon trial. January 2020: Why subpostmasters are calling on the government to pay Horizon trial costs. January 2020: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy says it did not make decisions in the Post Office's recent court battle. January 2020: Government should not be allowed to dismiss subpostmasters' claims over Horizon IT scandal. January 2020: Police sent information about potential Fujitsu staff perjury in subpostmaster prosecutions. January 2020: Prosecutions are a significant step closer to being sent to the Court of Appeal as Criminal Courts Review Commission forms a group of commissioners to review them. January 2020: Alan Bates: The "details man" the Post Office paid the price for ignoring. February 2020: The government has refused to pay the huge legal costs subpostmasters incurred in their battle with the government-owned Post Office, which they won. February 2020: Members of Parliament seeking a public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal face huge challenges, but pressure and time could force justice. February 2020: Calls for inquiry into Post Office IT scandal increase in Parliament, with cross-party support. February 2020: Care Quality Commission to review concerns over Paula Vennells' appointment after they were raised by a former NHS consultant psychiatrist. February 2020: Government admits it was too passive managing Post Office as parliamentary pressure builds. February 2020: Minister says Post Office IT experts misled the government when it asked questions about subpostmasters' concerns over Horizon IT system. March 2020: Boris Johnson commits to "getting to the bottom of" Post Office Horizon IT scandal. March 2020: Boris Johnson's commitment to inquiry into Post Office scandal in doubt. March 2020: MPs call on PM to commit to full public inquiry into Post Office Horizon IT scandal. March 2020: Those who did not play by the rules in Post Office Horizon scandal "should face prosecution". March 2020: MPs told to hold to account those responsible for Post Office Horizon IT scandal. March 2020: The Post Office has sparked anger with secret settlements with subpostmasters outside the recent legal action against it. March 2020: Labour MP Karl Turner tells Computer Weekly that the Post Office Horizon scandal is the most grotesque version of predatory capitalism he has ever seen. March 2020: MP Kevan Jones has warned a government minister not to repeat the mistakes of predecessors in relation to the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. March 2020: Criminal Cases Review Commission to use Microsoft Teams to ensure review of subpostmaster prosecutions is held on time. March 2020: Post Office postpones subpostmaster compensation scheme amid Covid-19 crisis. March 2020: Meeting reviewing subpostmaster applications to appeal criminal prosecutions moves into second day. March 2020: Subpostmaster prosecutions to be considered by Court of Appeal for miscarriages of justice. March 2020: How subpostmasters made legal history with biggest referral of potential miscarriages of justice. April 2020: Met Police examines information about evidence given in court by Fujitsu staff on the Horizon IT system. May 2020: Subpostmasters who had their lives ruined by the Post Office's faulty IT system have received their damages after a High Court victory. May 2020: A senior Post Office executive at the centre of an IT scandal, who tried to mislead a High Court judge in relation to it, has left the organisation without fanfare despite many years of service. May 2020: Post Office re-examines hundreds of prosecutions that could have resulted from faults in Horizon IT system. June 2020: A campaign group representing subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted for theft and false accounting by the Post Office is raising money to help clear the names of victims of the scandal. June 2020: Subpostmasters to force scrutiny of government's role in Post Office IT scandal. June 2020: The Criminal Cases Review Commission sends 47 more subpostmaster cases to Court of Appeal and asks government to review private prosecution powers. June 2020: Select committee chair writes to former Post Office CEO demanding answers over her role in IT scandal. June 2020: The government has been accused of launching a review that fails in getting to the bottom of one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history. June 2020: Subpostmasters will not cooperate with government review into IT scandal. June 2020: The government's proposed review of the Post Office IT scandal has received a further setback as forensic accountants join subpostmasters in refusing to back it. June 2020: Call for government review of Post Office Horizon scandal to have the power to force individuals to give evidence under oath. June 2020: Subpostmasters seeking justice in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal are regaining momentum in Parliament. June 2020: Healthcare regulator will be discussing concerns about former NHS boss chairing an NHS trust at an upcoming meeting. June 2020: Second Sight is working with law firm in appeals by subpostmasters against criminal convictions in Horizon IT scandal. June 2020: Post Office and Fujitsu blame each other for many of the failings in the Horizon IT scandal that wrecked lives. June 2020: Parliamentary Justice Committee to hold short inquiry into the rules and regulations surrounding private organisations' ability to initiate criminal proceedings. July 2020: Victims of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal need to raise thousands of pounds in a week or those responsible for their suffering will avoid scrutiny. July 2020: The government is set to face scrutiny over its involvement in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in modern UK history. September 2020: The government repeats that it won't pay victims' legal costs and confirms review into the scandal will not have the power to call witnesses. September 2020: Subpostmasters still not being told about all the known errors in the controversial Post Office branch accounting and retail system that they use. October 2020: The Post Office has chosen not to contest 44 out of 47 appeals, meaning most are likely to have their names cleared, but others still face a Court of Appeal battle for justice. October 2020: MPs are demanding the government holds a full statutory public inquiry into the Post Office IT scandal. October 2020: NHS regulator continues enquiries about the appointment of former Post Office CEO at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as more damning details emerge. October 2020: Government minister met with former subpostmaster online in an attempt to get victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal involved in government review. October 2020: The Post Office is focusing urgently on fixing an IT error suffered by a subpostmaster amid the ongoing IT scandal. October 2020: Labour politicians are calling for the government to give the Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry the power to force witnesses to give evidence if they don't cooperate. October 2020: Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has asked for external review of its process when appointing controversial executive. November 2020: Government faces scrutiny of its handling of the Post Office IT scandal that destroyed subpostmasters' lives and livelihoods. November 2020: Post Office branches offline during busy business hours after suffering an IT error that the Post Office said related to IT from supplier Fujitsu. November 2020: Fujitsu is refusing to explain what caused a national system outage in Post Office branches last week, despite the Post Office confirming the issue was the fault of the supplier. November 2020: The Metropolitan Police opens criminal investigation into Fujitsu staff who gave evidence in trials of subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted and even imprisoned for financial crimes. November 2020: Post Office criticised over vagueness of its explanation of the cause of a UK-wide IT failure that saw subpostmasters unable to do business. November 2020: Post Office says planned firmware update caused the problem that left branches unable to do business for 90 minutes. November 2020: Court documents reveal the names of the Fujitsu employees under investigation for potentially providing misleading information in criminal trials. November 2020: The government allowed the Post Office to 'run amok' and destroy lives, says complaint to Parliamentary Ombudsman. November 2020: Campaigning politician demands access to documents that could prove that the Post Office lied. December 2020: Government denies responsibility for the abuse inflicted on subpostmasters by the Post Office over faulty IT system. December 2020: CEO at the centre of the scandal that saw innocent people bankrupted and some sent to prison steps down from NHS role as pressure for her resignation grows. December 2020: History made as subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted in Horizon IT scandal have convictions quashed. December 2020: The appointment of a former Post Office executive, who tried to mislead a judge, in the Football Association of Wales has been questioned by an MP. December 2020: Court of Appeal indicates subpostmasters can pursue appeal route that could do more damage to Post Office's reputation. January 2021: NHS trust defends its director appointment process following an external review of its recruitment of former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells. January 2021: Lawyers call for changes to digital evidence rule that made it easier for the Post Office to 'bamboozle courts' and make subpostmasters pay a heavy price for its IT failings. January 2021: The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has referred four more subpostmasters' criminal convictions to appeal, as part of the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern UK history. February 2021: A former senior developer who worked for Fujitsu on the Post Office IT system that led to subpostmasters being falsely accused of fraud, has claimed bosses knew of fundamental flaws before going live. February 2021: Subpostmasters call for Boris Johnson to pause and reshape the government's Horizon inquiry. February 2021: Vote of no confidence in Football Association of Wales boss triggered by recruitment of former Post Office executive who tried to mislead a judge in IT trial. March 2021: Government agrees to change private prosecution rules that were abused by the Post Office in its pursuit of subpostmasters wrongly accused of financial crimes. March 2021: Subpostmaster victims who have spent millions bringing the Post Office IT scandal to light have received no reply to their concerns from Boris Johnson. March 2021: MP condemns department's 'bizarre' rejection of freedom of information request linked to Post Office IT scandal.  March 2021: Football Association Wales boss steps down after losing confidence motion triggered by appointment of an executive involved in the Post Office IT scandal. March 2021: The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is reviewing five cases of potential miscarriage of justice in relation to subpostmaster prosecutions. March 2021: Subpostmasters heading to Court of Appeal to clear their names in what is potentially the biggest miscarriage of justice in English legal history. March 2021: The Post Office does not have enough money to pay compensation to the subpostmasters it wrongfully prosecuted. March 2021: Angela van den Bogerd has left her role at the Football Association of Wales, following criticism of her part in Post Office IT scandal. March 2021: Court of Appeal hearing reveals Post Office instructed employees to destroy documents that undermined an insistence that its Horizon computer system was robust. March 2021: The Post Office was warned that a former Fujitsu employee had misled courts when giving evidence on its behalf. March 2021: Boris Johnson agrees with MP that those responsible for the Post Office Horizon scandal should be brought to book. March 2021: Former Post Office chief was paid over £400,000 when she left despite the organisation being involved in what would become the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history. April 2021: The UK government faces a potential judicial review over its Post Office Horizon IT scandal inquiry, after subpostmasters formally wrote to the government seeking one. April 2021: The government is listening to calls for changes in how digital evidence is considered in court, as Post Office IT scandal spells out current rule's inadequacy. April 2021: The Post Office's controversial contract with Fujitsu has been extended another year to help the organisation manage its exit. April 2021: The Post Office is to move work done by Fujitsu in-house when its outsourcing contract ends, and is already recruiting IT experts. April 2021: The Post Office has revealed the end to its controversial Horizon IT system which, through its errors and the Post Office's denial of them, caused huge suffering. April 2021: The UK government is the only block to fair compensation for subpostmasters who were wrongly punished for accounting shortfalls. April 2021: The Court of Appeal has overturned the criminal convictions of 39 subpostmasters who were blamed and punished for accounting shortfalls caused by computer errors. April 2021: Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells has left roles in the church, Morrisons and Dunelm after postmasters' convictions were overturned in the Court of Appeal. April 2021: The biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history is set to get bigger as more subpostmasters take their cases to the Court of Appeal. May 2021: Post Office IT scandal CEO has no excuse for her inaction in preventing the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history, says Criminal Cases Review Commission chairperson. May 2021: Subpostmasters, MPs and the public call for a full statutory judge-led public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal, following another damning court judgment. May 2021: Government says it wants to ensure a fair pay-out for the 555 subpostmasters who defeated the Post Office in a legal battle. May 2021: The Post Office has contacted hundreds of people it might have wrongly prosecuted for financial crimes. May 2021: The miscarriages of justice involving subpostmasters are the most disturbing element of the Post Office Horizon scandal – but it goes much deeper. May 2021: The supplier at the centre of the Post Office Horizon scandal has so far escaped the ramifications of its role in the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history. May 2021: Another two former subpostmasters have had their convictions for financial crimes overturned, following a hearing in Southwark Crown Court. May 2021: The government inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal is set to be made statutory with the power to compel witnesses and evidence. May 2021: The government confirmed that the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal will be given statutory status and wider scope. May 2021: The Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance has agreed to meet the former judge heading up the inquiry into the Post Office scandal that ruined the lives of hundreds of subpostmasters. May 2021: Criminal Cases Review Commission will not allow pressure on its resources to prevent subpostmasters seeking a review of their criminal convictions. May 2021: Professional IT body wants changes to how computer evidence is used in court in the wake of the Post Office case. June 2021: The Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry begins with subpostmaster campaign group waiting for full details before committing its support. June 2021: Whatever the Post Office told government about its decision to sack investigators examining subpostmaster prosecutions for theft could identify if the government was part of a cover-up. June 2021: The Post Office has so far compensated about 400 subpostmasters who suffered losses as a result of computer errors that they were wrongly blamed for. July 2021: Another 10 subpostmasters are set to have their criminal convictions quashed as part of one of the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history. July 2021: The government has made no contact with subpostmasters two months after it said it would work with them to ensure they get speedy and fair compensation. July 2021: The cost of a scheme set up to compensate subpostmasters who were victims of the Horizon IT scandal will exceed £300m. July 2021: The government will pay interim compensation within weeks to subpostmasters who were wrongly convicted of crimes due to computer errors. August 2021: A further four subpostmasters are set to have their wrongful convictions overturned in the latest development in the Post Office Horizon scandal. August 2021: The government has failed to provide fair compensation to the subpostmasters who exposed the full extent of the Horizon scandal to the world. August 2021: Subpostmasters demand more clarity on Horizon public inquiry before committing their support. September 2021: Six more subpostmaster convictions referred for appeal in Post Office IT scandal. September 2021: Government minister holds secret meeting with Post Office Horizon scandal victims. October 2021: The public inquiry into a scandal that saw subpostmasters imprisoned after being blamed for accounting shortfalls will hold its first public hearing early next month. October 2021: A government minister investigating the controversial Horizon IT project in 2000 described the Post Office board of directors as 'appalling, short-sighted and partisan'. November 2021: The behaviour of Post Office senior management during the Horizon scandal was so egregious that the supplier of the faulty software has escaped a large financial penalty. November 2021: Former Fujitsu staff who gave evidence in subpostmaster trials have been questioned by police for a second time. November 2021: Former subpostmasters convicted of crimes based on data from error-prone Post Office computer system continue to embark on appeals. November 2021: The first hearing in the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry hears why victims should be paid compensation immediately. November 2021:The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is investigating eight potential miscarriages of justice linked with faulty Post Office IT system. November 2021: The Post Office will waive professional legal privilege for documents relating to legal advice it received regarding subpostmaster prosecutions. November 2021 A total number of 65 subpostmasters have now had criminal convictions overturned in Post Office Horizon scandal. November 2021 Subpostmasters asked to withdraw support for Post Office scandal inquiry. November 2021: Seven more subpostmasters have been cleared after the Post Office charged them for crimes caused by its faulty Horizon software. November 2021: The Post Office made clear its support for a change in UK law regarding computer evidence that was making prosecution 'onerous' – a change which later helped to wrongfully convict subpostmasters. November 2021: The chair of the Post Office scandal public inquiry has confirmed the compensation of a group of subpostmasters will be revisited. December 2021: Government must go further after agreeing to pay compensation for wrongly convicted subpostmasters. December 2021: Pressure on government to pay fair compensation to subpostmasters left out of current schemes. January 2022: Almost 100 MPs have backed a call for the government to reverse its decision to exclude 555 subpostmasters from fair compensation. January 2022: A parliamentary select committee was told that the Post Office is unable to access information to accurately calculate compensation for some Horizon scandal victims. January 2022: The Post Office received subsidies worth over £1bn last year, including a £685m payment just last month, in a scheme labelled Post Office Historical Matters Compensation. January 2022: Government widens subpostmaster miscarriage of justice compensation scheme in Horizon scandal. January 2022: Government officials are open to finding a way to properly compensate victims of the Horizon scandal without setting a dangerous legal precedent. January 2022: The subpostmaster campaign group responsible for exposing the Post Office Horizon scandal is to meet with the government to discuss fair compensation for their suffering. January 2022: Fujitsu cannot hide away as taxpayers pick up the bill for the Post Office scandal triggered by its IT system, say peers. February 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal are being denied the millions of pounds they are owed as the government delays compensation resolution. February 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal are due to tell their devastating stories to the statutory inquiry. February 2022: MPs are demanding urgent action by the government to provide full compensation to a group of 555 Post Office Horizon scandal victims who have so far been left out. February 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal have been suffering in silence for many years, but the current public inquiry is giving them a voice, and people are listening. February 2022: Horizon inquiry questioning raises hopes of fair compensation for victims so far left out. February 2022: Government set to backtrack on untenable position on subpostmaster compensation. March 2022: The Post Office and Fujitsu failed to alert subpostmasters to a software error that caused them to be wrongly blamed for accounting shortfalls. March 2022: Horizon inquiry hearing sheds light on subpostmaster federation's role in hushing up IT problems. March 2022: 555 subpostmasters to get fair compensation after government U-turn on its stance on High Court settlement. March 2022: Compensation goal finally in sight for 555 Post Office scandal victims, after 13 year campaign. April 2022: Fujitsu bags £430m government contracts despite rising cost of Post Office Horizon scandal. April 2022: The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission expects more subpostmasters with potential wrongful convictions to come forward. April 2022: Former subpostmasters who were wrongfully convicted and punished for crimes have not yet received full compensation over a year after their convictions were overturned. April 2022: A former Fujitsu worker has been questioned under caution for the third time as police investigate potential perjury in trials of subpostmasters wrongfully convicted of financial crimes. May 2022: Paula Vennells could be stripped of her CBE as the Honours Forfeiture Committee commits to reconsider its award in the light of the Post Office Horizon scandal. May 2022: Lawyer negotiating compensation for victims of Post Office scandal says the two sides are 'poles apart' on valuations. May 2022: Inquiry into Post Office scandal moves to Scotland, with differences in English and Scottish law raising further serious questions about subpostmaster prosecutions. May 2022: The chair of the Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry has brought forward hearings about compensation as victims warn that at this rate "people will die" before they get anything. May 2022: The Criminal Cases Review Commission is to contact 88 more potentially wrongfully convicted Post Office workers. May 2022: The Post Office Horizon IT system at the centre of a national scandal will be replaced by 2025, with a supplier expected to be named in August. May 2022: Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal in Scotland raise further questions about Post Office and government conduct. May 2022: Government accused of 'passing the buck' and 'not knowing what it is talking about' after stating it has no plans to review court rules on computer evidence. May 2022: Computer Weekly spoke to the barristers at Henderson Chambers that fought the Post Office in the High Court to expose the widest miscarriage of justice in UK history. June 2022: Two more Post Office Horizon scandal victims have had their wrongful convictions overturned. June 2022: The 555 subpostmasters who exposed the depth of the Post Office Horizon scandal could finally be fairly compensated. June 2022: Forensic accounting firm that 'knows where the bodies are buried' will be released from confidentiality obligations by the Post Office to give evidence to public inquiry. June 2022: Lawyers negotiating the compensation valuations for former subpostmasters who suffered wrongful convictions have brought in independent judicial scrutiny to break an impasse. June 2022: Subpostmaster campaign group is a step closer to achieving what it was originally set up to do as government launches compensation scheme for its members who did not receive fair payouts. July 2022: More former subpostmasters have their wrongful convictions for theft and fraud overturned in the Court of Appeal. July 2022: When the Post Office's lie about the Horizon system failed to silence subpostmaster critics, it took more extreme measures, say victims of the scandal. September 2022: The Met Police have interviewed a former subpostmaster as part of an investigation into potential perjury by former Fujitsu staff. September 2022: Chair of statutory public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal has aired his disappointment over the slow progress in making interim payments to victims. October 2022: The public inquiry into the Post Office scandal has begun phase two with a request for adjournment amid allegations that the Post Office is failing to disclose relevant documents. October 2022: Victims demand that the perpetrators of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal face the public inquiry. October 2022: Fujitsu's part in causing the extreme suffering of subpostmasters will be made clear as the IT supplier begins giving evidence at a statutory inquiry. October 2022: A dereliction of duty saw subpostmaster federation ignore its members when IT problems hit and allowed the Post Office destroy their lives. October 2022: Politicians are keeping up the pressure to block government contracts being awarded to Fujitsu because of its role in the Post Office Horizon scandal. October 2022: Problems reported with the Post Office's Horizon IT system before its roll-out should have been regarded as a "show-stopper." October 2022: Horizon system code writers lacked basic programming skills, according to the task force set up to investigate reported problems with the controversial software. October 2022: Trials of the Horizon computer system in Post Office branches in 1999 led to a warning from subpostmasters that software problems meant "a tragedy was not far away". November 2022: Game of 'hardball' in Horizon negotiations left subpostmasters exposed to tragedy. November 2022: Confirmation bias led Post Office to prosecute subpostmasters without investigation, inquiry told. November 2022: SCCRC has referred six cases of potential wrongful convictions of subpostmasters to the High Court of Justiciary. November 2022: Fujitsu expert witness in subpostmaster trial 'manoeuvred' into role, public inquiry told. November 2022: Post Office changed view of Horizon problems before roll-out, because of a 'sunk cost fallacy'. November 2022: Team working on controversial Post Office Horizon EPOSS software was the 'joke of the building'. November 2022: The Post Office IT scandal inquiry's appointed expert IT witness was "troubled" by the lack of integrity of data from the Horizon system that was used to send people to prison. November 2022: Telegram from British Embassy in Tokyo to UK government reveals pressure on ministers to sign off controversial contract. November 2022: Subpostmaster federation deliberately kept public in dark over computer problems. December 2022: Post Office boosted its 'coffers' as Horizon system threw up unexplained shortfalls, inquiry told. December 2022:  Post Office scandal – "cock-up or cook-up"? December 2022: Criminal Cases Review Commission calls on more convicted subpostmasters to come forward. January 2023: Former subpostmaster Alan Bates, who 'pulled up trees and moved mountains', turns down OBE offer. January 2023: Advisory board goal for Post Office scandal victims to be returned to rightful financial position. January 2023: Former Fujitsu staff under police investigation to face Post Office IT scandal inquiry. February 2023: Post Office's most senior executives hushed up Horizon errors, public inquiry told. March 2023: Post Office attempted to replace controversial Horizon system 10 years ago, but was put off by project's scale and cost. March 2023: IT worker tells public inquiry that the Post Office Horizon helpdesk was toxic, rudderless and racist. March 2023: Subpostmaster demands names of Post Office executives who crushed him to suffocate truth. April 2023: CCRC says 'door open' for more reviews of subpostmaster convictions. April 2023: The Post Office has extended a contract with Fujitsu after being unable to resolve technical issues related to migrating its IT to the cloud. April 2023: Post Office paid IBM millions when it ended proposed contract to replace Horizon. April 2023: The Post Office ended a proposed contract with IBM to replace its controversial Horizon system after work had already started. May 2023: More Post Office software-related convictions overturned takes total to 86. May 2023: Fujitsu staff had 'unrestricted and unauditable' remote access to Post Office branch systems. May 2023: Post Office lawyer bragged how team 'destroyed attack on the Horizon system' and put woman in prison. May 2023: Post Office executive told to report false bill of health on controversial software. May 2023: Campaigning former subpostmaster fears compensation for scandal victims will be delayed to 2025. May 2023: Post Office scandal – cover-up a 'dark chapter' in government, corporate and legal history. June 2023: Post Office CEO told MPs that the organisation is telling some subpostmasters it won't oppose them if they appeal. July 2023: Public inquiry hears how Post Office security withheld evidence from people it suspected of theft. July 2023: Former Fujitsu IT chief evidence postponed after late Post Office disclosure. July 2023: Post Office inquiry must examine role of court rules around use of computer evidence that enabled it to prosecute innocent people. July 2023: Peer calls for every Post Office prosecution to be reviewed. July 2023: Horizon inquiry adjourned as Post Office disclosure failures threaten to 'derail' proceedings. July 2023: Horizon inquiry chief threatens Post Office with 'criminal sanctions' over disclosure failures. July 2023: Subpostmaster compensation deadline will be missed, warns public inquiry chair. July 2023: CCRC refers two more subpostmaster convictions for appeal. July 2023: Post Office tried to convince independent IT witness that he was wrong about Horizon. August 2023: MP calls for review of computer evidence rule which led to subpostmasters being wrongly convicted. August 2023: Six subpostmaster appeals to be heard in Scottish court. September 2023: Post Office employee changed story for witness statement used to destroy subpostmasters. September 2023: Post Office had no interest in subpostmaster welfare when taking legal action, says Fujitsu memo. September 2023: Government offers £600,000 to subpostmasters with overturned convictions. September 2023: Five more subpostmasters have IT system-related convictions overturned October 2023: Government 'breached privacy' of Horizon victims with compensation offer. October 2023: First subpostmaster Horizon conviction overturned in Scotland. October 2023: Amnesia hides names of individuals behind Post Office's 'head on a spike' strategy. October 2023: 'Angry' lawyer warned against Post Office computer investigation in 2010 email. October 2023: Former Post Office executive admits he wouldn't sign unfair contract he pushed on subpostmasters. October 2023: Post Office auditors presumed subpostmasters were 'on the fiddle' or 'in a muddle'. October 2023: Bill for the scandal over £1bn, as campaign leader considers private prosecutions of Post Office executives. November 2023: Post Office disclosure failures delay Horizon scandal inquiry again. November 2023: Former Post Office manager has no memory of preparing witness statement in legal dispute. November 2023: Post Office scandal inquiry postpones more key witness hearings. November 2023: Controversial Fujitsu contract with Post Office extended again. November 2023: CCRC refers posthumous appeals against convictions to Crown Court for first time. November 2023: Paula Vennells' email fuelled Post Office Horizon cult, inquiry told. November 2023: Slow government response to Post Office scandal compensation forces new legislation. December 2023: Post Office lawyer with his fingerprints all over IT scandal spreads blame December 2023: Undisclosed document could reveal pressure on Fujitsu expert witness in Post Office prosecution. December 2023: Post Office prioritised its 'bottom line' over justice. December 2023: Former Post Office investigator called subpostmaster campaigners 'crooks'. December 2023: Current Post Office executive in denial of Horizon cover-up. December 2023: Government advised to overturn all Post Office scandal convictions. December 2023: Government reveals its own slow progress in compensating Post Office scandal victims. December 2023: 'No hiding place' for those responsible for Post Office Horizon scandal. December 2023: Post Office gets government handout as Horizon replacement costs increase 'significantly'. January 2024: Metropolitan Police launches second criminal investigation in Post Office scandal. January 2024: The current rules around digital evidence are partly to blame for the widest miscarriage of justice in UK history. January 2024: Fujitsu gets stay of execution as MPs support exoneration of wrongfully convicted subpostmasters. January 2024: 'Hero' subpostmaster accuses government of diversion tactics through 'weaselly' statistics. January 2024: How Fujitsu became a central part of the Post Office scandal. January 2024: The government has chosen to introduce legislation that will enable it to exonerate hundreds of subpostmasters as a group January 2024: How legal disclosure failures disrupted the Post Office Horizon inquiry. January 2024: Fujitsu 'morally obliged' to contribute to subpostmaster financial redress amid 'insane' delays January 2024: More than 900 subpostmaster convictions wouldn't have happened without Post Office-backed law change. January 2024: Anger sparked by TV drama forces Fujitsu to put public sector contract bidding on hold. January 2024: Fujitsu boss describes Post Office behaviour as 'shameful and appalling'. January 2024: Fujitsu boss admits to missed opportunities to prevent miscarriages of justice  January 2024: Concerns of an expert witness in subpostmaster trials were ignored by Fujitsu. January 2024: Urgent question asks which ministers knew of Post Office's shocking plan to remove judge. January 2024: Fujitsu agrees to support former subpostmasters' families beyond financial redress. January 2024: Committee chair asks minister to back 'Mr Bates clause' in Post Office compensation legislation. January 2024: Expert IT witness outsmarted an 'aggressive' Post Office to get to truth after inspection 'madness'. January 2024: MP demands answers from government minister over second faulty Post Office IT system. January 2024: Pre-Horizon users contacting lawyers as more Post Office IT horror stories emerge. February 2024: Government 'dragging it out' by refusing to share knowledge of Post Office trial 'delaying tactic'. February 2024: 'People are now listening,' Post Office inquiry told as latest phase ends. February 2024: Post Office scandal: Phase four's rogues' gallery February 2024: More than 1,000 subpostmasters could have used second faulty Post Office system. February 2024: Post Office Horizon IT scandal inquiry: Two years of shocking revelations. February 2024: Post Office CEO refused to meet government minister without her lawyer after 2015 Horizon report. February 2024: Post Office IT insider and the software decision that lit the Horizon scandal. February 2024: Controversial Post Office Capture system was developed in-house February 2024: Law to clear hundreds of wrongfully convicted subpostmasters expected in July February 2024: Unisys investigating potential involvement in controversial Post Office system. February 2024: King Charles strips disgraced Post Office CEO of her CBE February 2024: Post Office scandal roundup: Fourth Estate in full throttle. February 2024: Government won't rush to include Post Office Capture convictions in overturning legislation. February 2024: Government should face legal deadlines on paying Post Office victims. February 2024: 'Pathetic' Post Office spat detracts attention and fuels 'disdain' for authority. February 2024: Post Office CEO's claim to be 'working hard' on Capture investigation in doubt. March 2024: MPs demand Fujitsu be 'nailed down' on financial promise to Post Office scandal victims. March 2024: KC names Post Office staff he believes conspired to pervert the course of justice March 2024: Perverting course of justice and contempt of Parliament: a week in post-drama Post Office scandal. March 2024: Post Office prosecutions during Horizon go-live phase are 'frightening'. March 2024: 'Brutal' decisions required to sort out Post Office mess, says select committee chair. March 2024: MPs call for Post Office exclusion from compensation schemes, as trust hits rock bottom. March 2024: Fujitsu should pay half of Post Office scandal costs, says select committee chair. March 2024: Current subpostmaster account shortfalls reveal extent of Post Office's pre-2019 neglect March 2024: Unprecedented bill to exonerate hundreds of wrongly convicted Post Office workers arrives. March 2024: Children of Post Office victims to hold Fujitsu boss to his word. March 2024: Controversial Post Office Capture software was completely rewritten in 1994 March 2024: Post Office scandal fallout for Fujitsu could open UK public sector to Indian giants. March 2024: Post Office Capture users' campaign for justice gathers pace. March 2024: Sums of money Post Office 'stole' from subpostmasters may never be known. March 2024: Leaked comms reveal Fujitsu eyeing huge UK government bounty. March 2024: Remote access is the Post Office's known unknown April 2024: Fujitsu staff instructed how to bid for government contracts during self-imposed ban April 2024: Fujitsu should stop bending rules, stop bidding and pay up, says MP April 2024: Environment Agency dumps Fujitsu as Post Office scandal takes its toll April 2024: MPs will grill Cabinet Office over Fujitsu contract bidding pause. April 2024: Some former Post Office staff should be jailed over scandal, says government minister. April 2024: Further extension to controversial Post Office contract with Fujitsu inevitable April 2024: Civil servants more to blame for Post Office cover-up than ministers, says Alan Bates April 2024: Subpostmasters stealing from branches 'didn't make sense,' former judge tells inquiry April 2024: Fujitsu public sector contracts dry up in Post Office scandal aftermath. April 2024: Former Post Office executive's neglect prolonged Horizon reliability myth. April 2024: Post Office boss said subpostmasters had hands in till and blamed technology. April 2024: Alan Bates and JFSA won't back down in fight with government and Post Office. April 2024: Post Office boss signed off hush money to cover up smoking gun  April 2024: IT expert who helped expose Post Office scandal offers to investigate second controversial system. April 2024: Unisys reveals no link to development of controversial Post Office software. April 2024: Post Office lawyer was a jack of all trades, but failed his own. April 2024: Fujitsu to cut UK jobs as Post Office scandal fallout hits sales. April 2024: Expert investigating Capture system refuses to meet 'untrustworthy' Post Office. April 2024: Post Office boss used husband's descriptions in 'Orwellian' ploy to downplay Horizon problems. April 2024: Lords debate amendment to law on use of computer evidence in light of Post Office scandal April 2024: More evidence emerges that Post Office executive misled High Court judge.  April 2024: Post Office 'lied' to subpostmasters when forced to meet them, says former federation representative. April 2024: Post Office scheme was a 'charade' that never intended for large compensation pay-outs. April 2024: Post Office misjudged campaigner it labelled a 'bluffer' May 2024: Post Office investigators saw subpostmasters as 'enemies' – and that's what they became. May 2024: Post Office legal boss withheld details from statutory body reviewing miscarriages of justice. May 2024: Police told in 2016 that Post Office prosecutor withheld evidence of Horizon errors from court. May 2024: Fujitsu Post Office system admission was 'bombshell' to barrister. May 2024: Barrister says Post Office lawyers misled him over Horizon cases May 2024: Scotland's Post Office scandal victims to be exonerated en masse. May 2024: Comms director at centre of cover-up never thought Post Office were the 'baddies'. May 2024: Post Office IT boss failed to raise concern over false Horizon statements. May 2024: Post Office considered asking Computer Weekly to review Horizon IT system. May 2024: Post Office CEO Paula Vennells 'didn't believe there were miscarriages of justice'. May 2024: The fall from grace of ex-priest and Post Office boss Paula Vennells May 2024: Post Office directors went crawling back to Fujitsu when IBM project got complex, inquiry told May 2024: 'You knew' - former ally accused Paula Vennells of knowing about Horizon problems. May 2024: Third police probe into Post Office scandal under consideration. May 2024: Government knew of Post Office plan to remove judge. May 2024: Paula Vennells boasted about removing Horizon risk reference in Royal Mail flotation prospectus. May 2024: Over 700 subpostmasters exonerated by new legislation. May 2024: Met Police investigation set to go national. May 2024: Government appoints investigators to analyse Post Office Capture software used before Horizon. May 2024: Post Office Horizon replacement project labelled 'unachievable' as taxpayer bill reaches £1bn. May 2024: Fujitsu set for further £180m deal as Post Office Horizon replacement delayed. June 2024: Post Office bosses misled subpostmasters a day before IT project problems were exposed June 2024: Subpostmasters may take legal action against government in pursuit of financial redress. June 2024: Post Office chair was aware of Horizon concerns from day one but failed to act. June 2024: Mystery Post Office software developer revealed in 1995 Horizon project document. June 2024: Fujitsu had Post Office 'over a barrel', inquiry told. June 2024: Post Office Capture software training deficit echoes systemic Horizon problems. June 2024: IT witness was hidden away from Post Office court battle, but supported it from shadows. June 2024: Post Office scandal victims in Scotland have convictions quashed. June 2024: Once ridiculed Post Office scandal campaigner Alan Bates receives knighthood June 2024: Post Office and Fujitsu had tense relationship, but were joined at hip when protecting their brands. June 2024: Sir Alan Bates hits out at Post Office 'incompetence' after data breach. June 2024: Metropolitan Police could investigate one of its own staff in Post Office probe. June 2024: Post Office expert IT witness Gareth Jenkins resigns BCS membership. June 2024: Numbers prove former subpostmaster federation boss's ignorance over Post Office scandal. June 2024: Ignorance of 'legal niceties' from Post Office expert IT witness saw innocent people jailed. June 2024: Experts shocked by 'extraordinary' claim made by Post Office IT expert witness. June 2024: Former Fujitsu engineer says Post Office 'trapped' him into giving incomplete evidence. July 2024: Former Post Office chair 'regrets' keeping critical Horizon report secret. July 2024: Sir Alan Bates welcomes MP's elevation to House of Lords. July 2024: Government left monitoring of Post Office to 'luck'. July 2024: Civil servant was lone voice on Post Office board to query legal plan that blew taxpayers' cash. July 2024: Civil servant said subpostmasters' threat of legal action was 'sabre-rattling' July 2024: Fujitsu analyst gave witness statements when more qualified colleagues refused July 2024: Government trusted 'abuser' over the abused on Post Office scandal. July 2024: Ed Davey and Jo Swinson 'handled' by civil servants in Post Office cover-up, says Sir Alan Bates July 2024: Former minister felt she was fighting department over Post Office controversy. July 2024: Post Office 'acted the victim' and civil servants 'abandoned their principles', says former minister. July 2024: Vince Cable says the Post Office 'lied' to the government over Horizon issues. July 2024: Government commits at least £540m to financial redress for wrongfully convicted Post Office staff August 2024: Post Office scandal: Phases 5 and 6 had islands of conscientiousness in great depths of neglect August 2024: Post Office brings in new IT chief as it awaits funding for Horizon replacement August 2024: Post Office systems crash hits 'collapsing' Horizon system August 2024: Post Office apologises for IT problem text alert that was never sent. September 2024: Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence means huge taxpayers' bill September 2024: Post Office scandal victims given route to appeal unfair financial settlements September 2024: Fujitsu UK staff won't receive annual pay rise as Post Office scandal bites. September 2024: Under-pressure Post Office botches hardware procurement in project to replace error-prone system. September 2024: Government receives report on second controversial Post Office IT system. September 2024: Fujitsu loses £50m in sales after Post Office scandal furore. September 2024: Post Office chief executive Nick Read quits. September 2024: Post Office scandal victim becomes first to receive £600,000 under new redress scheme. September 2024: Post Office system still causing unexplained shortfalls for over half of subpostmasters. September 2024: Fujitsu faces financial challenges, with doubts over its commitment to righting Post Office wrongs. September 2024: Post Office IT department's focus on chasing a discount meant botched procurement September 2024: Post Office IT procurement mess saw £35m spent on air conditioner, says board member. September 2024: Fujitsu accused of 'paying lip service' to Post Office scandal victims. September 2024: Subpostmasters living years with disputed but unresolved debts to the Post Office, inquiry told. September 2024: More parallels between Post Office Capture and Horizon scandal revealed. September 2024: Investigation finds 'reasonable likelihood' Post Office Capture software caused accounting losses. October 2024: Post Office spending £80,000+ a week on engineers who can't work, as IT project burns cash. October 2024: Post Office and Fujitsu: from blood brothers to bad blood. October 2024: Late evidence in Post Office Capture investigation could not be reviewed. October 2024: Post Office recruiting tech-savvy board member amid unravelling IT disaster. October 2024: Post Office senior executive suspended over allegations of destroying evidence. October 2024: Whistleblowers call out ongoing cover-up by Post Office CEO in explosive letter. October 2024: Post Office boss Nick Read 'inadequate, greedy and self-interested', whistleblowers tell inquiry. October 2024: Can the Post Office project to replace Horizon be rescued? October 2024: Post Office IT transformation project was 'set up to fail', chairman tells inquiry. October 2024: Under-fire Nick Read was unprepared for Post Office challenge October 2024: Post Office dragging its feet getting rid of tainted staff, despite government 'green light'. October 2024: Post Office believes it took £36m from subpostmasters with unexplained losses October 2024: Post Office set to axe in-house-developed New Branch IT software. October 2024: Former police officer heading Post Office operations did nothing to help innocent subpostmasters October 2014: Sir Alan Bates tells Prime Minister to guarantee Post Office scandal victim redress by March 2025. October 2024: Met Police investigating senior Post Office worker over evidence destruction allegation. October 2024: Review of late evidence doesn't change Post Office Capture system report. October 2024: Post Office worker who allegedly told staff to destroy evidence could return to work. October 2024: Former Post Office IT boss alleged to have misrepresented alternative to in-house build October 2024: Change to rules on computer evidence will be an 'outcome' of Post Office scandal. October 2024: Federation requests government investigation into third Post Office branch system. October 2024: Warning shots fired as former subpostmasters have 'useful' meeting with Post Office CEO. October 2024: Government 'urged' to overturn all convictions based on Post Office Capture. October 2024: Who is the subject of the Post Office's Project Tiger investigation? October 2024: No simple replacement for digital evidence rules, says Post Office Horizon trial judge. October 2024: Fujitsu boss to face tough reappearance at Post Office inquiry, following inaction and sidestepping.  November 2024: Post Office scandal affected relationships of two-thirds of victims. November 2024: Government's £600,000 offer to Horizon scandal victims was 'political'. November 2024: Post Office data breach caused by botched website upgrade. November 2024: Post Office was reluctant to cut costs despite 143 central staff earning more than £100k. November 2024: Post Office appointing third-party reviewer of current Horizon system. November 2024: Post Office wrongly used public funds to pay for legal battle. November 2024: Government announces Green Paper on future of scandal-ridden Post Office. November 2024: Post Office scandal not caused by software errors, says combative Fujitsu boss. November 2024: Post Office requested four-year Horizon extension, as Fujitsu boss arrived at public inquiry. November 2024: Post Office to decide on Horizon before April, Fujitsu board considers final contract extension. November 2024: Post Office IT boss calls for subpostmasters to judge him on his actions. November 2024: Post Office scandal: Inquiry's final phase exposes dysfunction past and present. November 2024: Post Office is paying lawyers too much, admits minister. November 2024: Subpostmasters hit by Post Office scandal plan to meet over 'nuclear option'. November 2024: Post Office project taking control of Horizon data from Fujitsu as part of messy split. November 2024: Fujitsu snubbed on private sector deal with Centrica due to Post Office scandal backlash. November 2024: Post Office Horizon IT scandal inquiry: Three years of shocking revelations. November 2024: Government looking into third faulty Post Office IT system. November 2024: Convictions of Post Office Capture system users to be reviewed by statutory body. November 2024: Post Office scandal: How much deeper and wider can it get? November 2024: Post Office scandal redress echoes Windrush compensation problems. November 2024: Post Office Capture users invited to pivotal meeting with government. November 2024: Fujitsu's charity boss made redundant while Post Office scandal victims await support. December 2024: Post Office Fujitsu contract extended by a year as decision time looms December 2024: Post Office senior leadership warned of IT project data safeguarding risk. December 2024: Controversial Horizon system to remain in Post Office branches as part of tech 'fusion', says source. December 2024: Police not ruling any person or crime out of Post Office scandal investigation. December 2024: Post Office 'weaponised' IT system in most 'extensive and prolonged' miscarriage. December 2024: Government promises redress and justice to Post Office Capture system users. December 2024: Post Office creates CTO role to support 'extensive and complex' plans. December 2024: Post Office IT department fired and rehired 'friends' at 'exorbitant' rates, says former HR chief. December 2024: Post Office scandal campaigners awarded OBEs in New Year Honours List. January 2025: Sir Alan Bates has 'serious concerns' over Post Office scandal compensation budget. January 2025: Post Office staff list 14 scandal-stained individuals who should have honours stripped January 2025: Former subpostmasters invited to take part in Post Office Capture compensation scheme development. January 2025: Post Office scandal-stained Fujitsu orders staff to cut costs amid widening UK losses. January 2025: Subpostmasters won't get financial redress until mid-2027 at current rate of progress January 2025: Government calls for expert views on computer evidence to learn lesson from Post Office scandal January 2025: Review of legal rule on computer evidence long overdue, say Post Office scandal victims. February 2025: Government failed to provide accurate cost of Post Office scandal compensation. February 2025: CCRC reviewing 17 Post Office convictions with potential Capture software involvement February 2025:'Positive steps' in redress for Post Office Capture victims. February 2025: Fujitsu's £600m-plus prize with His Majesty's 'cash cow' in 2025. February 2025: Peer demands Fujitsu cough up £300m interim payment towards Post Office scandal bill. February 2025: Post Office makes first official apology to Capture users. March 2025: Metropolitan Police concern puts brakes on Post Office Horizon data migration. March 2025: Government announcement on Fujitsu talks add 'vague words' and no interim payment March 2025: Post Office scandal data leak interim compensation offers made. March 2025: Minister asks for evidence of Post Office ECCO+ system problems. March 2025: Former subpostmaster to sue Post Office and Fujitsu for judgment 'obtained by fraud'. March 2025: Government considering redress scheme for families of Post Office scandal victims. March 2025: MPs demand government reconsider response to Post Office compensation report. March 2025: Kroll reviewing Post Office Horizon's current integrity and discrepancy identification. March 2025: Experts question court's rejection of former Post Office manager's Horizon appeal. April 2025: Scottish support group for Post Office scandal victims launched. April 2025: Post Office Capture and Ecco+ users asked to make contact with Scottish statutory body. April 2025: Post Office can't find evidence for over 1,000 Horizon scandal redress claimants. April 2025: Post Office gets extra £136m towards tech transformation as clock ticks on Horizon. April 2025: More than 100 Horizon victims are challenging Post Office offers on complex claims April 2025: Fujitsu UK staff will get bonus despite Post Office scandal fallout. May 2025: Progress made on government's Post Office Capture redress, but concerns remain. May 2025: Evidence reveals Post Office scandal victims short-changed in compensation payouts. May 2025: Controversial Post Office Horizon system could stay until 2033. May 2025: Post Office scandal inquiry to publish first findings this summer May 2025: Post Office performs costly 30-year U-turn on Horizon May 2025: Botched Post Office IT projects continue to drain public purse. May 2025: Fujitsu raked in £80m from HMRC in March alone, despite Post Office scandal. May 2025: Post Office slammed after deleting social media comments on IT scandal. June 2025: Compensation to Post Office scandal victims reaches £1bn milestone June 2025: HMRC paid Fujitsu £310m last year, but Post Office supplier's UK business faces gradual decline June 2025: Government announces details of Post Office Capture redress scheme June 2025: Report on integrity of current Post Office Horizon system due in autumn. June 2025: MPs say the government has not done enough to contact all those who qualify for Post Office scandal compensation schemes. June 2025: Seven main suspects under police investigation in national Post Office probe June 2025: Fujitsu's grip on HMRC loosening but bags of taxpayer cash still to be made. July 2025: Post Office inquiry chair 'cannot rule out' scandal caused 13 suicides. July 2025: Former Post Office staff in Horizon replacement bid team. July 2025: Home Office dumps Fujitsu from IT services contract. July 2025: Fujitsu outage crashes Post Office Horizon system July 2025: Peer warns suppliers against partnering Fujitsu in contracts. July 2025: Post Office will not compensate subpostmasters for IT outage. August 2025: Fujitsu tells all UK staff to preserve documents related to its work with the Post Office August 2025: Metropolitan Police contract with Fujitsu is 'potential conflict of interest' amid Post Office probe. August 2025: Subpostmaster federation accepted money from Fujitsu in run-up to High Court Post Office trial. August 2025: Police investigation into Post Office scandal to cost more than £50m. August 2025: Home Office Fujitsu contract is 'de facto' conflict of interest in Post Office police probe. September 2025: Post Office scandal supplier's roots in government go too deep. September 2025: Depression, anxiety, PTSD and suicidal thoughts: Post Office victims speak out. September 2025: Internally, Fujitsu UK is braced for major revenue decline as Post Office scandal takes its toll September 2025: Post Office Horizon accounts are still a mess and replacement system is years away September 2025: Post Office Capture appeals slowed by poor records October 2025: Peer demands Fujitsu pay £700m in interim as it prepares response to Post Office scandal inquiry. October 2025: Fujitsu boss said Post Office inquiry report wasn't 'that bad', despite link to suicides. October 2025: Shameless Fujitsu boss confident firm will be back in 'good books' in 18 months October 2025: CCRC formally sends Post Office Capture referral to Court of Appeal October 2025: Government awards Post Office £2m contract to search for its own Capture records. October 2025: Post Office Capture redress scheme 'went down like lead balloon' and is 'discriminatory'. October 2025: Peer angry as sales figures suggest Fujitsu has weathered Post Office scandal storm. October 2025: Post Office scandal investigator warns public inquiry about Horizon defect at large for years November 2025: Unearthed report reveals source of Post Office's tenuous Capture sales pitch November 2025: Post Office extends controversial Fujitsu contract in £41m deal. November 2025: Post Office contract with Fujitsu has option to extend into 2028. November 2025: Fujitsu milks £110m from HMRC in six months with hardly a public stir. November 2025: Research says wrongful prosecution of subpostmasters casts doubt on 'golden thread' of British justice. November 2025: CCRC refers case based on third faulty Post Office system. December 2025: Former Post Office legal boss won't escape police reach. December 2025: Post Office scandal could widen to thousands more branches after third system appeal. December 2025: Subpostmaster and investigator met the Post Office over Horizon defect raised six years earlier. December 2025: Post Office avoids £1m fine over botched website upgrade data breach. December 2025: Fujitsu police contract 'complicates' Post Office investigation. December 2025: Fujitsu underestimated Post Office scandal backlash December 2025: Post Office six years late to warn subpostmasters about Horizon defect. January 2026: Fujitsu boss has been a Post Office scandal bystander for over a decade. January 2026: Fujitsu Post Office IT support team were 'legalised hackers'. January 2026: CCRC says multiple Post Office software systems potentially implicated in miscarriages of justice. January 2026: Post Office scandal's oldest victim calls for total ban on Fujitsu. January 2026: The DWP said in August that it would carry out an independent review of prosecutions of subpostmasters, but it has yet to appoint a reviewer. January 2026: Peer demands independent investigation into DWP's prosecution of subpostmasters. January 2026: Fujitsu boss 'falls on his sword' before settling with Post Office scandal victims. January 2026: Sir Alan Bates slams 'nonsense' reported about his financial redress settlement January 2026: History repeats itself in Post Office Capture redress scheme with low-ball offers made February 2026 Minister responds to criticism of Post Office Capture redress scheme. February 2026: Fujitsu will be out by next summer, says Post Office CTO. February 2026: Peer 'disappointed' that DWP review of subpostmaster prosecutions is still months away. February 2026: UK government risks 'perpetuating' Post Office injustice through response to Capture appeals. February 2026: Eradicating Fujitsu and Horizon from the Post Office, step by step. February 2026: Minister wants 'logical conclusion' to review of digital evidence in light of Post Office scandal. February 2026: Email from 1999 reveals Post Office ECCO+ system crash problems. February 2026: UK government commits £483m to Post Office for IT transformation. March 2026: Scandal victim gets leave to appeal decision to split case against Post Office and Fujitsu March 2026: IBM takes a second shot at Post Office contract to replace Horizon March 2026: MP report calls for legislation to overturn Post Office Capture convictions March 2026: Government announces redress scheme for families of Post Office scandal victims. March 2026: DWP finally seeks reviewer of its subpostmaster prosecutions. March 2026: Post Office still can't find evidence for 1,400 scandal redress claimants, while people die waiting March 2026: Second Post Office Capture conviction referred to appeal court April 2026: Post Office scandal supplier Fujitsu to cut nearly 10% of UK workforce. April 2026: Fujitsu injects another £80m into UK arm amid Post Office scandal fallout. April 2026: Keir Starmer was warned about Post Office prosecution practices as director of public prosecutions. April 2026: 'Platitudes' hide struggle as Post Office scandal redress scheme closing date announced. April 2026: Court of Appeal rejects Post Office Capture case delay request. May 2026: Post Office acknowledges ECCO+ user's calls for help three decades ago. May 2026: Fujitsu UK pays staff bonuses as it sits on Post Office scandal contribution. May 2026: Accenture joins IBM in battle for £323m Post Office Horizon deal. May 2026: Post Office to contest Capture conviction appeal despite chairman support for overturning en masse. May 2026: Post Office chair defends 'inappropriate and harmful' position on Capture appeals. May 2026: Post Office objection to Capture appeals is 'inexplicable and unconscionable'. May 2026: Fujitsu finally thrown out of Post Office in £500m Horizon replacement deals. May 2026: Sir Alan Bates questions UK government commitment to Post Office criminal investigation. June 2026: Influential advisory group tells Post Office there is a 'clear case' that Capture convictions are unsafe. June 2026: Post Office delays signing Horizon software replacement contract. June 2026: Former Post Office legal boss referred to disciplinary council. July 2026: The Post Office has extended standstill period before formally signing contract for new EPOS system. July 2026: Post Office Horizon replacement contract delayed further. July 2026: 'It beggars belief' as DWP 'drags its heels' over subpostmaster prosecutions reviews. July 2026: UK public don't trust Fujitsu, but government does. August 2026: MPs demand answers on Fujitsu's inclusion in lucrative frameworks. August 2026: Supplier challenge delays Post Office Horizon replacement. August 2026: Post Office finally signs off Horizon replacement deal after three-month delay. August 2026: More than 100 apply to review DWP subpostmaster prosecutions as process drags on August 2026: More than 100 apply to review DWP subpostmaster prosecutions as process drags on. September 2026: Peer demands action on DWP subpostmaster prosecutions in duty of candour debate. September 2026: 'Wilfully blind' Post Office thought just a few hundred affected by Horizon errors. September 2026: Law firm paid £200m to support Post Office, while police investigating scandal are forced to beg. September 2026: Met Police finally get full funding for national Post Office investigation. September 2026: Around £4m has been paid out to subpostmasters as part of a redress for losses related to non-Horizon processes, products and policies. October 2026: Former subpostmasters could apply for judicial review over unfair redress of financial losses. October 2025: UK government adapts Post Office scandal redress schemes and investigates pre-Horizon software. October 2025: Suspect Post Office systems that came before Horizon to be investigated by the government. October 2026: Lost in the post: Subpostmasters could miss out on redress.

Lapsed US snooping law still running as senators object US senators have demanded the release of a secret court ruling on a surveillance law that lets American authorities obtain foreign companies' and citizens' data without telling them – one of two key laws that can undermine data sovereignty for overseas citizens and organisations. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA 702) lapsed in June 2026, but data gathering can continue to March 2027 because of a 17 March court opinion that the senators said contains "serious abuses of Americans' rights" – and which the Trump administration has still not declassified more than a month past its legal deadline. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California wrote to director of national intelligence Jay Clayton and attorney general Todd Blanche on 26 October. They demanded release of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion and the names of officials who had withheld it, with a written response due by 6 November. FISA 702 expired after the House of Representatives rejected a reauthorisation bill in June, with 19 Republicans joining Democrats to vote it down. Surveillance and data gathering continue because the same March opinion that found the abuses also permitted another year of activity. The consequences reach further than Washington. Section 702 lets the US government compel a cloud provider to provide "technical assistance" to run a search with no protection for foreign citizens who are targeted by the act. That assistance could potentially arrive as compiled code in a software update that exfiltrates data, unreadable to the engineers who push it. The second law is the US Cloud Act, passed in 2018 after Microsoft refused to hand over customer data held in an Irish datacentre. It compels US companies to provide data in their "possession, custody, or control" even where it sits overseas, and lets US courts attach a non-disclosure order that stops the provider from telling the data subject their data has been shared. Together the two laws open several routes into overseas data: Follow-the-sun support terms route data and metadata to global hubs, and the metadata alone can be enough for a Section 702 investigation. US-authored software updates can carry "technical assistance" as compiled code that UK staff cannot inspect. Data must be decrypted to be processed, so it can be scraped from memory mid-compute. Even confidential computing breaks: side-channel attacks can listen to the CPU and measure power draw or timing fluctuations to guess the data being processed. That reach is why data sovereignty matters for UK organisations. As US companies, the hyperscalers are potentially subject to US court orders that can compel them to exfiltrate overseas citizens' data.  The UK public sector is extremely exposed. In the 2023/2024 financial year, 95% of central and local public sector organisations spent budget on hyperscale cloud services, across more than 1,100 public sector bodies. The European Court of Justice has twice struck down data sharing agreements between the EU and the US – Schrems I and Schrems II – because Section 702 offers no equivalent protection to EU citizens. The senators are not alone. A coalition of more than 20 civil liberties and accountability groups, led by Demand Progress and signed by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told congressional leaders the opinion must be public before any reauthorisation debate. The dispute turns on a statutory transparency rule. Under US law, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general must complete a declassification review of significant FISA court opinions within 180 days. Senate intelligence committee chair Tom Cotton and vice-chair Mark Warner pressed for the opinion's release in the spring, and Blanche said in July he would declassify it. The 13 September deadline passed in silence. The senators wrote: "If this administration won't follow this simple statutory directive, it is unclear why Congress or the American people should trust this administration to follow any of the other legal limits to Section 702." Read more about data sovereignty Data dive: Kill switch and catch-up – can Europe close the sovereignty gap? 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? Is cloud data sovereignty all just a case of 'Trust me, bro'? Hyperscaler cloud is inherently global. Does that make data sovereignty unattainable – especially given the powers US courts hold? We grilled the hyperscalers in an attempt to find out. Data dive: Mapping the UK public sector's hyperscale dependence: UK government and local authorities have built critical infrastructure amid a web of US hyperscaler cloud and other providers, which brings risks of exposure to a narrow set of non-UK suppliers.

Autumn Budget 2026: UK chancellor ties datacentre grid access to community tests In his Autumn Budget, UK chancellor John Healey has made priority grid connections for datacentres conditional on strict tests around community investment, local jobs and water supplies. This British "datacentre covenant" comes as Westminster takes in a datacentre backlash that has paused development across Scotland, and seen protests and petitions spring up across the UK. Healey said the covenant would require operators to invest in local communities, create local jobs and protect local water supplies before winning faster grid connections and, where necessary, permission to build on-site generation.  He framed the need for datacentres around sovereignty, and argued that when the NHS uses artificial intelligence (AI) to treat patients, or the armed forces use it to keep the country safe, that data should stay in Britain. He cast the covenant as a new deal for datacentres, promising the grid connections operators need in exchange for the local consent they have struggled to win. The move comes amid a ballooning datacentre pipeline that has grown to 173 projects and more than 14GW of capacity, driven by AI demand, and large sites in Scotland and the North East. "I'm today launching a new British datacentre covenant with strict tests that datacentres must meet to invest in local communities, create local jobs and protect local water supplies," said Healey. The covenant formed part of a wider AI package in the first Budget of Andy Burnham's government, which added £500m for AI safety and security, £140m for the sovereign AI unit, and an AI Challenge Prize for public services. It also set aside £18m for advanced chip design led by Edinburgh University and £6m for the Glasgow Scottish Event Campus. Read more about datacentres and planning In his Autumn 2026 Budget, chancellor John Healey announced more funding for sovereign tech and AI safety. Planning for datacentres needs evidence, not guesswork: We look at why UK digital infrastructure growth needs an evidence-led, transparent planning framework rather than reliance on speculative forecasts. Data dive: Government 2030 datacentre capacity targets look shaky: We analyse why DSIT's 6GW AI-capable capacity target for 2030 is out of reach unless operators accelerate delivery. It landed weeks after MSPs in Scotland rejected a Green call for a full moratorium, but voted to pause planning and consenting decisions on large datacentres until national guidance arrives by Christmas, with environmental impact assessments now required for any scheme of more than 50MW. The vote followed a summer in which the SNP's national council backed a moratorium and ministers intervened in individual schemes. Scotland's committed pipeline has grown to 14 schemes and 2.4GW, the fastest growth of any UK region. Opposition to datacentres has been evident in recent weeks. A petition against a datacentre at Little Bollington in Cheshire passed 1,000 signatures this week, and campaigners are urging rejection of a 700-acre solar and datacentre development in West Norfolk. The grid connection queue, rather than planning consent, remains the binding constraint on much of the pipeline, and Ireland already shows what happens when development outruns the grid. For datacentre operators and the enterprise buyers that depend on them, the covenant offers a trade: commit to local benefits and win a faster route to power. Whether those strict tests satisfy the communities now organising against individual schemes remains the open question.

Autumn Budget 2026: Chancellor sets aside funds for UK tech Just over 30 minutes into his Autumn Budget speech, UK chancellor John Healey referenced the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) to the UK, and the role the government needs to take. "Nowhere is the necessary role for the state clearer than in AI, to forge a British way, to seize opportunities and guard against the risks that is based on security," he said. Healey spoke about the UK's role as a world leader in AI safety and security, which he announced is being backed by an extra £500m. This, said Healey, would be "based on sovereignty", with what he described as a "first of its kind" Sovereign AI Unit that would protect UK interests by channeling government investment into strategic British AI firms. As part of this investment in home-grown technology, Healey announced that these British strategic AI firms would be backed by £140m, "to ensure our most sensitive data stays under British control".  "When the NHS uses AI to treat patients, we want that data here," he said. "When our armed forces use AI to keep us safe, we want that data here." As part of this commitment, Healey announced a British datacentre covenant, which he said would mean datacentres would need to pass "strict tests", covering investment in local communities, local job creation and the protection of local water supplies. In return, he promised that critical datacentres would get grid connections and, where necessary, be allowed to build on-site generation while they wait.  His speech implies that the datacentre covenant will stipulate sovereignty and security as part of the criteria for new builds. AI Challenge Prize Healey also spoke about the AI Challenge Prize, which he said is there to ensure the British people can benefit from the potential upsides of AI. This aims to find innovative uses for AI in public services. There is also what he called "the Union Learning Fund", to back workers. "This is how Britain leads on AI: secure, safe and working for the British people," said Healey. Along with the tech funding boost, the Chancellor said he would be taking on board the recommendations from the Women in Tech task force. "I'm also announcing a new scale-up programme to support female founders, and the British Business Bank will double its commitments to women-led businesses and funds to £200m," he said. Healey said the government would be reforming skilled worker visas and non-compete clauses in contracts, which he said means people who help build one successful company can move easily to the next.  Commenting on the investments in AI, Louise Newbury-Smith, head of UK and Ireland at Zoom, said: "As the government sets out today's Budget, AI remains one of the most powerful tools the UK has to drive long-term growth. The UK's ambition to become an AI superpower will be won on adoption, and that must happen not just in boardrooms, but in town halls, high streets and small businesses in every region." While the Chancellor has set out his ambitions to support sovereign tech, there are plenty barriers that put established US tech providers at a distinct advantage. Mark Boost, CEO at sovereign cloud provider Civo, noted that public sector tech spending is often mainly focused on buying from abroad. "If public spending continues defaulting abroad, AI will be running on foreign providers' platforms, with all of the value produced flowing overseas," he said. "All of the government's best-laid plans for its AI goals will go awry if its procurement bravery fails to match its rhetorical ambition. "It is clear that John Healey wants this public spending to serve as a growth engine for every postcode in Britain," said Boost. "Digital infrastructure is one of the best ways to achieve this. The UK already has homegrown providers building capacity across the country. It's now time to back open, sovereign platforms across public services, and commit to buying from UK-owned and operated providers." Read more about UK tech funding UK chancellor wants to boost UK tech sovereignty and has unveiled plans to support chip development, AI defence and biosecurity. At an event run by the Global Tech Advocates group, female leaders working in the deeptech sector discussed how the UK can become a leader in the space.

Beyond power: How to avoid water as a constraint on AI growth For several years, the race to build AI infrastructure has centred on one question – where will the power come from?  Today, across Europe and beyond, the next major constraint on AI growth is the resources required to remove the vast quantities of heat generated by high-density computing.  As rack densities move beyond 100kW and AI deployments scale towards gigawatt-sized campuses, water availability is becoming a critical factor in determining where new capacity can be built, how quickly it can be deployed and whether it can expand over time. In this environment, cooling is a strategic infrastructure decision. AI's hidden resource challenge: water For many operators, water availability is increasingly important when evaluating future capacity. A site may have access to land and power, but if cooling depends on large volumes of evaporative water use, long-term growth plans can quickly run into practical limits. While rack density is rising and global datacentre electricity demand is projected to more than double by 2030, drought, extreme heat and water uncertainty are becoming real constraints on where and how facilities are built and add pressure to already-strained infrastructure.  Operators also now need to increasingly consider the availability of water. The question has shifted from how to cool a single rack to how the entire thermal system should be designed so cooling never becomes the constraint on growth.   A facility may have access to sufficient power and land, for example, but limited water availability could affect how much computing capacity can ultimately be supported. Similarly, a cooling architecture designed around today's workloads may become a limitation as rack densities increase. Thermal management, therefore, needs to be considered alongside capacity planning, rather than after decisions around compute and site design have already been made. Zero-water and higher-temperature cooling are expanding what's possible The industry's challenge is not to adopt a single new cooling technology. It is to integrate the entire thermal ecosystem. From direct-to-chip liquid cooling and coolant distribution units through to chillers and heat rejection systems, operators increasingly need architectures that optimise water, energy efficiency and computing performance simultaneously.  They need to consider an approach which focuses on treating these elements as a connected thermal strategy rather than individual infrastructure components. Zero-water cooling is particularly significant because it changes the resource equation. Designs that eliminate evaporative heat rejection can remove dependence on a water-intensive cooling process and give operators greater flexibility when evaluating potential sites and planning future expansion. At the gigawatt scale, zero-water designs have modelled the potential to eliminate more than 45 million litres of cooling water consumption per day.   That flexibility has implications beyond sustainability. If water availability no longer determines whether a site can support a particular cooling architecture, more locations can potentially become viable for datacentre development. Similarly, higher condenser temperatures, up to 74°C, are expanding the role dry coolers can play in datacentre design. By allowing more heat to be rejected directly to ambient air, these approaches can reduce reliance on water-intensive cooling towers while also cutting noise levels by as much as 20dBA. Depending on the application, this can equate to a perceived noise reduction of up to 75%, resulting in sound levels comparable to a normal conversation or a quiet household appliance. They can also reduce the amount of infrastructure dedicated to heat rejection, and give operators greater flexibility in site design and future expansion planning. Less water, less noise and a smaller cooling footprint open up sites near communities or in land- and water-constrained areas and can help facilities deploy and expand faster. The business case goes beyond saving water The value of zero-water cooling is therefore not simply the amount of water it can save. It is the capacity and flexibility that can be unlocked when water is no longer a fundamental constraint on cooling. Datacentres use significant energy beyond compute, with cooling accounting for an estimated 30% to 40% of total datacentre energy use. Every resource used by cooling is a resource that cannot be used for compute, and every constraint that limits cooling can ultimately limit the amount of compute a facility can support. Optimised thermal architectures can effectively return resources to the compute side of the facility. Modeled 1GW air-cooled architectures have demonstrated the potential to support up to 50 MW of additional AI capacity through thermal optimisation alone, and absorption-based designs that use on-site waste heat have shown potential for up to 97 MW of additional AI capacity. There is another factor that is beginning to influence datacentre development – social licence to operate. Across Europe, communities and regulators are paying closer attention to how datacentres consume local resources. Water use is increasingly part of that discussion. Reducing dependence on evaporative cooling does more than improve sustainability metrics. It can strengthen stakeholder confidence, simplify planning conversations and improve the long-term viability of future projects Designing for growth from day one As AI infrastructure continues to scale, thermal management will be a deciding factor in where and how new datacentre capacity gets built. The question is no longer simply whether a site has enough power to support AI. It is whether the site has the resources, infrastructure and cooling architecture needed to support that growth over time. That means building thermal management into early decisions around site selection, capacity planning and infrastructure design, rather than treating cooling as a fixed requirement to solve after the workload is already set. Zero-water and higher-temperature cooling approaches can give operators more flexibility as rack densities increase, climate conditions change and resource constraints grow. As the industry enters a period of unprecedented expansion, the next decade will require a broader question – can infrastructure be designed to grow without becoming constrained by the resources needed to cool it? Organisations that answer that question early will gain greater flexibility in where they build, how quickly they scale and how effectively they navigate future resource constraints. In the AI era, cooling is no longer a support function, it is a strategic enabler of growth. John Keane is VP and general manager, EMEA global data centre solutions, at Johnson Controls Read more about datacentre cooling and heat rejection Cooling – not compute – is the binding constraint on the AI factory. Compute can be bought, but heat rejection must be engineered. Nvidia's Ajay Sekar reveals how warm-water liquid cooling is redefining the economics and geography of AI factories Data dive: Dodgy data derails datacentre water debate. The Government Digital Sustainability Alliance reports that we are on track for a massive water supply shortfall. The dataset it used suggests not. We look at the datacentre water use debate

Austrian doctors to swap emails and phone calls for encrypted messages Hospitals and clinics in Austria are gearing up to replace emails and phone calls with an end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service that promises to speed up communications between medical professionals and reduce the time it takes to make clinical decisions. The country is conducting trials of a sovereign instant messenger service, based on open source technology, that will allow clinicians to send messages and securely share medical information. The move follows plans by Germany to roll out its own encrypted messaging service, TI-Messenger, for healthcare, after trials showed that it saved clinicians time by freeing them from making repeated phone calls to speak with colleagues who are often too busy to answer the phone. The catalyst for Austria to rethink how healthcare organisations communicate came in January 2025 when the government banned the use of faxes to exchange clinical information. Alternatives to fax Hospitals developed alternatives, such as encrypted email or encrypted file storage, to share medical data, but the profusion of different tools made it difficult for hospitals to communicate with each other. Austria's non-profit body ELGA GmbH, tasked with running the country's electronic healthcare record system, began investigating alternatives to fax communications before the ban came into force. In December 2024, it held a workshop on Matrix messenger, an open source encrypted messaging service, and adopted it as a standard a month later. Matrix, which describes itself as an open protocol for decentralised secure communications, is coordinated by a non-profit community interest company, the Matrix.org Foundation. Austria chose Matrix because it is decentralised, allowing every state or hospital to run their own server. The protocol allows end-to-end encryption – a requirement for patient data – and is already widely used in Germany and other parts of Europe. The Matrix side project One of the first implementations of Matrix in Austria began as a side project by two doctors in Salzburg, who shared a passion for open source software. They set up medSpeak in 2023 to offer a secure communications platform to other doctors in the region. Phillipp Kurtz, co-founder and joint CEO of Famedly, a German technology company that is now involved in the development of Matrix in Austria, said the doctors were running a Matrix server from their surgery. "They had a little server and set it up themselves and ran all of their other hospitals and their other GPs in Salzburg on that server," he added. He estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 doctors have signed up to medSpeak. That project expanded into a larger trial with the largest healthcare provider in Salzburg, Salzburger Landeskliniken (SALK), and a hospital in the state of Upper Austria, Klinikum Wels-Grieskirche. The trial, which covered five hospitals, 7,100 staff, and was linked to the MedSpeak network, showed that encrypted messages could be shared successfully between doctors in different Austrian states. Technical support was provided by Famedly, which designed the Matrix app for German healthcare organisations, and healthcare IT services company X-tention. Read more about Matrix and end-to-end encryption How Luxembourg built a secure sovereign instant messaging service for residents: Luxembourg is rolling out a secure encrypted messaging service based on the open source Matrix protocol, for use by government, businesses and citizens, offering a sovereign alternative to WhatsApp and Signal. Swiss encrypted messaging service, ePost, targets one million postal users: Swiss ePost chief Renato Stalder bets on encrypted communications as demand for letter delivery falls. Sweden eyes open standard for encrypted chat services: Government departments in Sweden are considering deploying "open network" encrypted messaging services as an alternative to proprietary collaboration tools. European governments opt for open source alternatives to Big Tech encrypted communications: European governments are rolling out decentralised secure messaging and collaboration services as they seek to reduce their reliance on Big Tech companies. German healthcare aims to replace faxes and phones with secure messaging: Germany's digital health agency, Gematik, has turned to open source for secure messaging services that will link patients, doctors and pharmacies. French local authorities to replace WhatsApp with 'sovereign' encrypted messaging: French local authorities to deploy 'sovereign' end-to-end encrypted messaging service in a move away from US big tech. Healthcare directory Kurtz told Computer Weekly that the pilot demonstrated the need to build a directory on top of Matrix, to allow medical staff to find each other on the messaging system. The project used a blueprint for a staff directory developed for TI-Messenger in Germany, and worked to the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) specification, a standard for electronically exchanging information. The trial improved the speed of communication between hospital doctors and GPs. Rather than phone or leave messages, GPs were able to message doctors in the hospital directly to ask questions about medication and care, after their patients were discharged from treatment. The latest proof of concept, which started in October 2026, has been organised by ELGA, which added Vienna and the federal state of Tyrol to the trial. It will test the ability of Matrix services hosted on different platforms to interoperate with each other. The proof of concept is supported by three technology suppliers – Famedly, Cloudfight and CompuGroup Medical – which are each running Matrix servers. Pragmatic approach Kurtz said he expected Austria to be able to deploy its messaging service quickly, as it takes a more pragmatic approach to technology than Germany. "The requirements for certification are way lower, so you don't have to certify every single component separately," he said. Austria also has an electronic ID system in place, which will make it quicker for doctors to sign up to an existing messaging service hub. Austrian health organisations can also opt to share Matrix servers, making the service cheaper to run. "My perception is that they want to have it rolled out, in 2028 at the latest, in the whole of Austria. They really, really want to ramp it up," said Kurtz. One-stop shop Using a shared technology across the Austrian health service will allow clinicians to talk to their counterparts in other healthcare institutions more easily and quickly, said Kurtz. "You have one shared platform, one shared technology, and as long as you comply with that, you can talk to anyone in the system. So it's really a one-stop shop for all your communication with other healthcare institutions," he added. [With] one shared platform, one shared technology ... you can talk to anyone in the system. So it's really a one-stop shop for all your communication with other healthcare institutions Phillipp Kurtz, Famedly The service is expected to be particularly valuable when junior doctors working in a hospital need advice from a consultant or a senior doctor waiting at home on call. "The junior doctor doesn't know what to do, so he just takes a photo of an ECG or X-ray or whatever and sends it via chat to the doctor on call, who can send a message back without having to come into the hospital," said Kurtz. The service is also expected to find applications in nursing homes, making it easier for doctors to communicate with pharmacies when they prescribe medication to residents. Currently, the process takes multiple phone calls and follow-up faxes, which doctors are required to sign off manually. In future, Kurtz predicts that Austrian and German hospitals will federate their messaging services to allow doctors in both countries to collaborate. "Especially in winter, how many Germans go skiing in Austria and break a leg? There are always things to discuss between the German doctors and the Austrian doctors," said Kurtz. Managing stakeholders Kurtz said the biggest challenge has been the need to manage a large number of stakeholders, which include federal states, hospitals, central and federal governments, and doctors using the homegrown medSpeak platform. "They all want to have a say in it, so bringing all the interests together and coming up with a joint standard … has been crazily complicated with all the stakeholders," he added. Another challenge is that hospitals in Austria rely on shared inboxes, representing, for example, a ward where multiple people may be working. This format is not currently supported by Matrix. "Matrix just simply doesn't have a good concept for this. This is something that's missing and making implementation for these use cases extremely hard," said Kurtz. The project is improving by using a group chat room that receives all the messages sent to doctors on the ward. The system uses a bot to discuss the request with several staff on the ward to find out which doctor should respond to the enquiry. The doctor can then reply to the message in a new private chat. Less talk, more action Matrix will become available to health providers in Austria from 2027, with a number of providers offering servers and messenger apps. Kurtz said that although medical professionals realise they need to have a system like Matrix, the challenge will be changing their behaviour so they don't continue to use faxes or WhatsApp. "The most important leverage we have is the chief of medicine – if they are convinced and they tell their people to use just the Matrix-based solution, they will," said Kurtz. Were he to do the project over again, Kurtz said he would be more pragmatic, by talking less with stakeholders and acting more. "Trial and error gets you to your goal a lot faster than trying to think through all the ways to use Matrix, which we have done in countless discussions, workshops and meetings. I would say, we just start with something basic and see what happens," he said. Austria's Matrix timeline April 2024: First Matrix messenger service certified in Germany for healthcare. December 2024: Workshop on Matrix Messenger held in Austria with ELGA GmbH, which is responsible for Austria's electronic healthcare infrastructure. January 2025: The Matrix protocol is adopted into Austrian health care standards. January 2025: Austria bans use of fax machines for sending patient data. March 2025: Federal government, states and social insurance agree on one joint Matrix solution. August 2025: Famedly, a German Matrix app developer, is tasked with producing first draft for a national specification. February 2026:  Implementation project launched with a number of technology suppliers. July 2026: Architecture workshops with technology suppliers. October 2026: Tests across Austrian states. 2027: Beginning of national roll-out in healthcare.

Aera addresses decision-making using enterprise AI Aera Technology used its AeraHUB 26 conference in New York to introduce and detail the mechanics driving six new services that work in agentic decision intelligence, designed to accelerate the methods and processes by which enterprises build, govern and scale automated decision-making.   Aera said organisations running new-age agentic services today need the ability to capture business context, enforce policies, retain decision histories and continuously improve outcomes as autonomous agents make and execute choices.  The capabilities it has built aim to connect decisions across the value chain, turn business challenges into repeatable decision automation, and capture and retain the knowledge, policies and outcomes behind every decision. According to Aera, these capabilities shift businesses to decision-centric enterprises, where decisions are continuously optimised and executed to drive measurable business outcomes. Discussing the challenges in automating decision-making, Shariq Mansour, co-founder and chief technology officer of Aera Technology, said: "A decision has options, trade-offs, rules and an outcome someone answers for, and in most companies it still lives in meetings and spreadsheets, and is forgotten the next day." This, he said, is the "what, why, when and where" behind the technology Aera has built. "We have designed, tested and built one system where decisions are made, checked against the company's policies, recorded with their reasoning, and learned from [it]. The language model is one part inside it, and we replace it as better ones arrive," said Mansour.  The Aera team said realising greater value from AI requires fundamentally changing how businesses operate, starting with the decisions that drive operational performance – what to make, where to ship, when to buy, and how to meet customer demand. This means moving from data-driven decision-making to being decision-centric. It requires moving away from using data to inform or justify choices to engineering how decisions are made, executed and improved. "The next unlock for enterprise performance is better decisions across the value chain," said Fred Laluyaux, co-founder and CEO of Aera Technology. "AI is already making people more productive, but the bigger opportunity is transforming how businesses make and execute decisions. That is the shift to a decision-centric enterprise. With today's innovations, we are making it dramatically easier to put that vision into practice." As AI takes on a greater role in enterprise decision-making, Laluyaux said: "Reasoning alone is not enough." Although an agent can perform a task, he said a decision has a plethora of options, trade-offs, policies and an outcome someone is accountable for.   Building, governing and scaling decision intelligence   Building on Aera's foundation for agentic reasoning, the company is providing a skill-building capability. The idea is that users can start with a business challenge in plain language, prompt Aera to develop a plan, review and refine the proposed approach, approve it, and turn it into governed decision automation, often within a single working session. Skills are created, refined and updated by talking to Aera. The company said this enables organisations to adapt and improve decisions continuously as business needs change. Aera has also introduced Decision Ledger, which creates a persistent, traceable record of every decision, whether made in Aera or sent from another system through Aera's application programming interface, capturing the business context, reasoning, policies evaluated, actions and outcomes behind each one. Aera said it can spot decisions made in conversation and prompt a person to confirm them. By bringing structured and situational decisions into a common record, the company said it is able to preserve institutional knowledge, supports audit and review, and makes past decisions and their outcomes available to inform future decisions.   The Policy Studio feature is designed to let organisations turn enterprise policies into rules that govern decisions as they are made. Teams upload a policy document or describe a rule in plain language, and Aera drafts the rules for a person to approve. Read more stories about Aera Technology Merck Healthcare's Alessandro da Luca on supply chain automation era: The CIO of Merck Healthcare, Alessandro da Luca, talks about how his organisation has automated its supply chain using machine learning software from Aera. Icelandic researcher advocates for an overhaul of artificial intelligence: While technologies such as ChatGPT provide a glimpse of what may lay ahead, they are still a long way from real intelligence. Rules can be tested against live decisions before enforcement. Once active, they apply consistently across relevant decision types and can block a decision, require approval or warn. The results of policy evaluations are captured in Decision Ledger, providing traceability and evidence of how decisions were governed. "Our vision has always been to manage decisions as a digital asset: captured, governed and continuously improved," said Mansour. "These innovations automate that entire lifecycle, making it possible to capture every kind of decision, control the policies that govern them and enable the platform to learn from each one. And because the build itself is now automated, enterprises can automate far more decisions, far faster, and every skill becomes another digital asset they own." Other functions on offer include Agent Interoperability, to connect decision intelligence across the enterprise, and Dynamic UX, which enables users to create and adapt experiences using natural-language prompts. The interoperability capabilities enable Aera to work with existing enterprise agents and tools, including Microsoft Copilot Studio, external agents through Agent2Agent, and external tools through Model Context Protocol. Aera is also providing a feature called Command Center, which it said provides visibility into decision activity, performance and business impact enterprise-wide to help organisations monitor decisions, understand their outcomes and identify opportunities to improve performance as decision intelligence scales.

PHP2Shell: US updates Kev catalogue as exploits spread The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) has added the two so-called PHP2Shell vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (Kev) catalogue after confirming live exploitation by unnamed threat actors. The update addresses both CVE-2026-109618 – a PHP memory corruption flaw – and CVE-2026-109619 – a PHP stale internal request-state flaw. First made public last week in a chaotic disclosure process, the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities are considered critical due to the prevalence of the open source server-side scripting language across the world wide web. Collectively, they impact a huge number of organisations. The addition of a vulnerability to the Kev list means civilian agencies of the US federal government must apply fixes to their systems by a specific date, in this case Thursday 29 October, and is a clear signal that the flaw(s) in question are being exploited, meaning other organisations should pay attention even if they are not legally bound to do so. "These types of vulnerabilities are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise," the agency said. Cisa, said it was not known whether or not the PHP2Shell flaws have been implicated in any ransomware campaigns. Nor did it share details of any specific cyber incidents arising from them. However it emerged on Sunday 25 October that exploitation leading to remote code execution (RCE) had been detected against an Apache mod_php installation running version 8.4.26 of PHP in a sequestered honeypot environment. Closed Door Security CEO William Wright said Cisa's update had confirmed the fears that have been on many minds since PHP2Shell was made public last week. "Before this, many security vendors had reported numerous attempts to target honeypots and servers using the vulnerabilities, though allegedly none had been successful in taking full advantage of the potential for RCE," said Wright. "However, CISA's confirmation shows that the fear among experts and governments was not unjustified. "Threat actors work rapidly and take advantage they can get, and the potential advantage here was massive, with the exploit effectively allowing attackers to control and modify any unpatched server exposed to the internet," Wright told Computer Weekly via email. He said that while major services have now been promptly patched, questions remain about what will happen to smaller sites and services – many of which may now not be maintained – and to instances in which PHP is hidden as part of a larger tech stack supporting other services. Wright advised any organisations that have not yet started the process to review their systems as soon as possible to ensure they are not silently exposed to unpatched PHP deployments internally, or through third-party partners. Time to exploit According to CrowdStrike, full weaponisation of the PHP2Shell flaws likely took longer after disclosure because attackers would have needed to adapt the proof-of-concept exploit for the specific PHP version and application they wanted to target. This presented a "meaningful barrier" to threat actors, the firm's researchers said, because it meant they would have needed specific expertise on Docker containers, packages, and other elements used by the would-be victim. Meanwhile, as of12:00pm UTC on 27 October, Infrawatch's free PHP2Shell Tracker tool showed about 443,000 publicly visible hosts had been patched, an improvement of approximately 31,000 hosts in the past 24 hours, representing around 20% of the total. In the UK, patches have been applied to 27.2% of visible hosts and in the US, to 19.7%. Read more coverage of PHP2Shell 21 October: What to do as critical PHP flaws puts millions of websites at risk. PHP2Shell: 22M exposed servers at risk as emergency patches released. Critical PHP vulnerabilities expose most websites to potential compromise. (Cybersecurity Dive) PHP2Shell bugs signal red alert for security industry. (Dark Reading) 22 October: PHP2Shell disclosure unravels after leaks forced early patch drop. Botched PHP2Shell disclosure revealed as panic continues. 23 October: PHP exploitation moves at slower-than-expected pace, but millions remain at risk (Cybersecurity Dive) Exposed to PHP2Shell? Cyber experts weigh in with advice (Dark Reading) 26 October: EU makes progress towards PHP patching, UK lags behind. 27 October: CISA, security researchers confirm successful exploitation of PHP flaws (Cybersecurity Dive)

OpenAI's Altman: Only way out of patch apocalypse is through At Oracle AI World in Las Vegas, Nevada, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has rallied the security community and called for cyber pros to keep focus, saying the only way through the current tsunami of patches is through. In conversation with Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouryk during the day two keynote, Altman aligned with Magouryk that AI is not necessarily creating the problem but rather helping discover the myriad of security issues and flaws that have slowly developed over the past 20 to 30 years, and longer in some cases. "I think the only way through this is to go and find all these issues and fix them," said Altman. "In fact, I think we'll need new ways to fix them. It's maybe too hard to patch every bug one by one across the entire supply chain that we're all dependent on. I think we'll have to look at new kinds of services that are constantly monitoring traffic and not letting these things be exploited. "But I find myself shocked at just how many vulnerabilities these AI systems are finding and what it's going to take – just the incredible, Herculean effort that it's going to take to get ahead of this." Asked what advice he would give to cyber pros at this point, Altman said: "If I could recommend only one thing to a company right now to do with AI in the very short term … it would be to really understand the security threat landscape from AI and mitigate against that." He added: "I do realise that this is probably somewhat annoying for me to say and you're like, well, you're creating the problem." Magouryk said: "I'm glad that we are now able to discover [flaws] with AI rather than waiting for some unknown hacker to let us know about them." Cyber mesh During the keynote session, Magouryk added colour to new security initiatives trailed earlier at the event, with the formal announcement of the new OpenAI-powered Oracle AI Security Mesh, designed to complement the existing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Identity Assurance – a biometric human identity verification tool – and OCI Zero Trust Packet Routing – a network access policy enforcer. Oracle proposes that this mesh service will enable its enterprise customers to strengthen protections across both applications and infrastructure whether they are running on-premise, in OCI, or in someone else's cloud. The combination of OpenAI's latest frontier models with Oracle's testing tools and contextual knowledge of customer systems will supposedly let users find and fix flaws by reasoning through application behaviour, investigating possible weaknesses, or assessing fixes. Any changes or fixes applied will be human-approved with agents designed to operate with distinct identities, task-scope, and just-in-time permissions, and independent monitors will be on hand to detect and stop any agentic activity that ranges across approved boundaries. Going deep with OpenAI But Oracle's tie-up with OpenAI does not stop with cyber security. The software supplier also today announced a new collaboration with the AI giant to marry up its ChatGPT and Codex models to Oracle's applications, data and cloud infrastructure to put AI to work across customer systems and operations. An expanded product suite will bring this approach to life, said Oracle, by helping people work across systems, build and deploy applications, get on top of cyber issues. It described an "integrated foundation to build and run companies". "OpenAI is transforming how enterprises solve business problems, from chat, to coding, to analytics, to autonomous agents," said Magouyrk. "With this new product suite, we are uniting their transformative AI capabilities with Oracle applications, data, and cloud infrastructure – technology that businesses around the world rely on to run their most critical operations." Read more from Oracle and NetSuite On the opening day of its annual AI World conference, Oracle brought a wide range of agentic innovations to bear on its Fusion Cloud application suite. With CVE volumes spiking amid AI-assisted vulnerability discovery, Oracle is responding with cyber initiatives and practices for its customers. NetSuite co-founder and executive vice-president Evan Goldberg says AI is moving business software beyond menu navigation, while expanding access to the platform for startups.

MWC Doha aims to position Middle East as global hub for AI and digital infrastructure MWC Doha, which returns to Qatar for its second edition on 8-10 November, aims to establish the Middle East as a central player in global discussions around connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital infrastructure, according to Jawad Abbassi, head of MENA at the GSMA. While MWC has traditionally been associated with Barcelona and Shanghai, Abbassi said Doha offers a strategic location from which to connect markets across Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe, putting more than five billion people within reach. "MWC Doha delivers a full-scale MWC experience, on par with Barcelona and Shanghai," he said. The event also provides a platform for governments to connect national digital strategies with private sector investment. Qatar National Vision 2030 and Saudi Vision 2030, alongside similar programmes across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), are driving investment in technology, infrastructure and economic diversification. "MWC Doha's role is to be that meeting point for the leaders and decision-makers that deliver those visions, and gives the Middle East and North Africa its own home within the GSMA's global MWC series," Abbassi said. This year's event coincides with the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-26), bringing digital policymakers from more than 190 ITU member states to Doha alongside industry leaders and technology innovators. The GSMA sees the combination as an opportunity to bring policy discussions and industry priorities closer together. From 5G roll-out to enterprise value Across the Middle East, telecoms markets are moving beyond the initial deployment of 5G towards more advanced networks and new commercial opportunities. Abbassi identified the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait as among the world's most advanced 5G markets, with operators progressing towards 5G Standalone, 5G-Advanced and reduced-capability (RedCap) technologies. MWC Doha delivers a full-scale MWC experience, on par with Barcelona and Shanghai Jawad Abbassi, GSMA The next phase will depend on how effectively businesses translate connectivity investments into measurable economic outcomes. GSMA research projects that enterprise spending on digital transformation across MENA will average 9.8% of revenues between 2025 and 2030. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are among the world's top seven digital transformation spenders, according to Abbassi. However, expanding network coverage alone will not be sufficient to realise the region's digital ambitions. Although 96% of the MENA population lived within mobile broadband coverage, only 49% were using mobile internet by the end of 2023, he said. The difference highlights what the industry calls the mobile internet usage gap: people who live within coverage areas but do not use mobile internet services. Closing that gap will require greater affordability, digital skills and locally relevant content, Abbassi said. Doing so could extend the benefits of connectivity to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), healthcare, education and underserved communities. Telecoms operators take on a broader role in AI As governments and businesses invest in AI, cloud computing and datacentres, telecoms operators are increasingly positioning themselves as infrastructure providers beyond traditional connectivity. AI services require access to data, cloud capacity, edge infrastructure and reliable networks. Operators are therefore investing in the infrastructure needed to support increasingly data-intensive workloads, while also applying AI to their own network operations. Abbassi pointed to du's datacentre partnership with Microsoft and e&'s agreements with Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and Intel to apply AI across its mobile networks as examples of how regional operators are expanding their role in the technology ecosystem. Network application programming interfaces (APIs) represent another opportunity. Through the GSMA's Open Gateway initiative, operators can expose standardised network capabilities to developers, making it easier to build services that use telecoms infrastructure without negotiating separate arrangements in every market. For developers and enterprise technology teams, the initiative could simplify access to network capabilities and create opportunities for services that depend on connectivity, security and network intelligence. The wider challenge will be turning infrastructure investment into scalable services and business models that deliver value beyond the telecoms sector. Digital sovereignty and global partnerships The region's ambitions to develop sovereign AI capabilities and strengthen control over critical digital infrastructure are also reshaping technology investment. Governments are seeking greater control over strategic assets, including data, computing capacity and semiconductor supply chains, while continuing to rely on international technology partners. Abbassi explained that these objectives need not conflict. "Global collaboration has been a key driver of progress in the mobile and digital technology sectors, and the GSMA advocates for open markets and policies that support cross-border cooperation alongside each country's own digital ambitions," he said. He cited Qatar and the UAE joining Pax Silica, a US-aligned initiative focused on semiconductor and AI supply chains, alongside their investments in domestic AI infrastructure. Qatar Investment Authority's $2bn expansion of its venture capital programme, aimed at attracting global funds and AI startups to Doha, is another example of the country's efforts to combine sovereign investment with international participation. For technology leaders, the balance between sovereignty and collaboration will have implications for cloud strategy, infrastructure sourcing, data governance and access to advanced AI capabilities. Abbassi said global partnerships would remain critical to scaling AI responsibly, with open standards and predictable regulatory environments helping countries pursue national priorities while maintaining international cooperation. AI, intelligent economies and connected infrastructure MWC26 Doha's programme is organised around three themes: AI in Action, Intelligent Economies and Connected Infrastructure. The return of the GSMA Ministerial Programme and the inclusion of 4YFN Doha, the GSMA's startup showcase, are intended to broaden the event's reach across government, established technology companies and emerging businesses AI in Action will examine how telecoms companies are turning embedded intelligence into practical outcomes. Intelligent Economies will focus on the policies and partnerships needed to build competitive and inclusive digital economies. Connected Infrastructure will explore how next-generation networks can deliver performance, resilience and security at scale. Dedicated summits will cover sovereign AI and national digital strategy, intelligent datacentres, agentic AI, open telecoms AI, future networks, and satellite and non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). The return of the GSMA Ministerial Programme and the inclusion of 4YFN Doha, the GSMA's startup showcase, are intended to broaden the event's reach across government, established technology companies and emerging businesses. The agenda reflects the increasingly interconnected nature of the region's digital transformation priorities. AI adoption depends on computing infrastructure and connectivity, while the commercial success of those investments relies on enterprise demand, regulatory frameworks and access to skills and capital. Turning regional ambition into partnerships For the GSMA, success at MWC26 Doha will depend on building on the inaugural event and demonstrating sustained international interest in the region's technology ambitions. Abbassi identified two priorities: showcasing global interest in MENA's digital future, and demonstrating why the region is positioned to help shape the future of connectivity, AI and digital infrastructure. For the wider technology ecosystem, he said the event should serve as a catalyst for collaboration, connecting policy priorities with industry investment and giving regional innovation greater international visibility. "MWC Doha will continue to act as a meeting point and productivity catalyst where conversations become partnerships, policy priorities align with industry investment, and regional innovation gets showcased to a global audience," Abbassi added. Read more about Mobile World Congress MWC 2025: Operators account for 85% of mobile infrastructure investments: Research from global mobile trade association reveals operators alone contribute $109bn to infrastructure investments, far exceeding that made by content and application providers and cloud service providers. MWC 2025: Fabric to spread as BT sees no business plan B without the network: UK's leading coms provider outlines the pressures that enterprise customers will face as AI reshapes the new world of work.

Azure licensing lock-in limits choice A survey of 410 software and cloud decision-makers in US businesses has found that organisations are putting off investment due to Microsoft software licensing costs. Respondents reported finding that costs are higher when using a cloud provider other than Microsoft Azure to host Microsoft software. According to the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, this demonstrates that customers are being steered to Azure through financial penalty rather than merit, and workloads are being locked out of the cloud. Over half of affected businesses (56%) have increased prices to cover the cost. The same number have also cut other spending, while 33% have slowed hiring. The survey also reported that 83% claimed Microsoft's licensing rules have a meaningful impact on their choice of cloud provider. In fact, 18% said they have never considered a competing provider, while 61% of organisations that did look at alternatives still selected Azure to avoid fees. Ryan Triplette, executive director of the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, said: "Microsoft's customers are telling us the system is broken. Businesses are being steered to Azure by financial penalties rather than by merit. They are passing the costs on to their own customers and delaying [investment in] the AI [artificial intelligence] tools they need to compete. Some are choosing not to migrate to the cloud at all, rather than incur the costs associated with Microsoft's licences to do so." Triplette said the survey showed that the closer a decision-maker is to Microsoft's licensing practices, the more urgently they want regulators to step in. He urged regulators to take note: "What happens next matters to every American business, and every consumer paying more because of Microsoft's anti-competitive licensing practices."  Microsoft's customers are telling us the system is broken. Businesses are being steered to Azure by financial penalties rather than by merit Ryan Triplette, Coalition for Fair Software Licensing Under the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, a company designated as having strategic market status (SMS) has substantial and entrenched market power and a position of strategic significance in respect of a digital activity. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating whether Microsoft should be designated with SMS with regard to its business software, which includes its Office productivity suite, Windows and SQL Server. Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: "Business software and cloud services underpin workplaces across the UK, from small firms to vital public services. The evidence shows Microsoft has a long-standing and significant presence in the UK's business software market. "Organisations should be able to choose the products that work best for them, switch provider when they want to and combine services from different suppliers. We want to ensure businesses have the freedom to choose how they use Microsoft's products alongside alternatives. "We're now consulting on whether to designate Microsoft with strategic market status. If we do, our focus would be on promoting competition and giving businesses greater freedom to choose and combine products in business software." Microsoft has also been battling with European regulators. In 2023, the European Commission began a formal investigation to assess whether Microsoft may have breached European Union competition rules by tying or bundling its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365. This led to changes to Microsoft licensing across the European Economic Area and Switzerland, where the company agreed to unbundle Teams from its Office suite. Read more about Microsoft software licensing Microsoft faces court battle in £2bn Windows Server class action: The Competition Appeal Tribunal has allowed the unfair licensing case against Microsoft to go ahead. Microsoft reports massive cloud uptick as CMA questions licensing: The company's latest quarterly results show that the Microsoft cloud is booming. But the CMA is not happy with how it's winning business.

TechEd 2026: SAP fronts tabular data model in space as it bids to make autonomous enterprise real At SAP TechEd 2025 in Berlin, Philipp Herzig, chief technology officer of SAP, finished the opening keynote with a flourish in space. The supplier's tabular data foundation model, RPT-2, is being deployed, with technology from HPE, aboard the International Space Station. RPT-1 [pronounced "rapid one"] was announced at TechEd last year. It functions like a large language model [LLM] that will predict the next word in a sentence, but for structured data, according to SAP. It is used to make predictions for business scenarios, such as delivery delays or payment risk. "If we can run maintenance predictions in one of the most unforgiving environments, think what this means for our operations here on Earth," said Herzig. "That's AI [artificial intelligence] proven under pressure." In a blog post, Brenda Brown, the supplier's chief marketing officer for SAP Business AI Platform and Joule, said: "SAP [has] announced the planned deployment of SAP-RPT, our tabular AI foundation model, on HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 aboard the International Space Station (ISS), one of the most significant edge compute validations of an enterprise AI model to date." She further said the model "makes predictions directly from structured data – even with some data missing – and without requiring the usual model training or fine-tuning. Running directly onboard the ISS on HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, it supports anomaly triage in real-time telemetry data, predicts issues before failures escalate, reconstructs missing sensor values based on historical data, and generates explainable mission-health reports for astronauts and ground teams." In a press statement, Herzig added: "The same trusted SAP-RPT model that powers global supply chains also can work in space. "SAP's deep-rooted, proven expertise has led to the International Space Station's use of our tabular foundation model to predict potential mission-critical failures in orbit," he said. "With SAP RPT and TabPFN from [SAP acquisition] Prior Labs, we bring the unique capabilities of tabular AI into the enterprise and across every frontier." The broad theme of TechEd is to put some flesh on the bones of the "autonomous enterprise" vision adumbrated at this year's Sapphire conferences in Florida and Madrid. Evolution Florian Kunzke, SAP's global director of artificial intelligence strategy, said in a pre-conference press briefing with international press: "We will see an evolution of our strategy so far, moving from the slides in our announcements at Sapphire into the productive environments of our customers, which is the hardest thing to do." The supplier is announcing enhancements to its Joule Studio and Joule Work technologies, and its Business AI Platform, including the tabular foundation model on board the space station. The supplier describes Joule Work as "a foundational capability within SAP's AI suite that orchestrates complex business workflows, automates cross-functional tasks, and manages end-to-end operational processes autonomously across enterprise applications". SAP is also putting forward new tools to build AI agents and endeavouring to provide a "richer data and business context for those agents to reason with, and strengthened governance controls to run them responsibly across the enterprise". Herzig said, in the main statement for the event: "SAP TechEd has always been where builders shape what comes next," he said, adding that this was the 30th event of its kind. "This year, we are showing how we are moving from AI learning your business to running it. Joule Work is where you put your intent and get work done, in one experience across the entire SAP landscape and beyond. That is the shift we are delivering at scale. "Everything underneath runs on SAP Business AI Platform, delivering faster time to value, business understanding, higher accuracy, enterprise-readiness that is secure, governed and compliant, and a unique context layer built on over 50 years of process and industry expertise, encoded into every agent action." At last week's SAP AI Tour event in Birmingham, Manos Raptopoulos, global president of customer success, said in the keynote session: "AI means technology is now back in the boardroom, but is it delivering business value? When LLMs can't do Arithmetic, 90% accuracy is not good enough for businesses." He argued that grounding SAP's AI technology Joule in a "context layer" made possible by customers' use of the supplier's enterprise resource planning over many years "reduces hallucinations by 89%", adding that specific business knowledge, semantic richness and governance are what AI needs to deliver business value for SAP customers. Read more about SAP's developer conference TechEd SAP TechEd 2025: Make AI real, grind in data: SAP TechEd in Berlin put an accent on building agentic and generative AI systems to create real business outcomes, beyond what its executives say is excessive hype At TechEd, SAP continues to lay down the AI data foundation: New tools to speed up agentic AI development, open SAP platforms and provide access to data products were also touted as helping companies get business value from their AI. 2023: SAP unveils AI-focused developer tools at TechEd: SAP debuted AI-infused products for improved developer productivity: SAP Build Code for pro developers, a Hana Cloud vector database and the AI Foundation collection of services. In an interview with Computer Weekly, Raptopoulos said that when it comes to getting business value from AI, "the first layer is the intelligence layer, which is your generative AI model, LLM, call it whatever. There is another layer, which is the context layer, and context here is twofold. One is the context of the system – when it comes at least to our own system, it's the Knowedge Graph, as we call it, or the ontology, as some other people call it, but it's also the context of the company, which we call company memory in terms of, "So how do we do things around here?" "To get to what we call the autonomous enterprise, every customer is at a point A, and they have to go to point B," he said. "There are certain customers that are more advanced on that journey, and every customer is somehow unique, but they are very much aware of that journey, of that transformation that they need to do." At TechEd, the supplier is announcing capabilities for Joule Work, said to help make AI agents be more effective at handling complex business processes via open protocols including Agent2Agent (A2A) and Model Context Protocol (MCP).  It talks about "agentic thinking capabilities that plan and orchestrate the steps assistants and agents need to reliably complete complex, multi-step business workflows across SAP landscapes". The supplier is also trumpeting master data management capabilities provided by recent acquisition Reltio and data lake capabilities proffered by another recent acquisition, Dremio. That is said to have native support for Apache Iceberg and Apache Polaris, plus a high-performance, federated query engine that will enable unified data access without moving or copying the data.  It is also announcing an expansion of its relationship with Databricks, whose CEO, Ali Ghodsi, had a message for the conference reaffirming its work with SAP.

Why measuring your public cloud carbon footprint is so hard If a business wants to understand the carbon cost of its public cloud use, it should be able to ask a straightforward question – what emissions did our activity generate? The answer is rarely straightforward. It depends what the provider measures, how emissions are divided between customers, which electricity accounting method is used and what sits outside the calculation. Establishing whether those emissions have fallen introduces another layer of complexity. Deciding what can credibly be offset depends on understanding both. In my view, the fundamental difficulty is the distance between responsibility and visibility. Businesses are expected to account for the environmental impact of services they buy, while much of the evidence needed to do so sits with someone else. Public cloud customers purchase access to computing resources. They do not own the infrastructure, directly measure its electricity consumption or control how it is replaced. They rely on their provider to translate a complex physical operation into a figure they can use. That figure can be valuable. But we need to understand what it represents before building environmental claims around it. Shared infrastructure and reporting gaps Shared infrastructure is the first challenge. A server can support multiple customers, with storage, networking, cooling and other services shared across an even wider estate. Emissions therefore have to be allocated. Detailed methods can use measured energy consumption, resource reservations and hourly usage, but the customer's footprint remains an attributed share of a larger system. It is not a direct reading from a meter attached to their business. Allocation is unavoidable. The important questions are whether the method is transparent, whether it reflects the resources consumed and whether it is consistent enough to support meaningful comparisons. Reporting frequency creates a further gap. A monthly total may help a sustainability team complete its reporting, without helping an IT team establish which decision changed its emissions. It can conceal variation between workloads and between different times of day, even where the underlying calculation uses more detailed data. Monthly customer reporting already exists, but a reporting total and an operational decision tool serve different purposes. This matters because measurement should help businesses act. If we cannot connect the number to decisions about capacity, storage or processing, its usefulness is limited. Scopes, grids and moving baselines There is also the question of whose emissions we are counting. Electricity purchased to operate a cloud provider's data centre generally falls within the provider's Scope 2. For the customer buying the service, the associated emissions generally sit within Scope 3, as part of its supply chain. Moving infrastructure into the cloud can therefore change where emissions appear in a customer's inventory. That change does not, by itself, establish that fewer emissions have occurred. I think this is an important test for any migration claim. Has the environmental impact reduced, or has it moved outside the part of the organisation's footprint that receives the most attention? Electricity accounting adds another complication. Location-based figures reflect the electricity mix of the grid that serves a facility. Market-based figures reflect qualifying contractual arrangements for electricity purchases. A renewable electricity claim based on annual matching does not establish that every workload was powered by carbon-free electricity at every hour. Buyers need to understand which basis supports the figure they are being given. Without that explanation, two figures can look comparable while answering different questions. A customer may also struggle to distinguish a reduction that results from lower consumption from one that results from changes in electricity purchasing. Then we come to the baseline. To claim a reduction, an organisation needs a credible starting point and a consistent basis for comparison. Cloud carbon calculations evolve as providers improve their data and methodologies. Those improvements can lead to historical figures being revised. That is a reason to maintain clear records of the calculation method, rather than assume that a dashboard total is permanently settled. Otherwise, businesses risk treating a change in measurement as a change in performance. The activity being measured also needs to be comparable. If emissions fall because a business processes fewer transactions, that is different from delivering the same service more efficiently. Conversely, emissions per transaction may improve while total emissions increase as demand grows. Reporting absolute emissions and an appropriate measure of intensity would make these distinctions clearer. The Software Carbon Intensity specification offers a useful approach to relate operational and embodied emissions to a defined unit of activity. Hardware lifecycles and AI hardware Customers also have limited control over where and when emissions occur. Region selection can influence a workload's footprint, but choices must accommodate requirements such as latency, resilience and data residency. Electricity carbon intensity varies geographically and over time – a regional average cannot explain every individual operating decision. It is reasonable to expect customers to make informed choices. It is equally reasonable to expect providers to explain what customers can influence and what remains beyond their control. My IT lifecycle perspective adds one further question: does the calculation adequately account for the equipment itself? Manufacturing and end-of-life emissions form part of a hardware footprint, and allocating them to a service requires assumptions about equipment lifespan and use. Some cloud methodologies include embodied emissions, so it would be wrong to suggest these are universally ignored. The issue is whether their coverage and assumptions are clear to the buyer. AI infrastructure makes that scrutiny particularly relevant. More efficient accelerators can improve performance per unit of energy, but a sound assessment also considers manufacturing and the consequences of replacement. Customers need enough information to understand whether an apparent improvement covers the whole service lifecycle or only its electricity consumption. The limits of offsetting What does all this mean for offsetting? An organisation can purchase credits against an estimated footprint. Uncertainty does not make that transaction impossible. It does, however, affect how confidently the organisation can claim that it has compensated for its emissions. Missing sources, unclear boundaries or revised calculations can change the quantity it is trying to address. And measuring that quantity is only one part of the task. The credibility of the credits requires separate scrutiny. Purchasing them does not demonstrate that the cloud service itself has reduced its emissions. Offsets should be reported separately from the emissions inventory. I would, therefore, put better measurement and practical reduction ahead of the claim. Buyers should ask providers to explain coverage, allocation methods, electricity accounting and methodology changes. Procurement, IT and sustainability teams should agree what evidence they need before committing to a public statement. We should not wait for perfect data before removing unused resources or questioning unnecessary consumption. But we should be honest about the limits of the evidence. Public cloud carbon is difficult to measure because infrastructure, information and control are shared unevenly between supplier and customer. The answer is greater transparency across that relationship. Until buyers can explain what their number includes, how it was calculated and why it changed, any claim about reducing or offsetting it needs to reflect that uncertainty. Read more about IT sustainability Efficient chips cannot save inefficient software. While hardware and datacentres dictate power supply, software creates AI demand. Forrester's Abhijit Sunil explains why software sustainability must become a core engineering metric Software architecture as the first line of climate defence. True digital sustainability requires addressing software waste. Refactoring bloated code cuts computational overhead, lowering enterprise energy consumption and hardware churn

Why measuring your public cloud carbon footprint is so hard If a business wants to understand the carbon cost of its public cloud use, it should be able to ask a straightforward question – what emissions did our activity generate? The answer is rarely straightforward. It depends what the provider measures, how emissions are divided between customers, which electricity accounting method is used and what sits outside the calculation. Establishing whether those emissions have fallen introduces another layer of complexity. Deciding what can credibly be offset depends on understanding both. In my view, the fundamental difficulty is the distance between responsibility and visibility. Businesses are expected to account for the environmental impact of services they buy, while much of the evidence needed to do so sits with someone else. Public cloud customers purchase access to computing resources. They do not own the infrastructure, directly measure its electricity consumption or control how it is replaced. They rely on their provider to translate a complex physical operation into a figure they can use. That figure can be valuable. But we need to understand what it represents before building environmental claims around it. Shared infrastructure and reporting gaps Shared infrastructure is the first challenge. A server can support multiple customers, with storage, networking, cooling and other services shared across an even wider estate. Emissions therefore have to be allocated. Detailed methods can use measured energy consumption, resource reservations and hourly usage, but the customer's footprint remains an attributed share of a larger system. It is not a direct reading from a meter attached to their business. Allocation is unavoidable. The important questions are whether the method is transparent, whether it reflects the resources consumed and whether it is consistent enough to support meaningful comparisons. Reporting frequency creates a further gap. A monthly total may help a sustainability team complete its reporting, without helping an IT team establish which decision changed its emissions. It can conceal variation between workloads and between different times of day, even where the underlying calculation uses more detailed data. Monthly customer reporting already exists, but a reporting total and an operational decision tool serve different purposes. This matters because measurement should help businesses act. If we cannot connect the number to decisions about capacity, storage or processing, its usefulness is limited. Scopes, grids and moving baselines There is also the question of whose emissions we are counting. Electricity purchased to operate a cloud provider's data centre generally falls within the provider's Scope 2. For the customer buying the service, the associated emissions generally sit within Scope 3, as part of its supply chain. Moving infrastructure into the cloud can therefore change where emissions appear in a customer's inventory. That change does not, by itself, establish that fewer emissions have occurred. I think this is an important test for any migration claim. Has the environmental impact reduced, or has it moved outside the part of the organisation's footprint that receives the most attention? Electricity accounting adds another complication. Location-based figures reflect the electricity mix of the grid that serves a facility. Market-based figures reflect qualifying contractual arrangements for electricity purchases. A renewable electricity claim based on annual matching does not establish that every workload was powered by carbon-free electricity at every hour. Buyers need to understand which basis supports the figure they are being given. Without that explanation, two figures can look comparable while answering different questions. A customer may also struggle to distinguish a reduction that results from lower consumption from one that results from changes in electricity purchasing. Then we come to the baseline. To claim a reduction, an organisation needs a credible starting point and a consistent basis for comparison. Cloud carbon calculations evolve as providers improve their data and methodologies. Those improvements can lead to historical figures being revised. That is a reason to maintain clear records of the calculation method, rather than assume that a dashboard total is permanently settled. Otherwise, businesses risk treating a change in measurement as a change in performance. The activity being measured also needs to be comparable. If emissions fall because a business processes fewer transactions, that is different from delivering the same service more efficiently. Conversely, emissions per transaction may improve while total emissions increase as demand grows. Reporting absolute emissions and an appropriate measure of intensity would make these distinctions clearer. The Software Carbon Intensity specification offers a useful approach to relate operational and embodied emissions to a defined unit of activity. Hardware lifecycles and AI hardware Customers also have limited control over where and when emissions occur. Region selection can influence a workload's footprint, but choices must accommodate requirements such as latency, resilience and data residency. Electricity carbon intensity varies geographically and over time – a regional average cannot explain every individual operating decision. It is reasonable to expect customers to make informed choices. It is equally reasonable to expect providers to explain what customers can influence and what remains beyond their control. My IT lifecycle perspective adds one further question: does the calculation adequately account for the equipment itself? Manufacturing and end-of-life emissions form part of a hardware footprint, and allocating them to a service requires assumptions about equipment lifespan and use. Some cloud methodologies include embodied emissions, so it would be wrong to suggest these are universally ignored. The issue is whether their coverage and assumptions are clear to the buyer. AI infrastructure makes that scrutiny particularly relevant. More efficient accelerators can improve performance per unit of energy, but a sound assessment also considers manufacturing and the consequences of replacement. Customers need enough information to understand whether an apparent improvement covers the whole service lifecycle or only its electricity consumption. The limits of offsetting What does all this mean for offsetting? An organisation can purchase credits against an estimated footprint. Uncertainty does not make that transaction impossible. It does, however, affect how confidently the organisation can claim that it has compensated for its emissions. Missing sources, unclear boundaries or revised calculations can change the quantity it is trying to address. And measuring that quantity is only one part of the task. The credibility of the credits requires separate scrutiny. Purchasing them does not demonstrate that the cloud service itself has reduced its emissions. Offsets should be reported separately from the emissions inventory. I would, therefore, put better measurement and practical reduction ahead of the claim. Buyers should ask providers to explain coverage, allocation methods, electricity accounting and methodology changes. Procurement, IT and sustainability teams should agree what evidence they need before committing to a public statement. We should not wait for perfect data before removing unused resources or questioning unnecessary consumption. But we should be honest about the limits of the evidence. Public cloud carbon is difficult to measure because infrastructure, information and control are shared unevenly between supplier and customer. The answer is greater transparency across that relationship. Until buyers can explain what their number includes, how it was calculated and why it changed, any claim about reducing or offsetting it needs to reflect that uncertainty. Read more about IT sustainability Efficient chips cannot save inefficient software. While hardware and datacentres dictate power supply, software creates AI demand. Forrester's Abhijit Sunil explains why software sustainability must become a core engineering metric Software architecture as the first line of climate defence. True digital sustainability requires addressing software waste. Refactoring bloated code cuts computational overhead, lowering enterprise energy consumption and hardware churn

Autumn Budget 2026: Healey sets out AI funding Ahead of his autumn budget, chancellor of the exchequer John Healey has unveiled further investments in artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on risks to jobs and greater security. His plans include £10m per year to improve the UK government's understanding of how AI will reshape jobs and industry, and how the nation needs to prepare for it. The UK's AI hardware capabilities will also receive £18m of support through a new UK Advanced Chip Design Academy for developing advanced chip-design skills. The academy aims to connect British research more directly with advanced semiconductor manufacturing, and to support the government's drive towards re-industrialisation. Healey wants to cut UK dependence on other countries to bolster security and resilience while supporting home-grown businesses and talent. Among the government's plans are new investments in AI chip design capability in Edinburgh, alongside a new AI Centre of Excellence in Manchester. Discussing the investment boost in UK AI, Healey said: "AI will transform daily life: every firm, community, hospital, school, and every aspect of our economy can benefit. I understand and share the concerns of working people, so I am setting out a distinctively British approach to AI – one that doesn't leave workers behind and defends our national interest, while ensuring the benefits of AI-enabled growth are felt right across the country." AI minister Kanishka Narayan discussed the need for technology sovereignty and strengthening cyber security defences: "As AI becomes more powerful, Britain must have the capabilities to protect its people and shape its own future. That means staying ahead of emerging threats, from cyber attacks to biological risks, while building more of the critical technology our security depends on." Regarding technological sovereignty, Narayan said: "We cannot afford to rely entirely on technology built overseas. By backing British science, advanced chips and our own AI companies, we can strengthen our national security, rebuild Britain's industrial strength and create good, skilled jobs across the country." Security minister Dan Jarvis added: "Today's investment will help the UK seize the opportunities AI presents to strengthen our national security, while staying one step ahead of those who seek to use AI to do us harm."  The investments include £165m for a National AI Biosecurity Initiative, of which £100m is being set aside for an AI Biosecurity Lab (AIBL) which will use AI for the detection and surveillance of biological threats. The AIBL is also receiving £200m in AI model credits from OpenAI and Anthropic, plus partnerships with Google DeepMind and London-based AI life sciences pioneer Basecamp Research. There is also an additional £120m investment in the AI Security Institute for building a shared scientific understanding by testing new AI systems and developing technical standards to ensure risks are mitigated. The government plans to use agentic AI to improve the UK's cyber defences through £60m of funding and a new £70m National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability (NERV) Centre where AI tools will be used to identify cyber vulnerabilities across UK critical infrastructure and the economy. Read more stories about UK government tech funding UK government's £500m sovereign AI fund bids to commercialise research: The UK government is launching a £500m Sovereign AI Unit to boost artificial intelligence startups and drive economic growth through strategic and long-term investments. Government can't account for digital transformation spend: Being transparent on digital spend across departments currently 'not feasible' due to finance systems constraints, the government responds to Science and Technology Committee recommendations.

AI World: AI vulnerability surge brings change for Oracle's cyber practice With Microsoft's regular Patch Tuesday updates now routinely comprising well over 1,000 vulnerabilities per month, Oracle has revealed that it too is picking up flaws in its products at a comparable rate – currently around 3,000 every quarter – which is forcing dramatic change when it comes to how it works with customer organisations on patching. Speaking to reporters ahead of Oracle's AI World opening, Gary Miller, the firm's executive vice-president of customer success, said that since onboarding into the Glasswing artificial intelligence (AI) security programme earlier this year, Oracle has poured resources into addressing flaws in both its cloud and on-premise products using AI as a discovery mechanism. "We're using all of the different models to find vulnerabilities in our technology," said Miller. "We'll have one model that will find a vulnerability, we'll have another check that it actually is a real one, and then we'll have other models actually code and test the fix. Plus, these models don't look for one way in. They string vulnerabilities together. They're very complex [and] so we have to have a very complex response to that." Oracle's patch cadence is also increasing – with the past seven days alone seeing about eight real-time patches dropping, said Miller. "The problem is the speed with which bad actors find this stuff because they're using the models as well, and they're collaborating," he said. "Are there going to be more one-off patches that everybody has to put out, like PHP? Yes." Interestingly, said Miller, not all of these vulnerabilities are being discovered by AI – indeed, the total number includes some that humans still found but the models brushed past. As a result, Oracle's cyber experts are now tinkering around under the bonnet, actively fine-tuning the models to give them hints as to where trouble might be found. "It's now a combination of humans and frontier models that are finding issues and stringing things together," he added. "It's got pretty advanced." Read more about patch management AI accelerates exploit timelines from months to hours. Organisations must shift from patch-all to risk-based prioritisation using exploitability metrics. AI agents are increasingly finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. The bigger challenge for security teams is figuring out which of those flaws matter most. Microsoft's July Patch Tuesday broke records by addressing over 600 CVEs. What does this reveal about the effect that AI models have on vulnerability and patch management? To help customers get used to life in this new normal, Oracle is ramping up what amounts to a large data-sharing exercise with its customers, with the intent of helping them understand exactly what Oracle products they are using, and which ones might be putting their security at risk. Alongside this is guidance on next steps and best practice. "We use [OpenAI's] Codex and we ran it against our whole installed base, and it came back for every customer with all the software they've got, the patch versions they've got, and the fixes they should apply," said Miller. "That was within two days. And we gave that to customers. They can go and look at what they have [and] in many cases, customers didn't know everything they had." On the patching side, Oracle is now making repeatable AI-powered testing capabilities available to customers that they can run against their systems as much as they like, while the supplier will work with those who may need or want additional safeguards at this stage to create digital twins of their Oracle environments to run patches against before deploying them into production. "This is going to take time to flush out," said Miller. "We have to work together as a community against bad actors. They're also working as a community. They're using AI tools. Our AI tools have to be better than they are. Their AI tools and our community has to be stronger than their community. This is going to be a team sport to get through this together."

AI World: Oracle sets agents loose on Fusion Cloud apps On the opening day of its annual AI World customer conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Oracle unleashed a plethora of artificial intelligence (AI) innovations chiefly targeting its Fusion Cloud Applications suite, as CEO Mike Sicilia used his opening keynote to advance one vision of an Oracle-powered AI future. Boasting of a "unique advantage" that has been decades in the making, Sicilia claimed that Oracle was well-placed to lead against four key metrics that will collectively enable AI to be truly effective in the enterprise. First, he explained, AI Database will enable agents to access data, then the AI Data Platform will help them understand this data in the context of the wider business, while Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) will provide the high-performance infrastructure needed to run them. Finally, today's Fusion announcements will enable them to work more effectively within business applications. Sicilia's AI doctrine would seem to hold that it is this final 'pillar' that is the most important – or at the very least the most visible to the everyday IT user. In his view, he explained to the keynote audience, the true measure of a successful AI deployment will ultimately be to make the underlying business application essentially invisible to the ordinary user. According to Natalia Rachelson, senior vice-president of Oracle Applications, it is in this way that customers can realise immediate value because they will now clearly see tangible actions and outcomes from their agents. "The mindset is changing. In the past, SaaS software helped record things, but people still had to direct and tell it what to do, people had to extract data and run reports," said Rachelson. "That paradigm is now shifting," she told Computer Weekly. "We're moving from Fusion just being a system of record to Fusion being an all-in-one system of record and system of outcomes." Underlying the suite of announcements Oracle made on the opening day of AI World is a new, open source Fusion Cloud Applications implementation service, which the supplier is making available through a public GitHub repository, and will supposedly make the setup and configuration process both machine-readable and executable entirely by AI agents. The Oracle Fusion Setup and Configuration Registry (FSCR) will be built and maintained by Oracle and is designed to capture the supplier's internal expertise on its own product suite as reusable AI skills that allow agents to plan, execute, test and validate directly in Fusion Cloud Applications, releasing humans to focus on other things, such as business transformation, process redesign and so on. Part of the aim of FSCR is also to expand Oracle's customer base by making it easier to get things up and running, said Rachelson, with the hope being that the free-of-charge service will induce users of its competitors to consider jumping ship to Fusion. "Our goal is to get as many customers to Fusion as possible because that's where the AI value accrues for them," she added. Oracle said that its system integrator community will be free to extend the open foundation with methodologies, accelerators, automations and solutions of their own, and it will be actively pursuing these relationships with its channel partners. The Claw Alongside FSCR sits a range of new Fusion Agentic Applications powered by the recently launched Oracle Fusion Claw governed execution runtime, which is designed to allow Fusion Agentic Applications to run enterprise-scale work across multiple steps, different conditions, and large datasets, by marrying AI reasoning and deterministic computation. The Claw-powered applications span multiple business functions, and 25 are being made available at launch across multiple Fusion products covering customer experience (CX), enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM), and supply chain and manufacturing (SCM). Functionality includes ledger, payroll, procurement, supply planning and workforce orchestration, among other things. Finally, Oracle announced Fusion Companion and Fusion Agentic Home, two new overlay capabilities for Fusion Cloud Applications. Fusion Companion will serve as an intelligent layer that can understand an organisation's objectives and automatically takes the appropriate actions to achieve them – to Sicilia's point about applications becoming somewhat less visible, Oracle says Companion users will "no longer need to know" what application to run or action to take, or even which agent to use. Users will be able to access these capabilities via various supported AI tools – including the likes of ChatGPT – or through Agentic Home. Agentic Home is designed to offer users a native AI experience inside Fusion Applications, letting them define their objectives, delegate work to agents and agentic applications, and track progress. Oracle said it would let organisations simplify employee workflows, make them more productive, better resolve edge cases and exceptions, and let agents doing the grunt work while humans focus on wider objectives or decisions that need their judgement – a process it refers to as governed delegation. "This is about enterprise applications completely changing, and changing the way they [customers] operate," said Rachelson. "From assisting people with the work, to taking on the work, we're moving the work forward, and that is a huge takeaway." Read more about Oracle Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is working with Oracle to advance the use of AI and data analytics in medicine. The executive chair of Oracle and its CEO will be asked to justify why a project budgeted at $10bn is costing taxpayers $17bn more. A zero-day vulnerability affecting Oracle's PeopleSoft products is being exploited by a ShinyHunters campaign targeting schools and universities.

Capita 'comprehensively failed' on Civil Service pension artificial intelligence promise Artificial intelligence (AI) promises made to the government by outsourcer Capita failed to materialise, providing the "biggest learning" from an independent audit into the failed civil service pension project. The audit, by Grant Thornton, has also revealed major failings by Capita related to its promises to fix the scheme, which has left thousands of former civil servants in serious financial difficulties. Cabinet Office officials now have access to the relevant Capita systems and will be watching "every single day", said government minister Sally Jameson. In a parliamentary statement, Jameson, parliamentary secretary in the Cabinet Office, asserted that while Capita said it would be an AI-enabled pension scheme, that just was not the reality. A government-commissioned independent audit of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS), carried out by Grant Thornton, was received by the officials this month. It has laid bare Capita's tech failings on the project it began working on in 2023, before taking control in December last year. "We were promised 'the most AI-enabled pensions service'. It is fair to say that Capita has comprehensively failed to deliver on that commitment," Jameson told MPs. "The progress overall has been abysmal." The full audit report won't be published, although MPs on the Public Accounts and Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs committees will see it. Jameson said the report concluded that, "in a service whose success firmly relied on automation, Capita did not deliver the promised technology". She added that it also found Capita "had not been applying the right techniques to understand demand, productivity and capacity, and that it had not put in place effective mechanisms to detect and escalate failure". The minister also slammed Capita's recovery plans: "It will not shock this House that the independent advisor's report clearly shows that Capita's rectification planning was wholly insufficient, their technology was weak and their ambition was falling well short of restoring the quality services that members deserve." The revelations contradict Capita claims made in February that a backlog of work left by the previous supplier, MYCSP, was the cause of the problems with the scheme since Capita took control in December. However, Jameson did also describe MYCSP's performance as "abysmal". Government sees data Jameson said that from now on, the government will have full access to Capita systems related to CSPS and full sight of the data. "I agreed with Capita executives that Cabinet Office officials would work with Capita to develop a credible, workable and realistic recovery plan for which Capita alone will be held to account," she said. "I can confirm that for the first time, Cabinet Office officials now have full access to capital systems and data." Jameson said Cabinet Office officials will now be watching Capita closely "every single day". "I will indeed be holding Capita's feet to the fire every single step of the way on this rectification plan, and now that we have access to the Capita systems, we'll be able to look every single day, as I know Cabinet Office officials are, to track that progress," she added. The government will now publish figures to allow the public and members of the scheme a clear view of performance. Members have questioned figures put out by Capita that appear to contradict what is happening to them. "Every two weeks, we will be publishing the figures so people can see for themselves how Capita are performing," said Jameson. "If they're not up to scratch, I will return to this House." As revealed by Computer Weekly in September, the government set up a team to validate Capita data on the CSPS. Insourcing debate MPs repeatedly asked the minister about government plans to insource the scheme and other outsourced work. "We absolutely must improve these services going forward, which is why we are exploring in-house models," said Jameson. "We want to have a big wave of insourcing, because we can no longer be totally reliant on these companies that let us down time and again." "Following our previous commitments to Parliament, my officials have led an extensive programme of engagement with trade unions, practitioners and experts," she said. "The evidence from those sessions was clear: restoring operational resilience and member trust must be the approach. I have instructed my officials to evaluate the viability of a range of future delivery options, including insourcing all core business operations. "There are a number of different insourcing models in operation across the public sector that we will learn from, and we will consider which is the best approach to take for the civil service pension scheme and all the other schemes that it interacts with," said Jameson, stressing, however, that insourcing decisions must wait until all former civil servants have their pensions paid. "This government inherited a broken, outsourced administration," she added. "We cannot replace a complex pension operation overnight, but let me be clear: this government will hold Capita to account and continue to apply the most stringent commercial levers, and we will not rest until every civil servant receives the pension they are entitled to." Fix first Former civil servant Steve Tessier, who spent most of his career at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), as well as a spell on secondment at Nato, is still waiting for his pension after retiring last year. "I don't want more flannel: after waiting a year since retirement, I just want my money," he said. "I'm concerned that the minister tried to shovel all of the blame onto Capita, ignoring the significant failure of governance by the cabinet office that allowed capita to wreak havoc." The Civil Service Pensions Campaigns Group, set up to support scheme members, welcomed the acknowledgement of the seriousness of the crisis and the need for independent verification. "Capita's claims that the contract is back on track have been largely discredited by the evidence and experiences of members still awaiting pensions, accurate quotations and even responses to MPs' enquiries," the group said. "The reported failures surrounding technology and AI implementation raise serious questions about Capita's management of the contract and the Cabinet Office's oversight. We expect the Grant Thornton findings to be fully scrutinised, with clear accountability for what went wrong and the consequences for members." The group said questions over insourcing is a matter for Parliament and the government, but "any decision to bring the service back in-house must be supported by a robust, properly resourced transition plan that protects members from further disruption. "Behind the statistics are ordinary civil servants suffering real financial and emotional hardship. Capita's failures must also be taken into account when considering future government contracts. Members cannot afford another failed transition – they need their pensions paid accurately and on time, not further promises." Earlier this month, Capita said in a statement: "Capita recognises the need for continued service improvement, and we are implementing further automation along with stronger governance including improved management information. This will continue to improve operational output and member experience. "Capita accepts that performance remains below the standards that scheme members and the government rightly expect. The remediation of CSPS remains the group's top priority." Read more about Capita and the Civil Service Pension Scheme Oct 2026: Capita postpones investor event to focus on civil service pension fix. Oct 2026: Government could firm up pension insourcing position next month. Oct 2026: Campaign group submits evidence to two Capita probes as pension scheme member turns to food bank. Oct 2026: NAO to investigate what went wrong in Capita's civil service pension takeover. Oct 2025: Capita rubbishes Public Accounts Committee report claims. Sept 2026: Capita boss gets 'obscene' pay packet while retired civil servants need emergency loans. Sept 2026: Capita doesn't get to 'walk away from' civil service pension mess, says minister. Sept 2026: UK government to create team to validate Capita's data on troubled pension scheme. Sept 2026: UK government views the outsourcer's performance as 'unacceptable' after it reports meeting a self-imposed target. Sept 2026: Government has seen enough of Capita failure and Civil Service Pension Scheme to be moved in-house. Aug 2026: Capita CEO receives scathing rebuttal from employee over botched contract. July 2026: PAC raises more questions over Capita's role in government. July 2026: Capita to lose money on pension debacle but 'has government's private parts in its grip'. July 2026: Capita civil service pension contract 'prime candidate' for insourcing, says government minister. July 2026: Capita's rush to hit civil service pension deadline risking errors, say staff. July 2026: Union calls for insourcing of pension contract as Capita 'shit show' goes on. Jun 2026: Cabinet Office states Capita set to miss Civil Service Pension Scheme deadline. Jun 2026: Capita went live with its troubled civil service pensions administration without a basic Domain Name System security feature. May 2026: Ministers refused to sign off £563m Capita contract amid civil service pension disaster. May 2026: Civil servants to protest at Capita general meeting amid pension crisis. Apr 2026: Was Capita's Royal Mail pension contract a botch too far? Apr 2026: Capita lacked 'detail and thoroughness' in planning botched Civil Service Pension Scheme takeover. Apr 2026: MP committees to double up on Capita's civil service pension crisis. Apr 2026: Government should drop Capita from civil service scheme after it loses Royal Mail role, says union. Apr 2026: Government terminates Capita's Royal Mail pension contract. Mar 2026: Capita left to deal with 13,000 civil service pension cases over a year old. Feb 2026: Thousands of unread emails and 20 million database errors cause civil service pension hardship. Jan 2026: Troubleshooter steps in as Capita and civil service bosses apologise for pension scheme problems. Oct 2025: Capita rubbishes Public Accounts Committee report claims.

Proving the benefits of AI In this week's Computer Weekly, we hear from multinational companies adopting AI to find out how they are proving the value of the technology, beyond the hype that surrounds it. Retailers are embracing AI and some are introducing a new role – chief AI officer. We examine why and what the job entails. And AWS's security chief discusses the challenges of cyber security since the Mythos model has shown how it can hack IT systems. Read the issue now.