Communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) provider Nebula has announced the appointment of Eric Dodd as its new chief financial officer.

A seasoned industry veteran, Dodd brings more than 15 years of leadership experience across finance, HR, legal, and compliance within growth-stage technology companies.

Prior to joining Nebula, he served as CFO at K3 BTG and Attraqt, where he played a key role in scaling operations and driving financial strategy. He began his career as a chartered accountant with Deloitte in London and holds an MBA from London Business School.

In his new role, he will lead the firm's financial strategy and operations as it looks to sustain growth and expand its platform capabilities.

In an announcement, Nebula CEO Howard Stevens said Dodd's extensive experience will help the company build on its recent momentum and shape the next phase of its expansion.

"Eric's expertise and proven track record make him a fantastic addition to our leadership team," he commented. "His arrival comes at a time of tremendous growth for Nebula, and we are excited to see the impact of his guidance across our financial and operational functions."

Nebula's CPaaS platform is designed to support enterprise communications by enabling organizations to deliver voice, messaging, and customer experience services through a unified, cloud-based environment. The platform underpins the firm's growing ecosystem of more than 700 channel partners and supports over 200,000 active daily users.

Over the past year, Nebula has continued to invest in its proprietary technology and operational capabilities, releasing more than 50 new features and 100 software updates.

The company said its latest appointment will now further strengthen its executive leadership, reinforcing its commitment to strategic growth, operational excellence, and market innovation

Commenting on his new role, Dodd said he is looking forward to contributing to the company's financial and innovation strategy.

"Joining Nebula presents an exciting opportunity to contribute to a business with strong growth momentum and a clear vision for innovation," he said. "I look forward to supporting the company's continued success and delivering value to its customers, partners, and stakeholders."

Sectigo has announced the appointment of Clint Maddox as president of global field operations, as the certificate lifecycle management vendor looks to build on recent growth momentum.

Maddox will lead Sectigo's global revenue and go-to-market organization, overseeing sales, marketing, and channel operations.

A seasoned industry leader, he brings nearly 30 years of experience in driving growth and transformation at leading global enterprise software organizations – most recently as chief revenue officer (CRO) at KX, where he led global sales, go-to-market strategy, customer success, and consulting.

Maddox has also served as CRO at ConnectWise, where he scaled the firm's worldwide sales and partner ecosystems and launched new cybersecurity initiatives, following prior senior leadership roles at Broadcom and CA Technologies.

In his new role, he is tasked with expanding Sectigo's presence in priority markets, scaling its partner ecosystem, and unifying go-to-market activity to meet increasing enterprise automation and compliance demand.

In an announcement, Sectigo CEO Kevin Weiss said the appointment comes as automation and post-quantum cryptography increasingly define the nature of digital trust, with organizations needing partners who can execute at scale.

"Sectigo is building for that future. We've delivered the strongest year in our history, expanded globally, and advanced automated CLM in ways that are fundamentally reshaping how enterprises manage certificates, identity, and cryptography," he explained.

"Clint's experience transforming and scaling global revenue organizations will help us move even faster – unlocking new opportunities for our customers and strengthening the digital trust foundation the next decade will depend on."

Building on record momentum

Over the last twelve months, Sectigo achieved organic annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth of more than 20% year-over-year and completed the acquisition of the Entrust public certificate business – which it said included the largest certificate migration in industry history.

The vendor also bolstered its channel presence, doubling its enterprise and partner business over the same period, and introduced a Certificates as a Service (CaaS) offering to help partners manage and monetize digital certificates more effectively.

Elsewhere, the company became the first CLM provider available via the Pax8 Marketplace and launched Sectigo PQC Labs, a sandbox environment built on NIST's full post-quantum cryptography standards.

In his role as president of global field operations, Sectigo said Maddox will apply a "disciplined, purpose-driven approach" to help the company further expand its footprint.

"As organizations navigate shorter certificate lifespans, automation at scale, and post-quantum readiness, Sectigo is uniquely positioned to lead," commented Maddox. "I'm excited to build on this momentum, strengthen our global partnerships, and accelerate growth in the years ahead."

UK business investment in AI is set to skyrocket over the next two years, according to new research from SAP, but many are failing to properly plan – and it could cost them dearly.

Analysis from the tech giant shows UK businesses are, on average, spending £15.94 million on AI this year. Moreover, they expect to increase their investment in the technology by an average of 40% across the next two years.

The report found a good return on investment (ROI), with the average UK business seeing returns of 17% from AI investments, and ROI forecast to almost double to 32% by 2027.

Many said they were already starting to unlock value from AI, with 36% reporting significant improvement in decision-making, 34% in customer engagement, and 31% in time to value.

Notably, businesses are confident in their long-term prospects with AI. More than three-quarters (78%) of executives believe AI will achieve a positive return within one to three years. More than half (52%) say it delivers returns faster than any other technology.

In recent months, agentic AI has become highly popular, with the average UK business expecting an ROI of 11% from agents within two years, equivalent to £2.7 million.

Fragmented AI programs are causing headaches

While the outlook is upbeat, the report warned that a concerning number of AI programs are fragmented, meaning many aren’t unlocking full value from the technology.

Indeed, 42% of UK enterprises described their investment as piecemeal. A key factor here is that around 37% of projects are department-led, according to SAP, while 15% admitted their programs were ad-hoc.

Only 7% have a strategic, enterprise-wide IT plan, the report found. As a result, 70% of UK businesses said they were unsure whether AI is delivering its full potential.

“UK businesses have the ambition, talent, and data to lead in AI, although too many are still treating it as a ‘technology project’ rather than a holistic business transformation,” said Leila Romane, managing director, SAP UK & Ireland.

“The real opportunity is to use AI to reimagine how companies operate, how people work, and how value is created for customers. When UK organizations take that broader, strategic approach to adopting the technology and embedding it throughout their business, the results will become tangible."

Success hinges on a solid strategy

The initial scramble to jump on the generative AI bandwagon may have paid dividends for some enterprises, but those examples are outliers and not the norm.

We’re approaching three years since the arrival of ChatGPT, the big launch that sparked the generative AI race, and yet a concerning number of enterprises still don’t have a clear-cut strategy.

Analysis from Carruthers and Jackson earlier this year found more than a quarter (26%) of enterprises had no formal data strategy. With this in mind, it’s no wonder that many enterprises have grown frustrated at a lack of solid returns.

Research from Appen showed fewer than half of businesses (47.3%) recorded a return on investment with AI in 2024.

While this SAP study paints a positive outlook in terms of ROI, nailing the fundamentals still remains paramount for any IT leader. So what are these?

First and foremost, data quality is a key hurdle for many businesses. In a study from Ataccama, 69% of chief data officers (CDOs) identified data quality as their top challenge.

40% also said they struggle to maintain “consistent” data quality, which has an adverse effect on project outcomes.

Meanwhile, data storage is also another key issue for IT leaders. Analysis from Hitachi Vantara in early 2024 showed data storage capacity requirements were set to surge by around 150% in the coming years, and many enterprises have been woefully unprepared to meet these rising demands.

Accommodating huge AI workloads and storage requirements requires equally huge investment if a “data storage crisis” is to be averted, the company noted.

MORE FROM ITPRO

• Will the future of AI be made in Europe? The EU thinks so
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• Is channel know-how the key to de-risking enterprise AI plans?

As part of efforts to turn around Intel's fortunes, the company made a series of senior engineering appointments.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan is looking to focus on customer relationships and shore up the company's foundry business, cutting staff and reorganizing top management.

And as part of its plans to become a more engineering-focused company, Intel has now hired three chip industry executives for engineering and networking roles.

Greg Ernst, who's been with Intel for more than 20 years, has been named chief revenue officer. He has headed up the company's sales and marketing group (SMG) since May, after leading SMG across the Americas. He will continue to report to Tan.

Meanwhile, Srinivasan Iyengar has been named as senior vice president and fellow, leading a new customer engineering center of excellence and joining the Intel executive team, also reporting to Tan.

He joins the company from Cadence Design Systems, where he led global silicon engineering, working to help customers create best-in-class custom silicon, including a deep focus on hyperscale data center solutions optimized for key workloads.

Jean-Didier Allegrucci, meanwhile, has been named as vice president of AI System on Chip (SoC) engineering, responsible for managing the development of multiple SoCs that will form part of Intel's AI roadmap.

He joins from Rain AI, a startup where he led AI silicon engineering, after spending 17 years at Apple. There, he oversaw the development of more than 30 SoCs used across many of the company's flagship products.

And, finally, Shailendra Desai is to become VP of AI fabric and networking, where he will lead the development of innovative SoC architectures for Intel's AI GPUs and forward-looking roadmap.

Desai joins from Google, where he led silicon engineering, architectural design, and platform solutions across multiple mobile SoCs. He was previously the founder and CEO of Provino Technologies, an SoC startup acquired by Google in 2021. Both Allegrucci and Desai will report to Sachin Katti, Intel's chief technology and AI officer.

"We see significant opportunities ahead to strengthen our product offerings and meet the changing needs of our customers," said Tan.

"Greg, Srini, J-D, and Shailendra are highly accomplished leaders with strong reputations across our ecosystem, and they will each play important roles as we position our business for the future."

However, the news is less good for many other Intel employees, who this week learned that the company is planning to lay off as many as one-fifth of its staff.

"These are difficult actions, but essential to meet our affordability challenges and the current financial position of the company. It drives pain to every individual," Intel manufacturing vice president Naga Chandrasekaran reportedly wrote in a memo to employees.

He said the company is aiming for a cut in numbers of between 15% and 20%, with most of the cuts to take place in July. There are expected to be layoffs at Intel factories around the world, but particularly in Oregon, where the company currently employs 20,000 people.

Agentic automation specialist UiPath has announced the appointment of Simon Pettit as its new area vice president for the UK and Ireland.

Pettit brings a wealth of enterprise technology expertise to the role and most recently served as UiPath's vice president of international sales operations and revenue excellence.

As the firm's new UK&I chief, he will spearhead region-specific transformation projects, accelerating operational growth, and strengthening customer engagement.

In an announcement, Mark Gibbs, UiPath's international president, said there was "no one better" to drive the company's progress and customer results in the region.

"His deep understanding of the market and commitment to innovation make him the ideal candidate for this strategic role and I have no doubt he will successfully guide our next phase of growth and momentum in the region," he added.

Pettit's appointment comes at a crucial time for UiPath as the company moves into its next growth phase, which will focus on advancing agentic automation and driving intelligent enterprise automation through the UiPath Platform.

By combining controlled agency with developer flexibility and seamless integration, the offering aims to help enterprises leverage AI agents to automate business processes and streamline operations.

Pettit is credited with playing a crucial role in the company's success over the last six years and will now leverage his leadership experience and industry expertise to drive further growth of its platform across the UK and Ireland.

Commenting on his appointment, Pettit said UiPath' is well-positioned to help the UK and Ireland achieve its AI-focused ambitions across the enterprise.

"It's been a career highlight to contribute to the significant growth of UiPath over the past six years," he said. "I'm thrilled to take on the role of leading our UK and Ireland teams through this next transformative phase and am committed to helping scale the impact of agentic automation across the region for better customer outcomes.

"With the UK&I striving to be globally positioned as an AI superpower, effective and seamless AI integration within business operations will be crucial for creating successful use cases, and UiPath is positioned to enable this across enterprise."

UK employees are open to businesses bringing artificial intelligence (AI) into the workplace, but want greater transparency from business leaders on what their plans to implement this technology looks like.

This is according to a survey of 2,741 UK employees conducted by work management platform Asana’s Work Innovation Lab. 

Those surveyed are largely open to the use of AI in the workplace, with 92% saying they want to use the technology to help improve efficiency and reclaim time in their job. This correlates with the findings of research carried out by Microsoft in mid 2023, which found people were more focused on the potential benefits AI could bring them in their role than job security.

This general positive feeling towards AI is hampered by a perceived lack of transparency from senior management, however; only 30% of employees surveyed said they had sufficient clarity on their organization’s plans to use AI. In contrast, 39% of senior leaders said they believe they have been transparent on this matter.

The data also suggests that the use of AI in businesses are now significant factors that contribute to career planning in the UK. For example, 56% of workers said how transparent a company is about its use of AI will influence their career planning, with 40% saying whether or not they are offered training on AI would have an impact on their decision.

Reflecting on the results of the survey, Rebecca Hinds,Head of the Work Innovation Lab at Asana, said: “In order to harness the promise and the potential of AI in our workplace we need to adopt a deeply human approach. Decades of research show that the implementation of new technology fails in most cases not because the technology isn’t efficient, but because humans naturally resist change. We need to prioritize change management, upskilling and reskilling, and experimentation in order to make AI successful.”

Hinds is not alone in her concern. In a global survey of over 3,000 business leaders by professional services company Avanade, 63% of respondents said they believe employees will need some new skills or a completely new set of skills to work with generative AI. An overwhelming majority –98% – said support will be needed to train employees in the use of generative AI tools, while 50% foresee this as requiring significant support.

The leaders that participated in Avanade’s research are also optimistic about AI’s impact on the workplace as the technology is scaled. For example, 64% of respondents believe AI will maintain or increase the number of human roles at their organization in 2024, with most expecting the headcount to increase by up to 9%.

Making net-zero goals directly relevant to each individual could be the most powerful tool for encouraging employees to take charge and help IT organizations and their industry reduce emissions faster.

That's according to Chia-Huei Wu, professor in management at King's Business School, King's College London, who explains that research suggests developing personally relevant narratives that individual employees directly relate to and understand – as opposed to simply providing explanations or facts. 

"This can be based on a kind of storytelling," he says.

It makes sense to have all hands on deck where possible – the task is huge, after all. 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), average global temperatures must rise no more than 1.5°C (34.7°F) this century to avoid catastrophic climate change, which means slashing emissions 43% by 2030 versus 2019 levels and at least 60% by 2035. 

"The most important factor is motivation – it's about whether people want to do something, using their internal time," Wu says. "People may not think a fact (such as a figure from an emissions estimate) is relevant to them personally." 

A simple example might be developing a communication strategy that encourages employees to rethink sending emails, how much data they use, and the like. Even though these can be small things, the direct relevance to their own behaviors is more obvious than other initiatives, he points out.

Of course, organizations can help further by examining the potential for in-house mechanisms and initiatives that can foster greater efforts and provide routes to success, all of which should be embedded into daily work activities.

An example might be forming groups or "small clubs" that support each other to take action or suggest innovations or improvements. 

When employees can understand who is benefiting from an action or activity and why – understanding how everyone's work is connected across the whole organization – that can also increase the understanding of the meaning of their own work and how what they do can be influential, Wu points out.

"It sounds simple but has come out powerfully in organizational research" he says.

You might also consider that increasing focus on emissions can attract and develop more talent in the first instance, as Susan Kenniston, global sustainability head at Wipro, adds.

"Even knowing how to talk about it, even for recruiters and writing job descriptions and things, threading it into how you represent the company, it really starts there," she says.

Create a kind of "curriculum around sustainability that meets employees where they're at", she says.

Enabling education at executive and management levels that involves more junior employees can drive "faster feedback loops" on emissions over time, while rethinking metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) in relation to the overall business value framework, she says.

Jillian Moore, sustainability and global advisory lead at Avanade, agrees, adding that leaders need to accept and be comfortable with the fact they no longer have all the answers, while also communicating better and more consistently.

"We have a lot of people on the ground out there with clients, usually at slightly earlier levels in their career, who are hugely passionate and know more about sustainability," she says. "Sometimes we can be holding them back, not giving them the runway or space to actually act."

Get with the program

While it can be difficult to get consensus across every individual in a company, people involved at whatever level can often agree on the direction of travel. Then the task can become more about ensuring everyone can play their part and deciding what each individual can contribute, she says.

"You … need a program that helps take on board all these ideas," says Moore. "And you need transparency of outcome with everybody."

For example, if you're reducing travel and you show how the associated cost savings benefit a role it can feel like a win-win, encouraging people to bring forward further ideas, Moore says.

She also advises that organizations make emissions reduction part of people's objectives and appraisals, knitted directly into the job description; sustainability as indivisible from personal career progression.

"We're still at a point where people are prepared to do a lot of this altruistically and some people are very passionate about it. But I don't know how long that phase will last," Moore says.

Rajkumar Vijayarangakannan, leader of network design and devops at ManageEngine, emphasizes education and awareness initiatives as critical to sustainable practice for increasingly power-hungry machines, woven in right from the data center construction phase.

"Our team runs the bigger energy consumption areas, the data centers [which account for] 60-70% of our energy consumption," he says.  "Even five years ago, it was different. We have to optimize every space; even the smallest optimization helps us save a lot." 

Vijayarangakannan says he typically starts by talking to employees about switching off the lights. That might sound simplistic but actually it demonstrates awareness that every little action makes a difference, and that can very much be down to individual choices. 

The effectiveness of actions can be easily showcased these days with the use of temperature sensors, for example, he adds.

"Everything is involved with carbon emissions. So we started giving awareness programmes on which operations, methods and practices can give much better carbon emission control," Vijayarangakannan says. "Then they can, as employees, all be aware of it and then do their own individual things. Each and every one is part of a green program, and it starts from the level one employee."

In one small data center project, the vacuuming was consuming a lot of power; noticing this, the organization changed the method of cleaning, resulting in much lower ongoing emissions. "Every aspect of it is our individual responsibility," Vijayarangakannan says.

Every little helps

Sheryl Moore, head of sustainability at Stone Group, similarly favors getting buy-in from everyone to fully embed sustainability.

"Many people help me with this," she says. "A lot of it comes down to the values and the culture of the organization. If you encourage a more open conversation, that really helps."

People have to feel safe to voice their opinions and see that ideas also do get implemented, without necessarily needing to fully define, curate or present that idea in full themselves, Moore notes.

As James Robey, global head of environmental sustainability at Capgemini, says, tackling the climate crisis relies on collective action. 

"It’s vital for employees to be fully engaged," Robey says. "Our most far-reaching ... was a VP-led initiative to boost employees’ understanding of sustainability, while sparking new ideas and learnings for climate action."

IT spending around the world will total $4.7 trillion in 2023, driven by a surge in software spending, according to a new forecast by Gartner.

The new spending represents 4.3% increase year-on-year and has been driven largely by software and IT services.

The report projects that worldwide IT spending could grow as much as 8.8% in 2024, to a total of $5.1 trillion.

Gartner found that at present, AI has not had a large impact on IT spending and that in the future organizations are likely to implement it using existing budgets.

For example, Google Duet AI and Microsoft Copilot are being added to product suites that are free or already factored into budgets, while other businesses will gain AI capabilities as part of contracts with their enterprise software providers.

“A great deal of software out there will get AI without a price increase, so at no cost to the end-user,” John-David Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner told ITPro.

Lovelock argued that AI is impossible to track due to the fact that it is both a technology and an approach, with the example of chatbots and image generators as two AI tools operating in completely different markets.

“AI and generative AI is unique, in that it can use every form of technology as a channel to market,” he said.

“It'll be part of printers, it'll be part of mobile phones, it’ll be part of your software, it’ll will be part of your telecom services, your security services. Even your consulting services and outsourcing services will either use AI to deliver a better product to their end users, or they will add AI to the product feature mix for their end users.”

Lovelock also predicted that companies such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, and Ernst and Young will start using artificial intelligence for better product delivery, scale, and reduce costs without adding more staff.

‘Higher-level’ strategy shift

Lovelock has previously stated that IT spending is “recession-proof” and that companies that failed to increase IT spending could lose out. 

He told ITPro that this trend had continued, with some laggard companies focused on margin and cost control while others had shifted their exterior revenue-growth focus to making improvements to internal processes.

“In a sense, there is a higher-level change, where corporations coming out of 2022 into 2023 were primarily focused on revenue growth,” he told ITPro.

“Starting in maybe the end of 2022, beginning of 2023, they started to put into those digital transformation projects more work into efficiencies on the interior, on how they can make their departments more effective so that they can get to the new revenue stream?”

This drive for internal efficiencies has coincided with increased interest in infrastructure software, and Lovelock said that Gartner has seen “really strong growth” in robotic process automation (RPA).

Addressing job losses to AI, Lovelock acknowledged that it is a “tricky” issue, but maintained that it would ultimately come down to the business decisions of employers and whether they wanted to merely maintain productivity or improve it.

“For every job, there is a percentage of the time that is toil and a percentage of time that is value added. If you use AI to completely take away the toil, you wouldn’t get rid of the person because they’re adding value.

“In fact, you may start adding more people because the value that you used to get from one employee has gone up because they're no longer doing toil. So if you reduce their toil by four hours a day, now you're getting eight hours per day of value rather than four and that changes the cost equation for that role.”

The devices segment continues to decline, in line with another recent piece of research by IDC, down 8.6% in 2023 to $700 billion.

Lovelock cited mobile phones as an example, the sales of which are not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2025. Gartner findings indicate that following this brief recovery, the devices will return to “close to zero percent growth” by 2027.

Female tech workers in the UK have been disproportionately impacted by the recent wave of layoffs across the industry. 

Analysis from Integro Accounting found that the percentage of female tech employees in the UK sector has fallen for the first time since 2018, highlighting concerns about diversity in the space. 

The firm found that women accounted for around 20.1% of the total industry workforce in 2022, marking a decrease from 22.7% in the year prior. 

Across this period, the total number of female tech employees also fell in absolute terms from 384,025 to 359,154, equivalent to a 6.5% drop. 

Conversely, the number of male employees in the sector increased by 8.6% across the same period from 1,306,833 to 1,419,590. 

The statistics from Integro align with previous research on the issue of layoffs and female representation in the tech industry. 

Earlier this year, analysis from Layoffs.fyi found that in Europe women accounted for 41.6% of job cuts despite making up just over one-third of the workforce. 

Similar analysis of the US job market also points toward disproportionate levels of redundancies for female workers. Between October 2022 and June 2023, female tech workers made up nearly half (45%) of redundancies across the industry. 

What’s driving female tech layoffs?

Christian Hickmott, managing director of Integro Accounting, said the disproportionate volume of layoffs could compound long-standing issues around diversity and lack of female representation. 

“The UK tech sector has made great strides in boosting female representation in recent years so it is disappointing to see much of that progress undone during the recent round of tech layoffs.”

Hickmott noted that, traditionally, female workers tend to be “more highly concentrated” in part-time or non-technical roles which are “often the first to go during a downturn”. 

However, Donne Burrows, chief operating officer at Engine B told ITPro that, in her experience, women don’t typically hold positions that are more vulnerable to cuts. 

The issue lies in the seniority of roles, she said, with many female tech workers holding more junior positions compared to male colleagues. 

Junior roles are typically among the first to be subject to cuts during an economic downturn. With a higher proportion of male employees holding senior roles, this can create a broader adverse effect on female workers. 

“From my experience of recruiting and managing people and operations, I don’t believe that female tech workers are necessarily working in roles more vulnerable to cuts,” she said. “However, as companies look at making cost savings, they may be taking out more junior roles as these can be consolidated or automated. 

“Often these roles will employ a blend of male and female workers, but the more senior roles will tend to be filled by men so it feels like women may be more adversely impacted.”

Burrows said another key reason for disproportionate losses may be due to changing work patterns in the wake of the pandemic. With many organizations seeking to return to the office, this could have a greater impact on women in the workforce. 

“Some of the losses may be as a result of changing working patterns and more companies going back to pre-pandemic working - ie, more time in offices - and this may be adversely affecting female workers who have other commitments that remote working supports”. 

The City of London Police has awarded Capita a lucrative £50 million ($63 million) contract for digital services just weeks after the firm admitted it may have lost the pension data of half a million people in a security breach. 

Capita will create a customer management process for the end-to-end handling of communications by potential fraud victims and offer new multilingual language channels.

It will also implement speech analytics for call quality and provide empathy training for customer-facing employees.

“We are incredibly proud to be chosen to deliver the new fraud reporting service for City of London Police, and are focused on providing an empathetic and seamless service for all potential victims of fraud,” said Jon Lewis, CEO at Capita.

“This new contract is testament to our proven track record of delivering digitally enabled customer management for citizens – including some of the most vulnerable people in society – and reflects our commitment to delivering an outstanding service to our public sector clients.”

In total, the contract is worth £70 million ($88 million) across seven years, with an initial five-year period followed by a possible two-year extension.

Capita has previously also provided services for the NHS, Royal Navy, and worked on the IT infrastructure for London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).

Capita’s breach in brief

The news follows weeks of repeated updates on the scale of a cyber attack against Capita by the ransomware group Black Basta, in which sensitive information was stolen.

Capita first admitted it had suffered a breach affecting 4% of its servers in April, with initial compromise having taken place on 22 March 2023.

In May, the firm told a UK pension provider USS to ‘assume’ almost 500,000 customers had been impacted by the breach, including national names, addresses, and insurance numbers.

Just days prior, Capita indicated that the attack could cost it up to $25 million.

The firm has been criticized for its handling of the breach, having first stated in March there was “no evidence” that a breach had occurred before later stating that “some evidence of limited data exfiltration” had been found.

Its handling of the cyber attack may damage the company image going forward, with customers forced to wait weeks before being given the full picture of the data theft.

There are many things to do when starting a company. Find desk space, register the company, get a bank account, set up the website, and all the other tasks that require different hats to be worn. If the idiom were reality, hatters and milliners would be present at every startup accelerator. 

You quickly need a product or service to offer your customers. Without this, you won’t be in business for long, unless you already have other revenue streams or your investors or lenders are patient. Funnily enough, they never seem to be. 

You’ve probably already thought of an idea already; you think it’s going to change the world for the better, solve someone’s problem, or mitigate someone’s risk – possibly you hope it’ll do all three. So how are you going to get from A to B, where A is nothing but a headful of ideas, and B is a product in someone’s hand being used “in production”?  

We faced the same challenge when we started a company six years ago, armed only with a couple of laptops and a list of good contacts. You’ll need to work hard on networking throughout your journey – it’s hard to bring a product to life without a lot of help from others. 

Laying the groundwork

We wanted to disrupt existing practices in an area of healthcare research that aims to understand patient outcomes and experiences, outside of clinical trials, in almost any disease area. First, we needed to establish at least an outline “product-market fit”. We knew we had to ask ourselves – and answer – some very searching questions. These include: 

• Who are your customers?
• What problem(s) are you trying to solve for them?
• Do your customers even know what problem(s) they have?
• Will customers pay (and continue to pay) for that solution?
• What are they currently doing instead?
• If something already exists, how does it compare?
• How will you measure success?
• What does good look like?
• Are there any early KPIs/OKRs you can use to judge your progress?

We set out to validate our ideas by working with senior clinicians at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London, one of the world’s leading hospitals dedicated to cancer treatment and research. They helped us understand the contours of patient experience in oncology, many aspects of which extend across other disease areas too. We also ideated at length with industry experts at major pharmaceutical companies to gain insight into the types of evidential gaps they are trying to fill and where our solution could help with that.  

Finally, we checked the regulatory landscape to understand external constraints such as ethics, pharmacovigilance, data protection, and security requirements. Make sure you know who your key opinion leaders are and then ask as many questions as you can – most people are happy to have a chat over coffee, especially if you aim to improve the way things work in their industry. 

The building phase

With your assumptions challenged and your offer refined, you can move on to a highly creative and productive phase that will shape your product much further and quicker than you have so far. You need to start product iteration, which is a cycle of designing, testing, prototyping, and perfecting. Regular inspections and feedback are key to this process; as is listening. Remember the Lean methodology of “think big, act small, fail fast, learn quickly”. 

For this, we created the cheapest, quickest version of the product that we could and got feedback on it as early as possible. This way the cost of “failure” was very low, and we could easily pivot or simply remove functionality and try something new. You can find several ways to create minimally viable versions – wireframing tools help a lot here, but I’ve seen early product ideation done on paper.  

In our early user testing, we implemented clickable wireframes for mobile devices, which we chose as our initial target form factor. One version was a fully featured prototype that had the feel of a complete app but was built at a fraction of the cost. There are also now no-code or low-code solutions that go a stage further and provide basic functionality that further blurs the lines between prototype and minimum viable product (MVP). 

Asking for feedback

Who should you ask for feedback? It could be anyone: friends, family, and colleagues will all have useful thoughts. All feedback is a gift, and this is one that keeps giving. The best option is to ask your prospective end users.  

Don’t get too stuck on exactly who to ask. I guarantee the minute the rubber hits the road, you’ll start learning things you didn’t realize, or think were important yet. When we got feedback from people living with an autoimmune condition that caused muscle weakness, particularly in their eyelids, we soon realized it was hard for them to scan up and down a long screen of text or icons – we hadn’t expected that, but now it became obvious. 

We then organized phone calls, online surveys, and even in-person focus groups at venues in London, Paris, and Milan. There are many options where people can take part remotely, even remotely screen and voice-recording to get stream-of-consciousness feedback from users, but in-person testing is still important as the level of insight it provides is great.  

Choosing your priorities

When you have some feedback, organize it into areas of functionality; let’s call them “epics”, given we’re already considering an agile approach. At this point, you’ll be creating a backlog of product ideas. You can’t really expect your users to tell you which of them will provide the most value; it’s up to you to listen carefully. Find out what they’re doing now: can you imagine them switching from that to using your shiny, new application instead?  

As part of our discovery, we wanted to know if people track things about their disease already, such as medication, side effects, and treatments. If so, where do they already do that? We found quite a few people using spreadsheets to do this. If you give them your app, is there any friction in moving over to it – how likely is it to happen?  

You’re often not competing with the things you think you are, such as better features and functionality. Often you’re competing for people’s attention, the span of which is now frighteningly short. Dealing with patients suffering from acute or chronic diseases, we found users already have a lot going on in their lives and spend time managing their condition, treatments, and side effects – we usually couldn’t expect them to spend long using our app too. There are exceptions, such as a group we studied who needed regular blood transfusions which take the best part of a day in the hospital during which they had time to provide feedback. A different consideration here is hospitals are often places with restricted connectivity, which can limit the use of mobile devices. 

Finalizing your product roadmap

Finally, it’s time to review the backlog and the epics you identified. Try to arrange these into a product roadmap. There is much to cover in product management but this would be a good time to familiarise yourself with two key frameworks. 

First is the Kano Model, which helps us prioritize features on a product roadmap according to the degree to which they will satisfy users. I like this framework because it focuses on user delight while creating the biggest bang for your buck. It also explains why today’s “wow” feature soon becomes expected. 

The other model is the Design Council’s Double Diamond. This encourages you to take a two-stage approach in your thinking; initially divergent exploration, and then convergent focus. It does this across two areas called the problem space and the solution space. 

We’ve used this to great effect as a means of moderating conversations while planning our product roadmap. The idea is to prevent you or your stakeholders from jumping straight to the first solution they can think of. Taking the time to check if you really understand the nature of the problem and brainstorming for several competing solutions sounds like common sense but be prepared to explain the Double Diamond repeatedly on your journey to a successful product. 

As you can see, the process of designing, testing, prototyping, and perfecting is endless but you’ll recognize when you have something good enough.  

Our first oncology study app was quite basic, but we soon added more functionality. It’s also about removing features. Users had asked us for a feature that found people nearby with a similar stage of disease for support, but it wasn’t used as much as we had hoped. In the end, we withdrew it. Nothing in product management is an exact science and the data and feedback can only tell you so much. Don’t be precious about any of your ideas or assumptions as they will probably all be challenged at some point and your product will usually end up looking quite different when your journey from A arrives at B.

Inflationary pressures will affect small businesses differently depending on a wide range of factors, including their business focus and market position.

Small businesses form an important part of any functioning and vibrant economy. According to the UK’s Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) account for three-fifths of employment and around half the turnover in the UK private sector. It’s a similar story in the US, with its 27 million small businesses also generating roughly 50% of the nation’s GDP, according to the University of Minnesota.

Some inflationary issues are universal, and tend to affect all SMBs to varying degrees. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all way of dealing with  inflationary woes, as the cost of living crisis continues to bite, but there are some common strategies to consider for all kinds of small business.

Resolving cash flow issues

Cash flow sits at the center of the problems most small businesses face due to inflationary pressures, and there are competing priorities for the amount of cash available. 

“Some smaller companies will consider reducing their inventory, freezing recruitment, or cutting marketing and advertising expenditure,” says Bobby Idogho, co-founder and CEO of Radically Digital, a digital transformation consultancy.

Simac Konkader, a customer experience officer coach and business advisor, however, urges businesses to “double down on marketing and sales” rather than cutting back. It’s a false economy, he says, because customers need to know you’re out there and functioning. 

Konkader suggests taking up options like restructuring loans and negotiating supplier discounts. Suppliers may, after all, be able to find extra flexibility.

Fighting the cost of energy

The cost of energy continues to be a major concern for small businesses. This has been an ongoing issue in the UK, for instance. Research by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) finding 28% of small businesses that signed up to fixed energy contracts in 2022 may have to downsize, rethink their business model or close following further cost rises in April. 

It may be that efficiencies can made that can reduce energy costs. Konkader suggests looking at co-working spaces or using more hybrid or remote working where that’s possible. 

Technology can also play a part in reducing energy costs. Smart plugs, more typically used in the home, may be useful in some small business situations. First, they can monitor energy usage on a granular level and then to help reduce usage where possible through manual switching or timers. Using renewables may also help – if the up-front costs can be managed.

Curbing salary inflation

Salaries are a big cost for many firms, but without your workforce you simply can’t exist. Firms that don’t have a formal salary structure might do well to put one in place, both to manage pay itself and to set out how rewards, such as bonuses or discounts on the firm’s products, are given. This can help staff understand how and where they fit into the structure, and see how their special skills are valued.

Many firm owners feel responsible to the people they employ and want to do all they can to help them through the cost of living crisis. One option that could help people get through an immediate problem might be early access pay apps. 

“These on-demand pay apps give employees instant access to pay they’ve already earned, but wouldn’t normally receive until the month-end,” Idogho explains. Strategies like this can help with staff retention and loyalty, but businesses should keep an eye on usage, in case an employee gets themselves into serious financial difficulty. If you spot issues, consider whether there's any additional help you can offer. 

Investing in technology

Investing in technology might sound counter-intuitive at a time when finances are severely challenged, but it can be a game-changer. Technology, for example, can be used to reduce energy costs, streamline processes, communicate more productively with customers, or manage inventory and suppliers. It’s necessary if a firm wants to shift to a more hybrid structure too. Careful research should provide an indication of the return on investment and when this might kick in – and there may be some quick wins. 

Konkader also highlights the need to focus on modeling and harnessing data, which he says “will be just as valuable as having your own oil field” because of the insights it can provide into what works, and what doesn’t. Getting it right fast can help cash come into the business.

Planning for the future

Even when times are tough, it’s important to envisge a future in which the business is thriving and try to make progress towards that future. Small firms are often thought of as more agile than bigger, more established firms, able to learn more quickly, experiment with ideas, and, in the jargon, fail fast and move on. This can be used to advantage, with the ability to react quickly to changing conditions a key factor. 

Konkader advises businesses to use an advisory board or business coach. But Idogho tells ITPro that smaller firms can get staff involved in envisaging that future and planning for it before creating a “collaborative culture also promotes accountability, as individuals feel responsible for their contributions to the team's success.” 

It’s unquestionable that small businesses face some very serious challenges right now, and that many have to dig deep and work extremely hard to overcome these. Organizations that think strategically are able to be agile, support their staff, and maintain cash flow, may find themselves in the best position to come through and flourish. 

Digital transformation projects can revolutionize a business. These projects improve an organization’s self-awareness and boost productivity while ensuring it can compete for years to come. Dealing with inflation, however, has become a major barrier to digital transformation efforts, and the economic conditions are putting IT budgets under pressure.

Chief financial officers (CFOs) are moving away from growth plans they put in place after the ravages of COVID-19, and are taking a much more defensive approach, according to Deloitte’s Autumn 2022 European CFO Survey. They’re primarily concerned about rising energy costs, inflation, and labor shortages. 

The research found that, across Europe, cost reduction was the key strategy for the next year for businesses in 12 of the 15 nations that took part in the research. Digitalization, however, was the second highest-ranking strategy in seven countries, meaning it’s still a strategy many businesses want to pursue.

Digital transformation has significant implied costs, and is seen as expensive to implement. But it offers to possibility of scaling beneficially in the long term, according to the report. The firms that can afford to pursue digital transformation projects may see them as worthy investments, in light of rocky macroeconomics. Inflation is, nonetheless, a concern that needs to be carefully managed while undergoing any new or existing IT projects.

The risks of fast-tracking digital transformation

Lured by the prospect of digital transformation benefits, a firm might be tempted to fast-track the process. This can be a good strategy, but there are plenty of pitfalls for the unwary. 

“Complex digital programmes often rely on the allocation of available internal resources well in advance, which – in the case of fast-tracking – might have to be replaced or enhanced by more expensive external resources,” says Alfred Obereder, director at the independent management and technology consultancy, BearingPoint. 

Another potential issue is that trying to implement a digital transformation project at a faster pace than originally intended might store up problems for later, simply because things move at a faster pace and so checks and balances can be curtailed. Problems might not become apparent till much later or even till it is too late. Cyber security might be weaker than it should be, future scalability might be compromised, and, in general, more expenses might be needed later to fix problems baked in through fast-tracking.

However, with care and attention, fast-tracking can be a smart move. For example, a digital transformation project which allows a firm to better support remote working might reduce costs and improve productivity, with those benefits coming onstream at pace. 

“A digital transformation project that removes the requirement for surplus energy use – like moving away from an on-premise data center – could help reduce the need for electricity, thereby reducing business costs,” Tim Powlson, principal consultant and digital transformation expert at the business change consultancy Entec Si, highlights as another example. 

Is pausing a digital transformation project viable?

An alternative (and more drastic) option that might be considered in light of soaring inflation might be to pause or even completely shelve a digital transformation program. 

While there’s no simple answer to this question, says Obereder, there might be alternative options on the table. “Instead of a full pause or disbanding [projects], companies might want to consider creative options to instead reprioritize their program’s roadmap and focus on elements which are easier to finance and have an increased impact on cost savings.”

Any engaged contractors might not take kindly to a pause, which would mean a loss of revenue for them, even if a temporary one. To be viable as a cost-saving strategy, a pause would likely need to last several months. 

During that time, business priorities might shift, the parameters of the project might flex, and external conditions might develop and lead to new opportunities. Rather than accommodating these through a standard iterative process that’s part of a project in progress, additional costs might be incurred in revisiting earlier work and earlier decisions.

Shelving a digital transformation project might end up being the only option for some businesses, and it might be a difficult decision to make in light of considerations like the sunk-cost fallacy. Approximately 60% of executives say digital transformation is the most critical growth driver, however, meaning canceling a project equates to swerving away from a potential source of future growth, according to PWC.

The cost of cutting corners

Powlson suggests an alternative approach: “It’s worth understanding what the minimum viable product (MVP) would be and highlighting where the most benefit can be made for the lowest cost.”

Indeed, another possible way to save costs on digital transformation projects is to do some trimming. But this is another approach that is fraught with challenges. Cutting corners at speed in order to manage what may well be serious short-term financial problems might end up being a false economy as a firm can finish up with an end product that’s far below the standard and capabilities originally planned. 

Rather than trim all over, Powlson advises hunting down “the smallest change that can be made for the most amount of good” as a way of getting more immediate value from digital transformation. Taking such measures might make it seem as if digital transformation projects are a runaway train, but that’s not really the case. 

High inflation is far from the help businesses need after a tumultuous few years of adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of where around the world they’re based. Inflationary pressures are bad everywhere, but particularly biting in the UK, with the OECD predicting the UK economy will perform worse than all the other G20 nations, except Russia.

The pan-European Autumn 2022 European CFO Survey from Deloitte also found expansion and growth plans businesses devised as they emerged from the worst of COVID-19 have been swapped out for defensive strategies. These plans aim to combat rising energy costs, labor shortages, and the effects of inflation. 

Amid this doom and gloom, individual businesses, from the smallest to the very largest, can feel they have an uphill struggle to survive, and they’ll be exploring every avenue to help them stay afloat. Technology can’t provide all the answers, and just how it might help depends on the nature of the business using it as well as the bigger picture of technology use. Harnessed wisely, however, technology might be able to provide a helping hand. 

Stepping up digital transformation

COVID-19 forced organizations to undergo digital transformation faster than they might have planned. The need to support remote working, and a subsequent desire to capitalize on the benefits for employees, pushed digital transformation higher up the agenda. Today the same imperative exists for businesses, although largely framed by a cost-cutting agenda than a workforce-enabling push.

Pushing ahead with digital transformation – despite imperatives to cut back on IT projects – could be a great strategy, providing the funds to do so are still available. Depending on the nature of the organization, there are a number of projects that may help the organization be more productive in the medium or long term and therefore mitigate a potential revenue drop-off.  Such projects include migrating to the cloud, eliminating data siloes, streamlining processes, developing or switching to services that use automation or artificial intelligence (AI) as well as honing marketing, sales, and customer experience (CX) activity. 

Organizations might reap any one of these benefits be speeding up efforts: 

• Work can be done more quickly and easily – including remote and hybrid work
• Customers and suppliers can enjoy faster, higher-quality communications
• Inventory, sales, and purchasing processes can become more reliable and effective
• Compliance can be managed more easily. 

Meanwhile, from an operational perspective, moving to the cloud from on-premise systems can reduce space requirements, hardware costs, and the cost of energy required to run on-premise systems. Doing so can also pave the way for scalability and a development cycle that’s iterative and able to take advantage of new applications and services at speed. 

Overhaul supply chain management

Organizations reliant on supply chains for components used in manufacturing, inventory for sales, or, indeed, as a supplier into the chain, need not be told about recent volatility that’s led to the non-availability of items and vast price fluctuations.

Technology solutions can help organizations keep track of what they need to buy, when, and from whom. They can monitor pricing, keep up-to-date information about alternative suppliers and pricing fluctuations, and help build relationships with the widest possible network of suppliers. 

More complex supply chain management required by some manufacturing organizations can stand to benefit most from more advanced technologies. Applications, such as those using AI and machine learning can also optimize complex supply chains by alerting humans where issues might arise and by forecasting demand. Research by IBM found 53% of Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) say digital supply chain transformation initiatives could be their most significant competitive advantage over the next three years.

Offering a first-class web experience

Whether customers are members of the public, or other businesses, it’s important to give them the best website experience possible. Consumers often vote with their feet, ditching sellers whose web offer they find clunky and outdated, and the same is true for clients and partners. This is why the role of chief experience officer (CXO) is growing.

Those selling to other organizations aren’t exempt from the need to make sure they deliver a high-end experience via their websites.  Looking at business-to-business sales, McKinsey found customer loyalty is hard-won. For example, 72% will actively look for another supplier if there isn’t real-time, always-on customer service, or if there isn’t a consistent experience across the channel. Meanwhile, 74% will do this if product availability isn’t shown online.

What this shows is that price isn’t everything when it comes to making sales. Using technology to deliver a high-quality all-round experience matters more to customers than simply dropping prices. Even today, with inflation continuing to be problematic, customer loyalty isn’t won on price alone.

Implementing the tools to fight inflation

In these specific areas and others, the constantly evolving march of technology can provide organizations with some useful tools to fight the cost of living crisis and inflation. 

When cash is tight, it isn’t possible to invest in everything all at once, and, just as when the finances are flowing freely, it’s important to evaluate the options, select what seems to be the most appropriate, deliver the greatest reward for the least outlay, and make the move to implement.

WANdisco has announced plans to cut around 30% of its global workforce as the scandal-hit firm deals with the fallout of recent fraud allegations. 

In a statement today, the data firm said it will undertake a “reorganization and review process” that will result in significant job cuts across its global operations. 

The cloud migration specialist currently has more than 150 employees spread across several regions worldwide, with offices located in Sheffield, Belfast, Newcastle, San Francisco, South Korea, and Australia. 

Proposed layoffs will apply to “all areas of the company’s operational and geographic footprint”, WANdisco revealed in its statement. The firm said that it is currently in consultation with affected staff.

WANdisco said the motivation for the cuts follows a “detailed review of the business which indicated the need for difficult but necessary changes to the company’s size” to ensure long-term growth. 

“The proposal to reduce the company’s overall headcount was considered at great length,” said Kenneth Lever, executive chairman at WANdisco. 

“Regrettably, the proposed action is a necessary step to responsibly position WANdisco for long-term growth.”

“We are working through the process as sensitively and supportively as we can, providing those directly impacted with as much information and support as possible and at all times in full compliance with local law.”

WANdisco fraud allegations

The decision to impose staff cuts follows a period of disruption at WANdisco in which the company has been accused of fraudulent activity. 

In early April, CEO and co-founder David Richards MBE and chief financial officer Erik Miller stepped down. 

The shock announcement came in the wake of an ongoing investigation into fraud allegations. 

The investigation was prompted by the discovery of financial irregularities in March this year. 

An external probe into company finances revealed that revenue figures published in its previous quarterly report were inaccurate.

Annual revenue figures for 2022 had previously been reported to be around $24 million. However, the investigation found that this was in fact $9.7 million. 

Sales figures were also allegedly inflated in the inaccurate reports, having been $11.4 million compared to $127 million previously.

At the time, WANdisco suggested that a single employee was responsible for the false revenue figures, according to reports from Reuters. 

The Sheffield-headquartered firm also denied any connection between the April leadership shake-up and the allegations. 

Microsoft has announced a range of new features for its AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge copilots, including chat history and multimodal support.

Users will be able to pick up where they left off with new persistent chats in both Bing chat and the Edge sidebar, while a new export option for chat aims to enable more collaboration on output.

If a link is opened from a Bing Chat answer, the link can open in Edge while shifting the original Bing Chat into the browser’s side pane, allowing the user to simultaneously continue chatting while browsing.

The idea behind the new feature is that by making Bing Chat accessible within the Microsoft Edge browser, users could use the pairing as an effective research tool.

One piece of information gleaned from a web page can become a question sent to Bing Chat, which can then direct the user to new information - a process to repeat until the research task is fully completed.

Workers in specific sectors may also benefit from future updates Microsoft teased that aim to personalize Bing Chats, bringing context from previous sessions to new conversations.

Research tasks that are repeated often, for example, could become quicker to complete with smarter suggestions.

Elsewhere, Microsoft also unveiled improved visual features for Bing chat, including images for search results, charts, and graphs.

Bing Image Creator, the firm's response to other generative AI art generators such as Midjourney and Dall-E, now supports up to 100 input languages.

In time, it has said it will incorporate multimodal capabilities such as visual input for chat.

“We know from research that the human brain processes visual information about 60,000 times faster than text, making visual tools a critical way people search, create, and gain understanding,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft.

“Bing has always been known for its visual experiences including features like Knowledge Cards and visual search. And now we’re delivering those same experiences in chat.”

With productivity gains in mind, Microsoft has improved the tool's ability to summarize longer documents and enabled Edge to complete actions such as opening media content or specific web pages in response to chat input.

Edge Mobile will gain a similar feature, with new capabilities to summarize mobile web page content due to be released in the coming weeks.

To broaden the reach of Microsoft’s Bing and Edge AI assistant, third-party plugins will soon allow developers to integrate their apps or websites within the Bing chat experience.

Microsoft gave the example of a user asking a math question in Bing chat and receiving a complex visualization through an integration with the answer engine Wolfram Alpha.

Bing exceeded 100 million daily users in March, in large part due to the interest in the search engine’s new GPT-4-powered, generative AI capabilities.

Users can try out the features in open preview now, and Microsoft has stated that updates will regularly follow.

Founders Forum Group has confirmed the formal acquisition of Tech Nation in a move that could provide calm and clarity on the continuation of services run by the former industry champion. 

The acquisition will see FF Group “continue to execute against Tech Nation’s mission to empower tech entrepreneurs, scale innovative startups, and provide a united platform for UK tech founders,” the organization said in a statement today. 

As part of the move, FF Group said it plans to relaunch “a number of Tech Nation programs” and continue publishing industry reports on the UK tech sector alongside its existing portfolio of events and services.

In addition, Tech Nation will continue to process the Global Talent Visa for the Home Office under the FF Group umbrella.

This means that applicants can “continue to apply as normal” for the scheme while the Home Office identifies a new endorsing body to take over from Tech Nation.

Tech Nation’s outgoing founding CEO, Gerard Grech, and board director Sarah Wood, will help steer the transition as part of FF Group’s Tech Nation Advisory Board.

The announcement brings to a close long-running speculation over the future of Tech Nation assets and the continuation of the visa scheme, the latter of which proved to be a point of serious concern among industry figures in the wake of Tech Nation’s closure. 

Since its inception, the Global Talent Visa scheme has processed more than 6,000 visa applications for non-UK nationals seeking work in the UK tech industry. More than 3,000 have also been officially endorsed. 

When Tech Nation, which officially shut its doors on March 31, confirmed plans to close down, reports surfaced that a ‘fire sale’ of intellectual property and assets had begun. 

Founders Forum, launched in 2005 by lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman, was initially earmarked as a key contender in this process. 

In late March, Tech Nation confirmed it had entered talks with FF Group over this potential acquisition. 

Tech Nation said that the decision to select FF Group was driven largely by its existing footprint in the UK tech ecosystem, which made it well-placed to continue acting on the industry champion’s long-standing goals for industry support. 

“Having invited expressions of interest from organizations across the UK, and completed a process of due diligence, Tech Nation chose FF Group to usher the growth platform into a new chapter, given its existing impact in the UK tech ecosystem, and focus on supercharging entrepreneurial growth both in the UK and globally,” Tech Nation said.  

Gerard Grech, founding CEO at Tech Nation, described Founders Forum as the “ideal custodian” to lead the organization into its next chapter.

“I am confident FF Group will continue the vital work of Tech Nation, leveraging its influential network to evolve Tech Nation’s existing programs, foster entrepreneurship nationwide, and supercharge scaleups and high-growth businesses across the UK,” he said.  

“It’s been a privilege to have worked with so many fantastic people during Tech Nation’s journey to date, and I want to thank the Tech Nation team for all their hard work in making it happen with the ecosystem.”

What Tech Nation programs will continue? 

Questions still remain over what growth programs FF Group will continue following the acquisition. 

In a statement today, FF Group chief executive Carolyn Dawson OBE said that initiatives previously run by Tech Nation “align succinctly with many of our existing initiatives at Founders Forum Group”, suggesting that some schemes could see a revival under new stewardship. 

Dawson told IT Pro that while “further details” will be announced over the coming months, the organization will be carrying forward a “selection of brands from Tech Nation’s portfolio”. 

“Currently, we are looking at incorporating Future Fifty, Net Zero, Rising Stars and Libra into our existing roster of programmes designed to empower entrepreneurs,” she said. 

“Our goal is to continue executing against Tech Nation's mission of supporting tech entrepreneurs, scaling innovative startups and catapulting their growth, and providing a united platform for UK tech founders.”

Over its decade-long existence, Tech Nation has run several highly successful growth programs aimed at supporting entrepreneurs and tech startups across the country.

Around a third of tech unicorns ever created in the UK tech industry have passed through one of its growth programs, which also included the Upscale, Applied AI, Fintech, and Cyber schemes. 

Dell has announced the appointment of Steve Young as its new senior vice president and general manager of its UK business. 

A long-time figure at the company, Young has spent more than 20 years at Dell, starting as a senior sales executive at EMC in 2001. 

In his capacity as company director, he is responsible for Dell’s UK business, client satisfaction, and employee engagement.

In an announcement, the tech giant said Young will continue working to position the company as “the partner of choice” for partners looking to transform their business.

“It is an exciting time as organizations accelerate their digital transformation plans and build their digital futures,” Young said. 

“Having worked at Dell for over 20 years helping customers transform their businesses, I am thrilled to lead the UK through its next phase of innovation.” 

Young’s career to date includes managing the EMEA Dell Technologies business, driving the firm’s full portfolio of solutions with the largest customer accounts throughout the region. 

Most recently, the Dell veteran lead its global cloud partnerships with hyperscalers, working to solidify the company’s position in the multicloud market.

In his new role as SVP and general manager for the UK, Young will focus on building relationships, solutions, and go-to-market strategy with public cloud providers, data center providers, customers, and partners. 

Dell says the aim is to drive its storage and data protection software and services presence in the public cloud marketplace.

The appointment follows the release of Dell’s APEX Data Services in the UK back in January - a move designed to help UK channel partners expand their operations into new geographies, as well as gain better control over storage costs.

“Our deep partner and ecosystem connections, combined with our talented team and proven innovation, mean that customers trust us to help them achieve their goals, solve problems and seize opportunities,” Young added. 

“I’m looking forward to working with our team to deepen our connections with customers, partners, and our communities to deliver breakthrough projects and transformations.”  

Global PC shipments dipped by nearly one-third in the first quarter of 2023, marking a continued decline on previous quarters amidst deteriorating economic conditions.

Research from IDC showed that total shipments of PCs declined 29% in Q1 to 56.9 million units. IDC said that weak demand, excess inventory, and a “worsening macroeconomic climate” were all key contributing factors to the drop in shipments.

The firm’s research also noted that shipment volume in Q1 2023 was “noticeably lower” compared to pre-pandemic levels.

More than 59 million units were shipped in Q1 2019 and 60.6 million were shipped in Q1 2018.

Apple, Lenovo, Dell Technologies, and ASUS were among the worst-impacted firms by this precipitous decline in shipments.

Apple saw a 40.5% decline in the first quarter, bringing its total market share down to 7.2% compared to an 8.2% share in the same period last year.

Lenovo and ASUS both experienced a 30.3% decline in shipments across the previous quarter while Dell shipments declined by 31%.

The recent statistics paint a potentially concerning picture for Apple, which has typically weathered sluggish device growth in recent months.

In the final quarter of last year, PC manufacturers saw a significant decline in shipments, with Dell experiencing a 37.2% decrease alongside notable dips for HP, ASUS, and Lenovo. Despite this, Apple shipment volumes dipped by just 2.1%.

IDC said that, despite sluggish sales and a bleak outlook for the coming quarter, this period presents an opportunity to give the supply chain “some room to make changes as many factories begin to explore production options outside China”.

Additionally, IDC noted that PC makers have begun to pull in orders for Chromebooks due to an “expected increase in licensing costs later this year” and are expecting some growth movement as organisations begin shifting en-masse to Windows 11 later in the year.

“PC shipments will likely suffer in the near term with a return to growth towards the end of the year with an expected improvement in the global economy and as the installed base begins to think about upgrading to Windows 11,” the consultancy said.

Linn Huang, research vice president for devices and displays at IDC, said this upcoming refresh period could offer a reprieve for manufacturers, but this is heavily dependent on recovering economic conditions.

“If the economy is trending upwards by then, we expect significant market upside as consumers look to refresh, schools seek to replace worn down Chromebooks, and businesses move to Windows 11,” he said. “If recession in key markets drags on into next year, recovery could be a slog.”

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Data firm WANdisco has announced that its chief executive officer David Richards MBE and chief financial officer Erik Miller have stepped down with immediate effect.

The pair’s respective resignations were not announced in advance, and leave WANdisco with just one of its three executive directors.

Richards co-founded WANdisco in 2005 and has presided over the company in the role of CEO since then. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his services to the IT sector in 2022, and has received recognition from the University of Sheffield for his work in the region.

Miller has been CFO at WANdisco since 2016, having held the same position at several other firms such as video processing firm Envivio before his appointment.

It is expected that the interim chair of the company Ken Lever will take over operations until such time as a new chief executive is selected. Ijoma Maluza, formerly CFO of connected asset financing platform M-KOPA, will take over as interim CFO.

In a statement to Morningstar, a WANdisco spokesperson said that it "is in the best interests of all stakeholders if [the objective of lifting the suspension of company shares] is pursued under new leadership".

WANdisco offers cloud migration services, primarily for Internet of Things (IoT) data at large scale. In moving data from on-premise data lakes to the cloud, it aims to enable firms to use it for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics.

Investigation into potential fraud

The resignations come amid ongoing investigations into the company for alleged fraud, though WANdisco deny a connection between the leadership change and the allegations against it.

Following the discovery of financial inconsistencies in March, WANdisco employed FRP Advisory to lead an external investigation of the sales and revenue figures.

Its findings have indicated that figures that had been published in its last quarterly report were inaccurate.

Revenue for 2022, previously stated to have been $24 million, was in reality only $9.7 million. Sales bookings were reportedly heavily inflated in the inaccurate figures, having been $11.4 million compared to a previously-reported $127 million.

WANdisco's current theory is that one employee was responsible for the false figures, as reported by Reuters. At this time more information has not been provided as to the steps the company has taken to identify and follow up with this individual.

WANdisco denies any connection between the resignations of its CEO and CFO and FRP Advisory’s findings.

The potentially fraudulent activity was first reported in early March, and WANdisco suspended its shares in the London Stock Exchange as it launched its investigation into the matter.

Days before the investigation was announced, The Telegraph reported that WANdisco was evaluating a move to list in the New York stock market.

The firm, headquartered in Sheffield in the UK and in California for the US, had indicated that it would keep its shares in London’s junior AIM market after the move.

It is not clear whether this is still on the table, and the firm has not yet recommenced trading.

ITPro has approached WANdisco for comment.

Microsoft has officially launched Microsoft Teams in China via its local partner 21Vianet.

The tech giant launched the collaboration platform in the country on 1 April, at the same time as upgrading Office 365 to Microsoft 365, which will also be operated by 21Vianet.

“Under the premise of fully satisfying the Chinese market's requirements for data security, personal information protection and other laws and regulations, Microsoft and 21Vianet Blue Cloud have joined hands to officially launch the Microsoft Teams service operated by 21Vianet for the Chinese market,” the company said in a blog post.

Microsoft said that Teams has more than 280 million monthly users around the world after being launched globally in 2017.

Users in China were still able to use the service before it officially launched, although they may have experienced some latency due to the country's 'Great Firewall'.

Microsoft has advised businesses in the past on how to operate their Microsoft 365 accounts in the country if they have a branch or office there.

“For enterprises with global Microsoft 365 tenants and a corporate presence in China, Microsoft 365 client performance for China-based users can be complicated by factors unique to China telco's internet architecture,” the company said in a notice.

“China ISPs have regulated offshore connections to the global public internet that go through perimeter devices that are prone to high levels of cross-border network congestion. This congestion creates packet loss and latency for all internet traffic going into and out of China,” it said.

Users in the country who connect to global Microsoft 365 tenants from locations like their houses or hotels, without using an enterprise network, may have experienced poor network performance in the past. This is because the traffic has to go through China’s “congested cross-border network circuits”.

The new offering of Teams may improve the service within the country, but it may not change anything for global companies who need to communicate with their branches in China. It can be assumed that internet traffic from outside of the country’s borders will still need to go through the same “cross-border congestion”.

Microsoft said it doesn’t operate the service itself and it will instead be operated by 21Vianet. This partner will provide hosting, managed network services, and cloud computing infrastructure services.

21Vianet is a Microsoft strategic partner that is in charge of operating Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform in China.

It also operates Office 365 services in the country, and claims to be the largest carrier-neutral internet data centre service provider in China.

“By licensing Microsoft technologies, 21Vianet operates local Office 365 data centres to provide the ability to use Office 365 services while keeping data within China. 21Vianet also provides subscription and billing services, as well as support,” said Microsoft.

"Due to the unique nature of the China services – operated by a partner from data centres inside China – there are some features that have not yet been enabled,” the tech giant added. “Customers will see the services come closer to full feature parity over time.”

Microsoft and China's 'Great Firewall'

In October 2022, China reportedly upgraded its Great Firewall to crack down on Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption tools, which citizens had used to evade censorship.

Users had reported that at least one of their TLS-based censorship circumvention servers had been blocked, which was done by blocking the specific port the circumvention services listed on.

The year before, in October 2021, Microsoft decided to shut LinkedIn down in China which was going to be replaced by a standalone job application platform.

Social media platforms in the country have to remove content deemed inappropriate which was uploaded by users. LinkedIn had already been ordered to perform a self-evaluation and suspend new sign-ups of users inside China after failing to control political content on the platform.

“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” Mohak Shroff said at the time, senior vice-president of engineering at LinkedIn.

“We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

The tech giant had been expanding its business in the country, and in June 2021 it revealed it was set to add four new data centres in China by early 2022 to expand its service capacity.

It already had six data centres in the country, and was making the move due to new regulation in China which encouraged domestic and foreign companies to shift to local data management.

Western Digital has revealed it has been hit by a cyber attack, forcing the company to shut down some of its systems.

The company said on 3 April that it identified a network security incident on 26 March. It confirmed that an unauthorised third party gained access to a number of the company’s systems.

After realising it had been breached, Western Digital enacted its incident response protocols and hired external security and forensic experts.

The data storage company said the investigation is still in the early stages, but it’s also coordinating with law enforcement authorities.

Western Digital said it is taking systems and services offline to “secure its business operations”. It’s currently working to restore impacted infrastructure or services.

“Based on the investigation to date, the company believes the unauthorised party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data,” the company said.

Western Digital warned that the cyber attack may cause some disruption to its business operations as it is focusing its efforts on “remediating this security incident”.

The company is currently experiencing a widespread service outage on a range of its products, including its network attached storage (NAS) devices:

• My Cloud
• My Cloud Home
• My Cloud Home Duo
• My Cloud OS5
• SanDisk ibi
• SanDisk Ixpand Wireless Charger

“We are working to restore service. We apologise for any inconvenience. Next update will be posted on Monday, April 3,” Western Digital said on its My Cloud service status page.

It appears that cloud, proxy, web, authentication, emails, and push notification services are all down.

A number of users have shared on Twitter that they are experiencing difficulties with logging into the My Cloud service.

"The login service for WD My Cloud Home is unavailable,” tweeted Alejandro Lorente. “Thank you @westerndigital for not letting me access my data that I have in the living room.”

Full details of the incident are yet to be revealed, but Western Digital is the latest in a string of high-profile organisations to have been breached in recent weeks.

Many others including Pension Protection Fund UK, the City of Toronto, Rubrik, and others are all thought to have been attacked via exploits of Fortra's GoAnywhere product.

Ransomware gang Cl0p has previously claimed that it has breached more than 130 organisations through exploits of the vulnerability, and posted American multinational Procter and Gamble on its victim blog on Monday morning as its latest high-profile attack.

Continued analysis of the supply chain attack at business communications provider 3CX has revealed a byte-by-byte match in code between that found in the trojanised 3CX program and North Korean state-sponsored hacking group Lazarus.

The revelation marks the first specific attribution for the attack. When first announced, the evidence simply pointed broadly to a North Korean threat actor.

Researchers from Sophos published the discovery, saying code found in the portable execution (PE) shellcode loader used in the 3CX attack has only ever been seen in attacks attributed to the Lazarus group.

"The code in this incident is a byte-to-byte match to those previous samples," it said in its blog post which was updated on Thursday evening.

3CX developers 'missed red flags'

Security researchers from ReversingLabs found that 3CX had missed signs that its client had been tampered with before releasing an update.

They compared two macOS installer packages, the last known safe version and the first known compromised version, and found several "red flags" that prompted a deeper investigation.

ReversingLabs said its own software indicated that a Microsoft digitally signed binary was modified after signing without breaking the signature integrity, something that could not happen by accident during the build process.

"Developers would have had to make a conscious choice to implement a change like this, and that would never happen for a software component they own," the researchers wrote.

"Other indicators of malicious intent were hard to come by as the malware hides itself as a statically linked function with ffmpeg library. But even without observing the malware execute, there are enough suspicious goings-on just in the diff between the two 3CXDesktopApp updates to warrant a deeper investigation."

The researchers added that there was "no sensible explanation" for their observation that RC4-encrypted shellcode was added to the signature appendix of the package's d3dcompiler and a reference to the compiler's library in the installer's ffmpeg library.

This process suggested to malicious activity had taken place, and was later proven in the attack's analysis.

ReversingLabs' analysis of the compromised package's metadata concluded that the attack was likely facilitated by a compromise of an open source repository, and that 3CX could have spotted this in the development process.

The company's researchers said they believe that a repository on which 3CX's Electron app relies was tampered with.

Such attack scenarios have become popular in recent years, with attacks on PyPI, PyTorch, and npm all making headlines.

The compromised DLL files, ffmpeg and d3dcopiler_47, are shipped with the Electron open source framework as standard and are unlikely to trigger alerts from security products.

Also, d3dcopiler_47 is signed with a Microsoft certificate, one that has no known reports of issues, meaning endpoint protection software, in most cases, would see it as safe.

"ReversingLabs' analysis of the modifications made to the company’s 3CXDesktopApp suggest that there were telltale signs of tampering with the company’s desktop client software prior to its release," it said in a blog post shared with ITPro.

"Had these signs been noticed during development, it should have triggered a closer analysis of the software release and, possibly, discovery of the breach and malicious code additions."

3CX CEO offers update

3CX's CEO Nick Galea revealed on 31 March that the company knew about the issue as far back as 22 March after it received an alert from SentinelOne.

The company uploaded the supposedly malicious file to the VirusTotal malware detection platform to verify the report.

Galea said that the service didn’t show that the file had malware, even displaying an indicator from SentinelOne on the platform that it was fine. 3CX repeated this a week later on 29 March and received the same results.

3CX realised it had been breached later that day and has now recruited incident response specialist Mandiant to investigate the incident.

On 30 March, the company confirmed its desktop software had been tampered with, and said it could have been carried out by a state-sponsored attacker. Customers were encouraged to uninstall the app, and reinstall a version which wasn’t impacted by the malware.

Microsoft is readying a new feature for Exchange Online that will report, throttle, and block emails from unsecured on-prem Exchange servers.

Admins will be sent alerts if their on-prem exchange servers are deemed to be unsupported or are unpatched from security threats, complete with a reminder to update their infrastructure.

It marks a step towards reducing the risk of malicious emails reaching organisations, but also to encourage customers with unsupported or unpatched Exchange servers to secure their on-prem environments.

“We’ve said many times that it is critical for customers to protect their Exchange servers by staying current with updates and by taking other actions to further strengthen the security of their environment,” said Microsoft.

“Many customers have taken action to protect their environment, but there are still many Exchange servers that are out of support or significantly behind on updates.”

Exchange Online is set to receive a new mail flow report in the Exchange admin centre. This will provide admins with information about unsupported or expired Exchange servers in their environment.

The report will inform admins of any messages that are throttled or blocked, and what will happen if the server isn’t updated or taken out of service.

If the server’s issues haven’t been addressed then Exchange Online will throttle messages from it. The throttling will increase progressively over time and is designed to raise awareness of the issue with admins to try and get them to fix the server. If the issue isn’t addressed within 30 days, then emails will begin to be blocked.

Microsoft is adopting what it calls a “progressive” enforcement approach, where throttling will slowly increase over time, followed by gradual blocking, and then resulting in blocking all non-compliant traffic. The actions will escalate until the server is removed from service or updated.

The company said that the new system is set to be applied to all Exchange Server versions and all emails coming into Exchange Online. However, for now, the tech giant is starting with Exchange 2007 servers.

“We have specifically chosen to start with Exchange 2007 because it is the oldest version of Exchange from which you can migrate in a hybrid configuration to Exchange Online, and because these servers are managed by customers we can identify and with whom we have an existing relationship,” Microsoft explained.

The new system will then be incrementally introduced into other Exchange Server versions, until all versions are included.

Microsoft is aiming to address the problem of emails sent to Exchange Online from unsupported and unpatched Exchange servers. It said these servers present a security risk as once they are no longer supported, they don’t receive security updates.

“Once a security update is released, malicious actors will reverse-engineer the update to get a better understanding of how to exploit the vulnerability on unpatched servers,” said the tech giant.

The company said that emails messages coming from servers that are unsupported or unpatched are “persistently vulnerable” and can’t be trusted. This means these servers can increase the risk of an organisation experiencing attacks like malware, security breaches, or hacking.

Rampant Exchange Server issues

Microsoft Exchange Servers have been repeatedly abused by malicious actors over the years.

In November 2021, compromised servers were used to spread a SquirrelWaffle malspam campaign after targeting unpatched instances. The malspam hijacked inboxes and set malicious emails responding to existing email chains.

Following other exploration attempts of Exchange Server earlier that year, Microsoft was forced to delay the technology's development roadmap.

The company admitted in June 2022 that it needed more time to strengthen its security following China-linked Hafnium attacks.

This was followed in December 2022 by a researcher who said that a ransomware attack on Rackspace may have been down to an attacker taking advantage of an out-of-date Exchange cluster.

Security researcher Kevin Beaumont suggested that the attackers exploited the server clusters which hadn’t been patched since August 2022, before the ProxyNotShell patches had been released.

Some GitHub users will have to make changes to their terminal code after the platform replaced its RSA SSH host key after it was exposed.

The key was only "briefly exposed" in a public GitHub repository, it said, but took the measure to replace the key "out of an abundance of caution".

Mike Hanley, CSO and SVP of engineering at GitHub, assured users that GitHub’s systems haven’t been compromised, but that the key was exposed due to “an inadvertent publishing of private information”.

“We did this to protect our users from any chance of an adversary impersonating GitHub or eavesdropping on their Git operations over SSH,” Hanley said in a blog post.

“This key does not grant access to GitHub’s infrastructure or customer data. This change only impacts Git operations over SSH using RSA. Web traffic to GitHub.com and HTTPS Git operations are not affected.”

Secure Shell (SSH) keys are used in the SSH protocol as an access credential. It allows users to securely access network resources, including servers, and use them as if they were local machines.

Host keys are unique to each SSH client and if one was stolen and then abused, attackers could perform man in the middle (MITM) attacks to access user passwords or execute commands.

GitHub said that only the RSA SSH key was replaced, and users who rely on ECDSA or Ed25519 keys don’t need to make any changes.

However, GitHub users who see the message “WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!” when connecting to GitHub.com through SSH will have to make some changes.

Users need to remove the old SSH key by running the command '$ ssh-keygen -R github.com'.

Alternatively, they can also update their ~/.ssh/known_hosts file manually to get rid of the old key, and add the new one by inserting a new line that can be found in the company’s blog post.

Another method users can deploy is automatically updating the key in their ~/.ssh/known_hosts by running specific code in their terminal, which can also be found on GitHub’s blog post.

“This is maybe as bad as Heartbleed,” said Daniel Feldman, cloud security architect for HPE on Twitter.

"Everything was exposed, across many platforms and services, retroactively going back some period of time (we’re not sure how long yet).

“Like Heartbleed, it will be very difficult to prove whether or not someone actually used the exploit. They just might have.”

Heartbleed was a security bug introduced into the OpenSSL cryptography library in 2012 but only disclosed in 2014. The vulnerability allowed potential hackers to read the memory of websites affected with the bug, opening the possibility for cyber criminals to discover encryption keys.

In October 2021, GitHub revoked all SSH keys used in its GUI client GitKraken after it discovered that the software client was generating weak SSH keys.

GitKraken disclosed the flaw, detailing that weak keys could lead to a higher probability of key duplication. GitHub notified users whose keys had been revoked, and recommended developers to review SSH keys linked to GitHub accounts.

The economy has been in turbulence for many months, and a combination of global conditions and domestic policies will have extended these conditions well into 2023 and likely beyond.

Although it’s looking less likely the UK will suffer a technical recession this year, the economy is still set to contract. What this means for many businesses is rising costs and likely a hit to revenue. This will be difficult to manage for many of the largest organisations – but could be devastating for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Beyond the most obvious areas of cost savings – including reducing energy costs or cutting back on office running costs – are a number of areas in IT that could be identified as fertile ground for reducing expenditure. These might include reducing cloud costs or even cyber security costs, but there are other tactics small businesses might wish to employ to get costs under control and seek to limit damage in the coming months.

1. Transfer your data to NAS devices

Where is your company’s data stored? It’s all the rage to push data into the cloud and make it somebody else’s problem. However, this is rarely the real outcome. Although a well-run data centre is likely to be more robust than a tired Dell desktop computer hiding under a junior IT employee’s desk, it’s simply your data in someone else’s computer.

Of course, cloud services have their places, especially for bulk offline storage of data. But it might be more advantageous to run a pair of NAS boxes: one as primary storage, the second as secondary, placed as far apart as possible and preferably in a separate building. Use the built-in replication tools to create snapshots of your data, and send these over the network to the second unit. Finally, pay for cheap cloud storage and push your updated data to that encrypted cloud storage on a daily basis.

These boxes aren’t going to be too expensive, unless you buy high-end versions, but don’t fall into the hidden costs trap. Ensure you have enough drive slots and set up the disk arrays appropriately in a fault-tolerant arrangement. With thought and care, there’s no reason why you can’t look for at least six years of life out of each of these boxes.

2. Cut expensive software subscriptions

Subscriptions to platforms such as Microsoft 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud cost a lot of per user once you annualise the monthly costs. Do you really need all the capabilities of Excel? Or Photoshop? If so, who in your organisation has that need, and are cheaper third-party tools good enough for everyone else?

For example, LibreOffice has most of the functionality of a ten-year-old copy of Office, but at no cost. Affinity graphics tools, too, cost a few tens of pounds per seat, with no rolling monthly licensing overhead.

If you really do need to have Microsoft Office 365, for instance, are you on the right plan? It’s likely there are areas there that can be pared back, especially for less power-hungry users. Take a good look as big savings can be made here.

Finally, are software services slipping through on personal credit cards and then being charged as expenses? This is surprisingly common, even in large organisations where there should be better control. As always, follow the money to build a picture of what is being paid for, and who’s using it. Then you can decide if they need it, or whether this is a historical hangover.

3. Review all cloud subscriptions

This brings us to cloud subscription services as a whole. These are very easy to sign up for, and there can easily be ‘vampire’ subscriptions you’re still paying out for each month that no longer deliver value. Turn off auto-renew on every piece of software you can. Companies are good at sending out reminders that a subscription is coming to an end, but don’t get caught by the “we renewed your licence (a month early) just to make sure you kept receiving our wonderful service”.

Some tasks really do benefit a cloud service, of course. Certain back-office applications, for example, let several people have a login and can help when working in a shared data environment. Don't dismiss the cloud out of hand. Simply ensure it is doing what you need for the tasks required.

4. Audit company devices

Do you have an audited list of devices on your network? Are the computers lurking in the corner that hark from the Jurassic Era? Are they doing perfectly innocent tasks but in an inefficient way? For example, there might be an ancient Dell desktop hiding in some cupboard, with a screen but backed up by a small uninterrupted power supply (UPS). It might have a relatively minor function – like running a printing queue for a laser printer – but is this really necessary? The device could be chewing through electricity for little reason.

All infrastructure should be on DHCP-reserved addresses. It gives you the flexibility to manage the device but ensures that you actually know what the device is. Devices on the network that are on true floating IP addresses should be devices that come and go from the network, like user laptops.

5. Control printer costs

Large professional-grade printers last a long time. Monster devices like the HP 5550, which has five paper trays and prints double-sided A3 in colour, can be at least 15 years old and still going strong but might cost a fortune to fill with toner cartridges.

Have you considered a much cheaper office-grade inkjet that has either a rolling ink subscription or refillable ink tanks for all other work? Is it really necessary to print in colour, or will black and white actually do just fine? Managing print costs can save a fortune.

6. Control power costs

Old hardware might be tempting to keep running, especially in light of e-waste concerns and not adding to the problem. It’s entirely possible, though, that you could replace power-hungry older devices with something cheap that uses a fraction of the electrical power. What's wrong with a small Intel NUC Pro that consumes 5W when idle, for example? Or even something Arm-based? Run the return-of-investment sums and obey the end result.

Finally, are you turning off these devices at the end of the day, or just hoping they go into some sort of power-save mode? There’s much to be gained here by rigorous management of power-on time.

7. Rationalise servers

If you have a few old trusty servers, now’s the time to simplify them down into one modern unit running virtual machines (VMs). Ancient rack mount servers might look twinkly in a rack, but they chew through energy and often need air conditioning to keep cool. Can you push the boat out, and even run a server closet at a temperature that’s fine for the servers, but perhaps uncomfortable for users?

8. Turn off the heating

Speaking of heat, it’s common to not only run the heating beyond a working day but through the weekends too. Providing you ensure there is no likelihood of frost build-up, why not aggressively turn off the heating and HVAC at weekends? Just ensure people have the means to turn on the heating for their area if needed.

9. Use different currencies to pay for goods and services

If you’re paying for services, what currency are they based in? It’s common for US dollars to be the pricing behind many cloud services, and we’ve all experienced significant price increases in some platforms this year due to the change in exchange rates. Are there UK or EU-based service providers that can do the same job, but at a more friendly exchange rate?

UK data centre company EfficiencyIT has launched a range of customisable, prefabricated data centres.

The focus of the new offering, ModularDC, is aimed at on-premises, distributed IT, or edge computing environments, the company said. The modular data centres will be designed, manufactured, and engineered in the UK.

The new range will also make use of components from its partner Schneider Electric, and aims to serve customers in government, defence, and other sectors, in 12-16-week timeframes.

The line makes use of EfficiencyIT’s UK-manufactured external enclosures, and can provide quick-to-deploy prefabricated data centres for remote locations.

Customers will be able to choose their own power modules, such as backup generators, low-voltage equipment, or uninterruptible power supplies (UPS).

ModularDC also offers all-in-one modules that customers can customise. They contain UPS, cooling, physical security features, integrated racks, and data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software.

EfficiencyIT said the data centre range offers cooling modules, with the latest energy-saving equipment, including liquid-cooled products for high-performance computing (HPC) customers, as well as in-row cooling and hot and cold-aisle containment.

The company said it provides data centres for customers that need high security for mission-critical environments. These modules can come with radiofrequency (RF) shielding, enhanced physical security, acoustic mitigation, and can also comply with requirements for sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIF).

“Since 2017, our company has been designing, specifying and installing prefabricated systems for customers’ application-specific data centre requirements,” said Nick Ewing, managing director at EfficiencyIT.

“By enhancing our offering with dedicated UK manufacturing capabilities, all of which are fully complementary to the solutions offered by our partners at Schneider Electric, we’re ensuring our customers’ demands for bespoke, agile and ultra-secure data centre environments can be met quickly, efficiently, and with the engineering reliability our business has built its reputation upon,” said Ewing.

Customers are able to use virtual reality (VR) to view their data centre virtually before the build process starts. EfficiencyIT said this helps to ensure customers can see the system is built for their requirements, and meet security criteria.

Customers in the EMEA region are able to purchase the modular data centres from the company in the UK, Ewing told IT Pro. EfficiencyIT is already designing, building, and deploying systems for customers in the UK, Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

"In terms of specific industries, our customers span life sciences, public sector, defence and government, but prefabricated solutions are also being used by hyperscalers, colocation providers and enterprise customers alike - primarily due to the rapidly deployable nature of the systems and the fact they can be deployed almost anywhere," he added.

HPE has struck an agreement to acquire AIOps-powered IT operations management (ITOM) startup OpsRamp.

Headquartered in San Jose, California, OpsRamp’s SaaS platform provides discovery, monitoring, automation, and event resolution for hybrid and multi-cloud environments using AIOps.

The tech giant says it will integrate the offering into its GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform to help customers and partners reduce their operational complexity and remediate incidents faster through a single, unified solution.

“Customers today are managing several different cloud environments, with different IT operational models and tools, which dramatically increases the cost and complexity of digital operations management,” said Fidelma Russo, CTO at HPE.

“The combination of OpsRamp and HPE will remove these barriers by providing customers with an integrated edge-to-cloud platform that can more effectively manage and transform multi-vendor and multi-cloud IT estates. This acquisition advances HPE hybrid cloud leadership and expands the reach of the HPE GreenLake platform into IT operations management.”

HPE's relationship with OpsRamp dates back to 2020, investing in the California startup through its Pathfinder scheme. Now, with its acquisition, HPE is making a firm play for the ITOM market, which Gartner estimates to be worth approximately $39 billion.

For GreenLake, OpsRamp adds end-to-end visibility, observability, and control across hybrid and multi-cloud IT environments. Its capabilities span multi-vendor computing, networking, and storage, along with cloud resources, containers, virtual machines, and applications.

Essentially, the addition will provide end-to-end support, complete with predictive insights and proactive automation. That includes the consolidation of multi-vendor tools, streamlining of manual processes with AIOps, and improved incident remediation with monitoring and observability.

The company says this will enable improved management of these cloud environments, reduced operating expenses, as well as a better overall IT experience for users.

OpsRamp will also be available standalone, as a service, as well as embedded within HPE’s compute, storage, and networking solutions.

“The integration of OpsRamp’s hybrid digital operations management solution with the HPE GreenLake platform will provide an unmatched offering for organisations seeking to innovate and thrive in a complex, multi-cloud world,” said Varma Kunaparaju, CEO at OpsRamp.

“Partners and the channel will also play a pivotal role to advance their as-a-service-offerings, as enterprises look for a unified approach to better manage their operations from the edge to the cloud.”

He added: “We look forward to leveraging the scale and reach of HPE’s global go-to-market engine to deliver our unique offering and are excited for this journey ahead as part of HPE.”

The transaction is expected to close during Q3 2023, subject to the usual regulatory approvals and closing conditions. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Latitude Financial has revealed that a cyber attack that hit the company last week is now under investigation by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The company said on 16 March that it had detected unusual activity on its systems. Today, it confirmed that the activity is a sophisticated and malicious cyber attack which is still ongoing.

Latitude has taken its systems offline and is unable to service its customers or merchant partners, it said. However, it’s aiming to restore its platform “gradually” over the next few days.

Taking the systems offline has already impacted a score of its customers, all reporting various different issues.

One user complained on Twitter that they were unable to make changes to their account, such as setting a new password, but couldn't access it due to the relevant systems being taken offline.

“Unfortunately, we have restricted access to internal and customer-facing systems,” replied a customer service agent. “This is to ensure we contain the security breach. I understand it's really frustrating not being able to log in.”

Other users were unable to make payments as a result of systems being taken offline, and one said it was the second time their data had been accessed in recent times, with the first being through the major ransomware attack on Medibank in October 2022.

As well as the AFP, the financial services company has also engaged the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), cyber security experts, and other government agencies.

“Our people are working around the clock to contain the attackers. We have taken the prudent action of isolating some of our technology platforms which means that we are currently not onboarding new customers,” Latitude said.

“In conjunction with our cyber security experts, we are continuing our forensic review of our IT platforms to identify the full extent of the theft of customer information as a result of the attack on Latitude."

Latitude has confirmed that around 330,000 customers and applicants have had their personal information stolen so far, around 96% of which is related to the theft of driving licenses or numbers.

The remaining stolen data was comprised of copies of passports or passport numbers, and Medicare numbers, 4% and 1% respectively, by Latitude's estimates.

However, the company said that it’s likely to discover more stolen information affecting current and past Latitude customers and applicants, as it continues with a forensic review which will now include “non-customer originating platforms and historical customer information”.

The Melbourne financial firm, which provides credit cards, insurance, and loans to consumers and businesses, is set to contact each impacted individual to confirm what personal information has been stolen.

It will work with relevant agencies to replace identification documents at no cost to Latitude customers. Latitude has also enlisted IDCARE, a charity that provides support to individuals or businesses that suffer a cyber attack.

Latitude also confirmed that it has cyber security insurance and has notified its insurers of the cyber attack.

“While we continue to deliver transactional services, some functionality has been affected resulting in disruption,” said Ahmed Fahour, CEO at Latitude.

“We are working extremely hard to restore full services to our customers and merchant partners and thank them for their patience and support. We understand their frustration.”

Bitwarden has confirmed it will soon be releasing a fix for a security vulnerability the company has known about for four years.

Researchers from Flashpoint identified earlier this month that the password manager’s autofill feature contained a flaw that could allow websites to steal users' passwords.

Bitwarden confirmed today that the fix is expected to be pushed to users next week.

The password manager will only fill in iframes from trusted domains if a user enables autofill on page load. These trusted domains include the same domain as a website or a URL the user has designated as safe.

Bitwarden said that autofill on page load remains 'off' by default. If a user fills in an untrusted iframe when using manual autofill, the password manager will flag an alert into the URI or URL to let the user decide whether to cancel or proceed with the operation.

“This eliminates the iframe attack vector while still allowing convenient autofill functionality for sites that have trusted iframes,” a spokesperson from Bitwarden told IT Pro.

IT Pro has asked the company why it decided to release the fix now even though it has known about the issue since 2018.

“I highly appreciate that the vendor decided to address this security issue," said Sven Krewitt, senior vulnerability researcher at Flashpoint. "The steps in the provided description of the fix should address the external iframe handling as the user is now in control of which iframes are filled by the extension (as opposed to filling all iframes by default).

"Please note that while the behavior of the 'URI match detection' setting is documented, the default setting still leaves an attack vector for environments where users can host content under certain sub-domains," said Krewitt. "We still recommend setting the 'Default URI match detection' to at least check the 'Host'.”

In their original research, Flashpoint researchers found that the password manager was handling iframes embedded on a web page in an atypical manner.

Bitwarden would auto-fill forms in an embedded iframe even if they were from different domains.

By combining the autofill behaviour with URI matching, which is when the browser extension knows when to auto-fill logins, the researchers said that could lead to two different attack methods.

The first is if an attacker embeds an external iframe into an uncompromised website and enables the ‘Auto-fill on page load option’. The other is if an attacker hosts a web page under a subdomain.

In either case, the default implementation of Bitwarden could then auto-fill malicious web elements with credentials, presenting a security risk.

In their original report, Flashpoint researchers said that the password manager was planning to exclude the reported hosting environment from its auto-fill function, but wasn’t going to change how iframes work.

The researchers added that only one attack vector had been addressed through this fix, instead of the main cause of the issue.

“It should also be noted that a brief evaluation of other password manager extensions shows that none of those will auto-fill iframes from different origins or show warnings for iframes from different origins. This currently appears to be unique to Bitwarden’s product,” they added.

Equinix has revealed a new rooftop farm on one of its data centres in France.

The farm makes use of waste data centre energy to power itself, and is located on the Equinix PA10 data centre in Saint-Denis, Paris.

The goal of the project was to promote the sustainable use of data centres, as well as promote health and wellbeing since the food grown is expected to be shared among staff and visitors, said Reid Brewin Architects (RBA), the company that designed and built the project.

RBA said that seasonal fruit and vegetables can be grown in the greenhouse through its hydroponic system. Hydroponics have been used to minimise water usage and make the most of the space.

The facility consists of a 430m² greenhouse along with 570m² of green space, and the garden is powered through a heat recovery system linked to heat exchangers connected to the data centre’s water cooling system.

The greenhouse is able to monitor humidity, external temperature, and internal temperature through various sensors.

If it gets too cold, for example, heaters will be turned on. It is also able to provide a controlled climate throughout the year since it has sunshades, ventilation, and automated irrigation systems.

In the gardens outside of the greenhouse, insect hotels have been installed to promote biodiversity. The garden's plant selection was a specific one. Only species of plants that rely on rainwater consumption are being grown for maximum sustainability.

“We’re extremely proud to support our clients with this shared goal, and PA10 heralds the start of an exciting new era, enabling us to apply learnings from this project across other projects,” said John Hutchinson, director at RBA.

“Sustainability and safeguarding the environment are at the heart of everything we do, and this opportunity has already inspired further initiatives across our client base.”

Waste heat from data centres has been used by other firms in a number of creative ways. Microsoft, for example, revealed in March 2022 that it was building a new data centre in Finland which would use excess heat to power local homes, businesses, and services. A district heating system was set to be constructed to connect heat from the server cooling process to buildings in the local area.

More recently, the UK startup Deep Green announced that it's using data centre waste heat to power local businesses and swimming pools, as reported by Business Green. It has installed its infrastructure at the Exmouth Leisure Centre in Devon and is looking to expand it to buildings in Bristol and Manchester in the future.

Exmouth Leisure Centre currently has 12 servers installed on its premises used to heat its swimming pool - an initiative expected to save more than £20,000 per year when it comes to heating costs.

A British quantum computing startup will install its technology at a data centre in Japan to be used by businesses around the world via the cloud.

Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) quantum computing as a service (QCaaS) offering will be available in late 2023 and will connect to Equinix Fabric, the company’s cloud platform.

To run workloads using OQC's QCaaS technology, businesses will connect their own digital infrastructure to Equinix Fabric hosted at the TY11 Tokyo International Business Exchange data centre.

“The world has been waiting for quantum computing to mature to the point that it can change our lives. Installing quantum computing in Equinix's world-class TY11 data centre brings us a step closer to this reality,” said Ilana Wisby, CEO at OQC.

“Quantum computing represents a major shift in terms of technology and process. Unlike traditional classical computers, quantum computers can crunch vast amounts of data at incredible speeds.”

OQC claims to have the UK’s most advanced quantum computer, as well as the only quantum computer commercially available in the country.

The company currently hosts its quantum computer on AWS. It’s an eight quantum processing unit (QPU) quantum computer, named Lucy, which launched on Amazon Braket on 28 February 2022.

"We are installing in Equinix’s TY11 Tokyo IBX data centre, given the extent of customer demand both in the Japanese market and the APAC region more generally," an OQC spokesperson told IT Pro. "We are excited to work with leading Japanese companies as they build their quantum capability and experiment and learn about our technology."

The startup has had three funding rounds and managed to raise a total of £38.9 million, according to Crunchbase. It also has two investors located in Japan - investment consortium HiJoJo partners and the University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners.

“IDC predicts that by 2026, 95% of companies will invest in compute technologies that deliver faster insights from complex data sets to drive differentiated business outcomes,” said Andrew Buss, senior research director at IDC's European enterprise infrastructure programme.

“Making quantum computing available 'as a service' on a globally interconnected digital infrastructure should significantly reduce barriers to experimentation and adoption such as cost, skills, and the complexity of integration - and open up quantum technology to many more organisations to test and use."

In August 2022, Fujitsu became Japan's first domestic company to commercialise quantum computing. It partnered with the Riken research institute to offer the service to businesses in the country. The new technology was expected to be used in sectors like medicine development and financial forecasting.

MI5 is set to establish a new agency to help UK businesses protect themselves against Chinese espionage and state-sponsored hacking.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak will unveil the news later today, as part of the UK’s updated diplomatic and defence strategy when it comes to China, The Times reports.

Sunak will reveal a new “National Protective Security Authority” which will sit in MI5. It aims to provide businesses and universities with advice on how to deal with industrial espionage.

Officials have reportedly compared the new agency to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which was established by GCHQ in 2016 as a central authority tasked with protecting the nation against cyber security threats.

It also routinely offers guidance to organisations and the wider public on cyber security best practice.

The National Protective Security Authority will be able to help organisations by providing advice on how to deal with Chinese companies, how to do business in China, or how to buy equipment from companies located in the country.

The motivation for the agency's creation is thought to be born out of longstanding concerns around China and its history of conducting sophisticated cyber attacks against organisations in the West.

The government’s new authority will also provide guidelines on how to approach Huawei or Hikvision, although it isn’t clear yet what these are.

It was decided that Huawei’s equipment would be removed from the UK's 5G network in 2020 to protect national security, a move encouraged by US sanctions placed on the Chinese company.

In July 2022, a group of MPs also demanded that Chinese surveillance equipment companies like Hikvision should be banned from the UK, expressing concerns about the ethics and security of the company.

Lastly, the new agency is expected to provide guidance on takeovers in "sensitive” industries. In July 2021, an MP raised concerns about Chinese-owned Nexperia acquiring Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), a Welsh semiconductor company.

MP Tom Tugendhat said at the time he was surprised the deal had taken place without being put through a review under a National Security and Investment Act.

“The semiconductor industry sector falls under the scope of the legislation, the very purpose of which is to protect the nation’s technology companies from foreign takeovers when there is a material risk to economic and national security,” he said.

“The government is yet to explain why we are turning a blind eye to Britain's largest semiconductor foundry falling into the hands of an entity from a country that has a track record of using technology to create geopolitical leverage.”

China's hacking history

China's state-sponsored hackers are long-known for their attacks on high-value organisations and universities, often with the intention of information stealing.

Recent examples include the February 2022 attack on News Corp - China was originally accused as the force behind it which saw staff emails and other business documents stolen.

In February this year, it was revealed that the China-linked hackers went unnoticed in the organisation's network for two years.

Further back, state-sponsored Chinese and Russian hackers were accused of targeting vaccine data during the COVID-19 pandemic. The attack on vaccine supplier Moderna drew worldwide attention in 2020.

In 2021, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) revealed it played an important part in vaccine delivery, helping by intervening in cyber incidents and protecting individuals in the health sector. It handled 777 incidents that year, with 20% of them focused on the health industry or companies involved in the vaccine rollout.

The pandemic forced many people out of the office and into their homes literally overnight. Organisations had to adapt – fast – and so did people. Those already ahead on the hybrid working path started with an advantage but, even for them, there was work to do. People who were working remotely a few days a week or month suddenly became people who were working from home all the time. The technology had to be just right, but success relied just as much on supporting people.

As some organisations continue with some form of hybrid working – the nature of which varies wildly between businesses – all organisations are assessing what the key lessons are from the pandemic. The takeaways will vary on so many factors, though, including attitudes to remote working in principle and the overall experience during COVID-19.

Looking at these areas will give any organisations, large or small, including those which struggled the first time around, a perfect set of tools to refine and improve their hybrid working strategy. This isn't just about what technology might be available, but rather how to adapt that technology for use across the workforce, and how people are expecting to be treated in a post-pandemic landscape.

Top technology for hybrid working

The tools that have worked best since the pandemic are the ones that have been best at supporting hybrid working. This statement seems obvious, but the devil is in the detail. “Mapping out the requirements for your business is one thing, but pre-empting how that will work and impact users in their everyday roles is quite another,” Cate Kalson, chief people officer at Opencast, tells IT Pro.

When it comes to implementing hybrid working technologies, this means thinking very practically not only about the technologies themselves, but the impact they have on your people who may be working in the office, at home, in other locations, or any mixture of these. “To solve new problems, you need new solutions. That’s why trying to address hybrid working with old operational processes won’t drive meaningful change,” Kalson adds. “Businesses that understand this have been the most successful at implementing hybrid working policies that stand the test of time.”

What that means is it’s no good jumping onto a cloud platform and thinking the job’s done. There are basics like email that can be standardised across any organisation. But when it comes to collaborative working, co-creation of documents, or any other kind of media and self-managed meeting scheduling, it’s important to think carefully about what tools best suit. It’s easy, too, to overlook the importance of the casual conversation in the office that sparks off a whole new train of thought for a team. From such conversations can come great things – but how can you cater for that in a technology-led environment?

Addressing this in a very practical sense, Kalson tells IT Pro: “One way to achieve this is to carve out a space for it in your organisational structure. For example, a role that might have once been called a ‘facilities manager’ could now be a ‘hybrid experience manager’.”

Flattening your business hierarchy

When the pandemic changed work patterns, companies with flat structures or previous experience with home-working policies had a big advantage, says Jan Hauser, CEO of software developer Applifting. He adds these businesses tended to give their employees both freedom and trust.

“In companies with a flat structure, there are usually different types of people than in companies with a classic hierarchical structure,” Huaser explains. “People are driven to be autonomous, independent, and responsible in the former case. They are encouraged to manage their own time and make important decisions.”

Meanwhile, in more hierarchical settings, decision-making is less autonomous, and a more senior-level thing. For more hierarchical teams or businesses, the move to hybrid working may have been jarring even symbolically through videoconferencing. In the past, senior management may have expressed their authority by occupying lavish offices with perks that allowed them to, say, travel to work in comfort. Once COVID-19 hit, everybody occupied the exact same digital square on the likes of Zoom and Google Meet, regardless of position.

Logically, then, adopting a hybrid model has already gone some way to flattening the structure, and requires businesses to cultivate a more autonomous working environment to at least promote that sense of trust and freedom. Hauser adds that building on a hybrid working model is a choice that “fundamentally changes” how people work, both individually and collectively. “If the change doesn't go hand in hand with a genuine effort to adapt to and iterate on the new dynamic, it can spell trouble.”

Don’t fall into the trap of focusing on tech

When thinking about hybrid working in the longer term, arguably the people management side of things takes precedence over technology. Once your hybrid working tech is in place, people need to use it and must feel that it’s supporting their work, not controlling their work or surveilling them. Employees need to really appreciate the work/life balance that hybrid working can foster, rather than feel themselves as slaves to the machine who struggle to clock off. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) offers advice on hybrid meetings that, for example, focuses more on people than technology, with its top ten tips including just two focussing on technology choices. The remaining eight are firmly focused on areas like people management, meeting etiquette, inclusion and training.

Similarly, echoing Kalson’s suggestion of replacing the ‘facilities manager’ with a ‘hybrid experience manager’, CIPD offers a planner employers can use to assess the suitability of specific roles for hybrid working.

It would seem the pandemic has taught us it’s entirely possible for some sectors to maintain a hybrid workforce – and to do so successfully. The acceleration of digital transformation and growth in the use of cloud technologies has played its part in facilitating the willingness of many organisations to allow workers to continue to be productive remotely for at least some of the time. While an organisation’s technology is what allows work to happen, it is an organisation’s people who make work happen, and supporting them is an ongoing process. Perhaps the most successful organisations in 2023 and beyond will be those who undertake continuous, unrelenting focus on their people for the long term.

Bitwarden’s autofill feature contains a flaw which could allow websites to steal users’ passwords.

The password manager browser extension handles embedded iframes on a web page in an atypical manner, according to new research from cyber security firm Flashpoint.

Researchers found that Bitwarden’s browser extension auto-fills forms that are in an embedded iframe even if they are from different domains.

Inline frames - 'iframes' - are a common component of webpages and part of the HTML markup language. They allow web pages to include content from external sources.

various different types of content can be stored in an iframe, including simple interfaces with text fields to input login credentials.

“While the embedded iframe does not have access to any content in the parent page, it can wait for input to the login form and forward the entered credentials to a remote server without further user interaction,” stated Flashpoint.

The researchers explained that they are aware of regular, uncompromised, websites that use embedded external iframes for a number of reasons, including advertising.

“This means that an attacker does not necessarily need to compromise the website itself - they just need to be in control of the iframe content,” they explained.

Despite this, Flashpoint found that there weren’t many websites that embedded an iframe on the login page, which lowers the risk.

However, it also found that default URI matching, which is how a browser extension knows when to auto-fill logins, combined with unsecured auto-fill behaviour, can lead to two possible attack vectors.

The first is if an uncompromised website embeds an external iframe, which an attacker controls, and enables the ‘Auto-fill on page load’ option. The second is if an attacker hosts a web page under a subdomain.

“In our research, we confirmed that a couple of major websites provide this exact environment,” said Flashpoint. “If a user with a Bitwarden browser extension visits a specially crafted page hosted in these web services, an attacker is able to steal the credentials stored for the respective domain.”

Upon contacting Bitwarden, Flashpoint revealed, to its surprise, that the company knew about the issue as far back as November 2018.

Bitwarden published a Security Assessment Report in which the issue, named BWN-01-001 by the password manager, was detailed. Flashpoint researchers said that this means the issue has been documented and public for more than four years.

“Since Bitwarden does not check each iframe’s URL, it is possible for a website to have a malicious iframe embedded which Bitwarden will autofill with the 'top-level' website credentials,” the report read.

“Unfortunately, there are legitimate cases where websites will include iframe login forms from a separate domain than their 'parent' website’s domain.”

Bitwarden said in the report that no action was planned at the time.

“If a website is embedding a malicious iframe from another domain, we can assume that website (or device) is already in a compromised state and that efforts from Bitwarden to try to mitigate the leaking of credentials for that website would likely not help,” Flashpoint said. “Additionally, by default Bitwarden does not autofill information without a user’s consent.”

Flashpoint believes that Bitwarden’s 2018 assessment of the issue is invalid, due to how important compromised credentials are for attackers to gain access to a user or organisation. Researchers created and provided two examples to Bitwarden to show how the issue could be exploited.

Bitwarden confirmed to IT Pro that it has been aware of the issue since 2018.

“Bitwarden accepts iframe auto-filling because many popular websites use this model, for example icloud.com uses an iframe from apple.com,” a spokesperson said. “So there are perfectly valid use cases where login forms are in an iframe under a different domain.”

The company added that the autofill feature described by Flashpoint is not enabled by default.

There is also a warning message that appears on the password manager which reads “>Warning: This feature is disabled by default because, while generally safe, compromised or untrusted websites could take advantage of this to steal credentials”.

Flashpoint said that Bitwarden plans to exclude the reported hosting environment from its auto-fill function, but doesn’t plan to make any changes to the way iframes work.

Only one attack vector has been addressed instead of the root cause of the issue, the researchers said.

“It should also be noted that a brief evaluation of other password manager extensions shows that none of those will auto-fill iframes from different origins or show warnings for iframes from different origins. This currently appears to be unique to Bitwarden’s product,” they added.

72% of business leaders believe their organisation doesn’t have a clear path to reach its digital transformation goals, according to new research from Microsoft.

Its survey examined the views of thousands of business decision makers (BDMs) and employees, looking at attitudes towards digitisation progress across global firms in the UK, US, and Japan more broadly.

Microsoft's research found that 71% of BDMs stated their company failed to deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

In addition, 85% of the 600 UK BDMs in the study recognised digitalisation as more important than ever before, with 83% warning that if their organisations don’t continue to invest in digital transformation, they will suffer or even fail.

Most BDMs and employees (76%) expressed that the current technology at their organisations has led to an increase in admin tasks, including data entry or note taking.

69% of all respondents also feel overwhelmed by how many collaboration tools are available. This led to 77% stating that data is siloed across teams and departments, while 73% find it hard to share information across their company.

However, 59% of BDMs aren’t planning to consolidate the number of tools available to their workers, with 26% declaring that they plan to increase the amount available.

Microsoft found that 89% of employees believe that artificial intelligence (AI) could automate at least a quarter of their daily tasks, and that they find work more fulfilling when using AI technology.

In cases where they have machine assistance, simple tasks can be automated giving them more time to work on other more pressing jobs.

Despite the help AI can offer, 78% of workers still expressed concern about the growing presence of the technology in the workplace.

The tech giant also said that the study shows there’s a need to democratise access to digital tools in UK businesses.

71% of workers want more access to low-code and no-code development technology to reduce reliance on outside help to create the tools their department needs.

Meanwhile, 74% expressed frustration that they weren’t able to implement their own digital solutions due to their company’s policies.

“The digital revolution in UK business will not be top-down - it will start from the ground up. Business leaders should place their employees at the heart of digital transformation,” said Rob Smithson, business applications lead at Microsoft UK.

“These are the people closest to your operational challenges and best placed to build and use technology to help solve them.

“By democratising access to tools that simplify – not complicate – work, and creating policies that encourage experimentation within a safe, secure environment, business leaders will fan the flames of digital innovation in 2023,” he said.

In May 2022, Microsoft launched Power Pages, a new low-code development platform to build websites and apps without developers.

This extended its Power Apps Portals product which also allowed organisations to build apps without needing to be an expert in software development.

The tech giant said that the Power Pages platform allows users to build web pages much faster compared to hiring a development team and embarking on a lengthy planning process.

Various departments within an organisation can use GUI-based development environments to create basic applications. The New Zealand government used it to facilitate the launch of a visa programme, the website for which initially failed when too many applicants used it concurrently.

In May 2021, the tech giant also planned to integrate GPT-3, an AI language model, into Power Apps, a low code app development platform. Microsoft said this would help users build apps without needing to know computer code or formulas. It hoped this would help train people more rapidly to use low code tools and provide greater access to more advanced app building.

WH Smith has revealed that it has been hit by a cyber attack which has impacted current and former staff members.

The retailer made the public notification via an alert issued to the London Stock Exchange on 2 March, advising investors of a cyber security incident.

It said the attack has resulted in illegal access to some company data, which includes data on current and former employees.

An investigation has been launched into the attack with support from third-party cyber security experts. Relevant authorities have been informed per the company's incident response plan.

“WH Smith takes the issue of cyber security extremely seriously and investigations into the incident are ongoing,” the company said in its statement. “We are notifying all affected colleagues and have put measures in place to support them.”

“There has been no impact on the trading activities of the group. Our website, customer accounts and underlying customer databases are on separate systems that are unaffected by this incident,” it said.

IT Pro contacted WH Smith for additional information but it declined to comment beyond its official statement.

“Although they acknowledge that employee data has been compromised, they are assuring customers that their details and financial information were stored separately and will not have been affected," said Will Richmond-Coggan, a data breach litigation specialist at national law firm Freeths.

"Keeping categories of information separate and secure from one another is vital in ensuring that a compromise of one system cannot affect the remainder of the business; They also say that they have already been in touch with employees and offered them support.

“Prompt efforts to communicate with those affected, and the offer of measures targeted at any risk of harm, can make a significant difference to the risk of regulatory enforcement, or subsequent claims," he added.

In April 2022, greeting cards business Funky Pigeon, a WH Smith subsidiary, was hit by a cyber attack.

It took its systems offline and was unable to fulfil any orders, and wrote to customers from the previous 12 months to inform them of the incident.

Analysis of WH Smith's cyber attack disclosure

The wording of organisations' data breach and cyber attack notifications is usually deliberately vague.

Some companies opt for total transparency whereas others, like Royal Mail International most recently, go for a strategically opaque approach.

WH Smith's disclosure falls somewhere in the middle and is about as vague as most cyber incident notifications in the UK.

Royal Mail's ransomware attack was originally called a "cyber incident" by the company from the outset, wording that remained long after it was reported to be ransomware.

Others, such as the recent attack on Minneapolis Public Schools, go further. In this case, the organisation referred to its attack as an 'encryption event".

The fact that WH Smith's trading operations remain functional is a promising sign for its chances of recovery and could indicate that the attack was not ransomware in nature.

Ransomware attacks are usually carried out using a double extortion model and aim to disrupt the target as much as possible to encourage payment.

The hiring of outside cyber security experts is a common occurrence in cyber attack scenarios and the practice is often said to be a necessity when constructing an organisation's incident response playbook.

The relevant authorities cited likely referred to are the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and could also include the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and National Crime Agency (NCA), among others.

As is usually the case, more details about the incident are likely to trickle out over time.

This is a developing story.

The UK is set to appoint a tech envoy to the Indo-Pacific region, its second appointment to a role of this nature after it appointed an envoy to the US in 2020.

James Cleverly, the UK’s foreign secretary, is set to make the announcement on 1 March. This will be the UK’s first tech envoy to the Indo-Pacific region, with the role geared towards strengthening the nation’s ties to India.

The envoy will work with partners in the region, in areas like setting global technology standards and using innovative tech to solve challenges.

The government is hoping this new role will help better present the UK as a science and tech superpower. It also wants to underline its commitment to forging partnerships in India and South Asia.

The announcement from the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) highlighted the fact that India has the world’s third-highest number of tech unicorns and startups, making it a promising region for tapping future partnerships and skills.

“India is also an emerging global leader on technology and there are immense opportunities for better collaboration between us in this sector,” said Cleverly. “That is why we will be sending our first tech envoy to the Indo-Pacific region, to maximise the tech expertise of both countries.”

Cleverly is set to meet India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to discuss the UK-India 2030 Roadmap, which is looking to improve defence, security, trade, and investment between the two countries.

The foreign secretary will also open the Young Professionals Scheme, a partnership between the two nations which allows 3,000 UK citizens and 3,000 Indian citizens to live and work in the other country for two years.

The UK is also set to reaffirm its commitment to forge a free trade agreement with India. The UK-India trade relationship is worth around £34 billion, the FCDO said.

Joe White was named the UK's first tech envoy, devoted to the US in 2020, a role that was merged with the appointment of Her Majesty's Consul-General to San Francisco.

White was set to lead the consulate as well as support the UK’s ambassador to the US when it came to areas like technology and entrepreneurship.

Lenovo is set to launch a new service offering businesses 24-hour priority hardware support, as well as new ThinkPads.

The company unveiled Lenovo Premier Support Plus, a new service offering direct contact with company technicians at any time of day to help them solve their hardware problems faster.

If employees experience problems with their device, they can quickly connect to an IT expert, said Lenovo. The service is tipped to improve customers' finances by increasing productivity and reducing downtime.

Lenovo is also providing AI-powered tools and predictive models to help IT teams monitor their hardware and any potential issues they might have, although it hasn’t detailed how this technology works.

The aim of this is to help IT teams “predict, diagnose, and prevent issues from becoming problems, thus reducing IT teams’ workload to help unlock their full innovative potential”. It’s set to provide teams with insights, alerts, and user experience scoring.

Lenovo currently has a similar support service called Lenovo Premier Support which provides companies access to technicians for hardware and software support, only available during business hours.

The new service hasn’t officially launched yet, but a Lenovo spokesperson told IT Pro it’s expected around mid-March, although this could vary by location.

Lenovo releases 13 new laptops in 2023 ThinkPad portfolio

The company has also released new hardware which it said is geared towards hybrid workers.

The ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 and ThinkPad Z16 Gen 2 make use of the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors with Windows 11 and can be equipped with a 2TB PCIe SSD to make demanding tasks easier to complete. The ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 is set to be released in July 2023 and will be priced at €1,649 (£1,448), while the ThinkPad Z16 Gen 2 will be available from August 2023 and will start at €2,249 (£1,975).

Lenovo is also releasing the ThinkPad X13 Gen 4 and ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 4 with narrower bezels, targeting frequent travellers who need a better screen-to-body ratio and hybrid working features.

Both laptops can come with Windows 11 Pro and use 13th-generation Intel core processors. The X13 Gen 4 can also come with the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors if needed.

Both devices will be available from July 2023. The ThinkPad X13 Gen 4 will start at €1,190 (£1,045), while the ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 4 will start at €1,290 (£1,133.

The company has unveiled the latest generations of the ThinkPad T series, which have had more than 20 generations since it was introduced in May 2000.

Lenovo revealed the T14 Gen 4, T16 Gen 2, and T14s Gen 4 can come with an optional 5MP camera with infrared as well as blue light display options to prevent eye strain.

The ThinkPad T14s, T14, and T16 will be available from July 2023 and will start at €1,590 (£1,396), €1,345 (£1,181), and €1,390 (£1,221) respectively.

Lenovo has also included a low blue light display option in the ThinkPad L13 Gen 4 and L13 Yoga Gen 4, which it said helps with battery efficiency. The newer releases in the L-series, such as the L14 Gen 4 and L15 Gen 4, are also able to come with up to 2TB SSD storage, double what the previous generation came with.

The ThinkPad L13 and L13 Yoga will be available from April 2023 and start at €839 (£737) and €980 (£860) respectively, while the ThinkPad L14 and L15 will be available from May 2023 and start at €775 (£680) and €755 (£663).

Lastly, Lenovo is marketing the ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 and 16-inch ThinkPad E16 for small and medium sized businesses.

The devices have a bigger display and a new keyboard and larger touchpad, and are for “value-conscious” users as they are cheaper than the premium ThinkBook options. Theycan be configured with 40GB or dual-SSD storage too.

Users can also give them a battery boost by choosing a 47Whr or 57Whr battery option if they need to use their devices on the go for longer periods of time. These laptops will be available from June 2023 and start at €770 (£676) and €780 (£685) respectively.

Australia is set to establish a second cyber security agency to coordinate the cyber security efforts across government - part of its response to numerous high-profile cyber attacks that rocked the nation last year.

The new agency will be called the National Office for Cyber Security and will sit in the department of Home Affairs. The government will appoint a coordinator for cyber security to lead the new agency and coordinate its cyber security responsibilities.

Australia already has the Australia Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) which leads the government’s efforts to improve cyber security and is part of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) - an agency in the defence portfolio.

“We're serious about making Australia the most cyber-secure country in the world by 2030,” said Clare O’Neil, minister for home affairs and cyber security, on Twitter. “That means we [are] appointing a new national coordinator to lead Australia's cyber security responses to cyber attacks.”

The coordinator is also set to oversee the government’s cyber security investment strategies and lead the government response to cyber attacks, according to Reuters.

At the same time, the government has released a discussion paper to guide the development of its new cyber security strategy. It’s currently seeking feedback on proposed policies and included a number of questions hinting at the direction it’s looking to take.

This includes the potential formation of a Cyber Security Act, prohibiting businesses or insurers from making ransom payments, and creating a single portal for businesses to report cyber attacks.

It’s also mulling greater engagement between ASD and ACSC, and organisations that experience a cyber attack to allow more information to be shared without the data being shared with regulators.

For now, details of the potential policies aren’t entirely clear. More information about how the policies may look will come after the 15 April 2023 deadline for responses.

“For businesses these days, cyber security is as important and essential as the shop having a lock on the door,” said prime minister Anthony Albanese. “We need all Australian businesses to be able to protect themselves and – just as importantly – protect their customers.”

In December 2022, O’Neil revealed that Australia was planning to be the most cyber-secure country by 2030, and would proactively hunt hackers as part of this strategy.

She highlighted the Optus and Medibank cyber attacks, underlining that those events needed to be used as a way to bring in a permanent cyber security change in the country.

O’Neil formally launched the programme to develop the nation’s Cyber Security Strategy, looking to help the nation strengthen its critical infrastructure and government networks.

Medibank has revealed that it has suffered $26.2 million AUD (£14.7 million) in cyber crime-related costs following the hack of its systems in the second half of 2022.

It expects its cyber crime costs to be around $40-$45 million for the 2023 financial year. This involves additional investments in IT security, but excludes further customer and other remediation, regulatory, or litigation-related costs.

According to IBM's figures in 2022, the average cost to an Australian organisation following a ransomware attack was $4.5 million, putting Medibank's losses considerably above the average.

The attacker accessed its systems through a stolen username and password belonging to a third-party IT service provider, Medibank revealed. This was used to access the company’s network through a misconfigured firewall which lacked an additional digital security certificate.

The company said the attacker then went on to obtain more usernames and passwords to access other systems. Since the company was alerted to the attack on 11 October, it confirmed that it hasn’t detected any additional criminal activity on its systems since 12 October.

“We recognise the significant impact the cyber crime event has had on our customers. We will continue to support them through our Cyber Response Support Program, which includes mental health and wellbeing support, identity protection, and financial hardship measures,” said David Koczkar, CEO at Medibank.

“There is more work to do, and the lessons we have learnt from the cyber crime will continue to shape our response and we will emerge stronger.”

Since the attack, the company said it has implemented greater security controls, including ensuring its firewall authentication is fully configured across its entire network.

It has also improved its network monitoring and added further detection and forensics capabilities to help defend against the 18 million perimeter attacks it experiences every day.

An unknown hacker targeted Medibank in October 2022 and threatened to release stolen data unless the company paid a ransom.

Data belonging to 9.7 million former and current customers was exposed, which was believed to include information like health claims data and passport numbers. At the time, the company thought the hack could set it back by $25-$35 million, especially since it didn’t have cyber insurance.

Medibank delivered its most detailed account of the 2022 attack in its half-year earings report released on Thursday.

It reported a gross profit of $233.3 million, an increase of 5.9% compared to the previous half-year. Over the past year, the company has gained around 35,000 customers, despite losing 13,000 clients following the attack in the second half of 2022.

The UK's six-month trial examining a four-day working week has yielded positive results, with 92% of firms choosing to retain the structure.

Among the most notable improvements across the companies involved in the trial were better staff health, overall happiness, and increased productivity.

The results showed a clear improvement in employee working conditions before and after the trial was implemented. Burnout fell by 71% and sick days by 65%, with almost half of the employees having reported a reduction in fatigue.

Companies also marked a reduction in churn, with a 57% drop in staff resignations across the trial compared to a comparison period of equal length.

The vast majority of employees indicated that they preferred the four-day schedule, and 15% stated that no amount of money could convince them to return to a five-day week.

60% of respondents also indicated that they were more able to combine their work and care responsibilities under a four-day week, while 62% said they could balance their work and social lives better. Revenue in participating companies remained largely unchanged, rising 1.4% on an average weighted by company size.

“This is a major breakthrough moment for the movement towards a four-day working week,” said Joe Ryle, director of the 4 Day Week Campaign

“Across a wide variety of different sectors of the economy, these incredible results show that the four-day week with no loss of pay really works. Surely the time has now come to begin rolling it out across the country.”

The study was the world’s largest looking at four-day working weeks and gathered results from 61 companies and more than 2,900 workers around the UK. 56 of these firms have chosen to continue with the work structure, with 18 confirming this is a permanent change.

Different types of companies took part in the trial across a range of sectors including financial and tech services, online retail, telecommunications, and food and beverage.

The trial also included a range of company sizes and strategies, to demonstrate the effects of the 32-hour week on as wide a pool of employees as possible.

The UK's four-day week trial in full

The trial, which began in June 2022 and ran until December of the same year, was run by progressive research organisation Autonomy in collaboration with 4 Day Week Global, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign, Boston College, and the University of Cambridge.

The full methodology and in-depth trial results were published by Autonomy in a paper, which also includes anonymised testimonies from business leaders.

The trial ran on the agreement that companies would pay employees 100% of their pay, for 80% of their time, and for 100% of their productivity. The majority of companies sought to implement the change to their working week with no reduction in output, and interviewed workers indicated that the loss of one day per week was its own incentive to work harder on the remaining four.

Some companies made employees sign agreements to maintain their productivity as a condition of the change, and brought in new methods such as holding meetings less regularly, automating some processes, and using new IT management software.

Autonomy reported that only two of the companies interviewed had taken to further recruitment to maintain productivity alongside their four-day week.

At the halfway point of the trial in September, 95% of participating organisations said productivity had maintained or improved. In 2019 Microsoft ran a four-day week trial in its Japan offices, and saw a subsequent 40% rise in productivity.

The trial accounted for a range of different four-day week structures, so long as pay remained at 100%. This allowed the four-day week to be adopted by companies across a range of industries and company cultures.

These included ‘fifth-day stoppage’ in which companies would cease operations for one day per week, a staggered approach in which two or more groups of staff took alternating days off, and a decentralised model in which the week structure varied by department.

Some companies that operate seasonally also worked the four-day week as an annualised average of 32 hours per week, in which staff worked longer opening hours during the ‘on’ season and shorter hours in the ‘off’ season with no loss of pay.

A small number of technology companies are already accredited with the 4 Day Week campaign, and more could follow in the wake of the successful results. Flexible work has long been a touted benefit of working in the tech industry.

Unlike other benefits, the four-day week could weather economic hardship, as employers actually stand to save money if the scheme is properly implemented.

It has been suggested that workers coming into an office for one fewer day per week could slash businesses’ energy bills, and if implemented on a widespread basis could reduce carbon emissions produced by commuters.

“The method of this pilot allowed our researchers to go beyond surveys and look in detail at how the companies were making things work on the ground,” said Dr David Frayne, research associate at the University of Cambridge.

“We feel really encouraged by the results, which showed the many ways companies were turning the four-day week from a dream into a realistic policy, with multiple benefits. We think there is a lot here that ought to motivate other companies and industries to give it a try”.

Princeton Digital Group (PDG), an APAC data centre company, is set to invest around $1 billion (£881 million) into a data centre campus in Indonesia.

The campus will be built in Batam and will contain four buildings, each with a 24 MW capacity across its 15-acre site. PDG said it has fully secured the power needed for the new infrastructure.

The development is part of PDG’s SG+ strategy which aims to help customers in Singapore expand their infrastructure to data centre campuses across Singapore, Batam in Indonesia, and Johor in Malaysia.

Construction of the Batam campus marks the first stage of the strategy. PDG is also planning on building another campus in Johor, although it hasn’t speculated when this will begin.

"I think the decision to invest in Indonesia is a wise one. Being only 20km from Singapore, it is still ideally placed to service that market with low network latency," said Tiny Haynes, principle edge computing infrastructure and services analyst at S&P Global.

"It has chosen a Special Economic Zone allocated by the Indonesian government which will provide financial and regulatory incentives for investment," he added.

"It is no doubt being built in an area where real estate prices are comparably cheaper than mainland Singapore and finally it has been able to allocate not just the space it requires, but the 96 MW of power which would be more challenging to source in Singapore," he said.

Batam is an island located 20km south of Singapore, and the new campus will be located in the Nongsa Digital Park, located on the northeastern part of the island.

PDG said that Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president, has described Nongsa and Batam as a “digital bridge” between the two countries.

“As a Singapore-headquartered Pan-Asia data centre operator, PDG is at the forefront of enabling customers to continue leveraging the unique set of characteristics that have made Singapore such a successful hub for the region," said Rangu Salgame, chairman and chief executive officer at PDG.

"Our SG+ strategy is aimed at providing a seamless infrastructure growth roadmap for our customers. The new campus in Batam reinforces our growth strategy and solidifies our already-strong presence across the region in China, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and Japan.”

“PDG’s investment in Nongsa Digital Park further strengthens the [special economic zone's] position as a data centre hub in the region,” said Muhammad Rudi, chairman of Badan Pengusahaan Batam (BP Batam), Batam Indonesia Free Zone Authority. “We look forward to working closely with PDG as the company continues to scale as a Pan-Asia leader in digital infrastructure.”

PDG is headquartered in Singapore. Its most recent investment was in December 2022, when it launched a 48 MW data centre in Mumbai. The company has a total capacity of 600 MW across 20 data centres in five markets. It’s also constructing a 100 MW data centre in Saitama, Tokyo, which is expected to be completed by 2024.

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Productivity software firm Zoom will fire 15% of its global workforce in a cost-cutting measure, as senior figures in the company are set to accept salary cuts.

Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan has stated that he will cut his yearly pay by 98%, and will not take a bonus in a move to show his responsibility for the cuts. Executives at Zoom will also see a 20% reduction in salary and forgo their corporate bonuses.

The company will give the 1,300 outgoing employees up to 16 weeks’ salary and healthcare coverage, as well as restricted stock units (RSU) and stock option vesting. The latter will last for six months for US employees, and until 9 August 2023 for those outside the US.

“As the CEO and founder of Zoom, I am accountable for these mistakes and the actions we take today - and I want to show accountability not just in words but in my own actions,” Yuan said in a message sent to employees.

“We worked tirelessly and made Zoom better for our customers and users. But we also made mistakes. We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyse our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities.”

Yuan's decision to only accept a 2% salary for the year is unusual, especially as he has also refused to accept a bonus.

As CEOs and executives receive the majority of their compensation through corporate bonuses, the message serves as a significant demonstration of the seriousness with which Yuan and other officials take responsibility for the cuts.

US employees were told to expect an email to their company inbox titled ‘[IMPACTED] Departing Zoom: What You Need to Know’ if they were included in the cut, while those outside the US were told according to local regulations.

Zoom has also stated that it will help fired employees to seek new roles elsewhere, and offer them 1:1 workshops, coaching, and networking opportunities.

Zoom's pandemic boom

Questions have long been raised about Zoom’s long-term future as a company. Following its meteoric rise driven by pandemic remote working, the firm reported its first billion-dollar quarter in August 2021.

But its path to profit was often unclear and moves to monetise the platform using advertisements have not succeeded in maintaining the company’s growth trajectory.

In September 2022, it was reported that Zoom will release email and calendar apps, adding to the company’s place as a productivity giant.

This would put it directly in competition with other productivity suites such as Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace, a step up from the company’s focus on video conferencing.

Zoom’s Q3 earnings showed 5% revenue growth year on year, with a strong base of 210,000 enterprise customers that grew 14% over the same period driving much of this. It has projected total Q4 earnings of around $1.1 billion (£910 million), up from $1.07 (£880 million) year on year.

The method by which Zoom employees have been notified is similar to that taken by Twitter following its acquisition by Elon Musk, which saw 50% of employees laid off.

Those made redundant were told via an email to their personal inboxes, while those chosen to stay were informed through an email sent to their work address.

However, some discovered early as they had lost access to their company Gmail accounts, while others had laptops remotely wiped in advance of receiving formal notice of redundancy.

Zoom was notably used in 2021 by US mortgage startup Better.com as a platform through which to fire 900 employees. CEO Vishal Garg had hosted a company-wide call just prior to Christmas, in which all attendees were informed of their termination effective immediately.

The communications firm is the latest in a series of high-profile tech firms to engage in layoffs and cuts to employee benefits. Amazon and Salesforce fired a combined 26,000 employees in January 2023, while Google reduced its workforce by 12,000.

Facing poor financials, Intel has also slashed salaries throughout the company in place of wider cuts.

CEO Pat Gelsinger could cut his salary by 25%, compared to 5% cuts faced by mid-level staff. The chip giant has lost ground to its rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), hurting its bottom line at a time when device sales have plunged.

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Intel has announced a wave of pay cuts and reduced benefits in the wake of poor quarterly earnings, affecting mid-level, vice presidential, and executive staff.

The firm is reportedly set to cut mid-level staff wages by 5% in March, with higher-level roles such as VPs and executives facing 10% and 15% salary cuts respectively. Pat Gelsinger, CEO at Intel, could also cut his salary by up to 25%.

Staff will also face greatly-reduced benefits in the immediate future, with quarterly bonuses and merit-based raises cancelled and the company’s 401(k) matched payment scheme reduced from 5% to 2.5%.

“This was an incredibly dumb move, as employees will become “quiet quitters” and lose morale,” wrote semiconductor analyst Dylan Patel, who stated that all Intel employees in grades 7 to 11 will see cuts.

“Bonus cuts are one thing, but base pay cuts sting. Intel, unfortunately, has to cut costs dramatically due to its immense amount of cash being burned, but they are doing it in the worst way.”

“High performers likely start to 'phone it in' while they look for their next job, as there is no incentive to keep working long nights and early mornings. The level 7 cut-off point is too low. This includes some fresh advanced graduates and many normal graduates with a handful of years of experience.”

The changes have been implemented following a challenging quarter - the chip giant announced its Q4 revenue of $14 billion on 26 January, down 32% year-on-year, with its client computing group business unit reporting a 36% year-on-year decline.

The decline follows the ‘biggest ever decline’ in worldwide PC shipments, which has impacted hardware.

“Despite the economic and market headwinds, we continued to make good progress on our strategic transformation in Q4, including advancing our product roadmap and improving our operational structure and processes to drive efficiencies while delivering at the low end of our guided range,” said Gelsinger on the earnings call.

Other firms have been affected by the downturn in hardware sales, with Microsoft having reported a 39% drop in device revenue across the same period.

Reuters reported that Gelsinger had described Intel as having “stumbled” in its recent performance.

The firm has ceded market share to main rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which reported better-than-expected earnings in its Q4 call.

Shareholders are not expected to receive reduced payouts, and annual bonuses will continue to be paid. However, as annual bonuses are linked to the company’s financial standing these are expected to be reduced as compared to previous years’ bonuses.

"As we continue to navigate macro-economic headwinds and work to reduce costs across the company, we’ve made several adjustments to our 2023 employee compensation and rewards programmes," Intel told IT Pro.

"These changes are designed to impact our executive population more significantly and will help support the investments and overall workforce needed to accelerate our transformation and achieve our long-term strategy. We are grateful to our employees for their commitment to Intel and patience during this time as we know these changes are not easy."

Intel’s move to cut salaries at this stage rather than engage in mass layoffs has put it out of step with the strategies of other large tech firms.

2023 has already seen a number of large firms slash staff, as Amazon and Salesforce fired a combined 26,000 employees and Google cut its global workforce by 12,000 roles.

A number of factors are behind this wave of big tech layoffs, including unsustainable business models and a drive for greater profit at the expense of employee security. As recession bites, more firms are expected to engage in cuts of this kind.

This article was updated to include comment from Intel.

It can be easy to feel like tech workers are dropping like flies, in the midst of economic turmoil and surging inflation. At the start of the year, Amazon and Salesforce announced 26,000 job losses between them, with layoffs at Alphabet and Microsoft pushing this number ever higher. Twitter, too, has seen mass redundancies and resignations, but that’s something of a special case. There’s something of a contagion effect underway, and the once impenetrable sector is showing the dents in its armour. This is especially apparent now the effects of surging inflation and the cost of living crisis have taken hold.

As a result, in the UK, more than half of tech workers are applying for new roles in anticipation of being let go. The sentiment is highest in London, with a stagging 63% of employees pre-emptively applying for new jobs. Given the success of big tech companies in recent years, particularly during the pandemic, certainly at the sight of other sectors in the economy, it might seem bizarre that profitable giants in the field like Amazon and Google feel the need to cut staff. Despite the negativity, though, these layoffs might pose an opportunity for workers being let go, as well as other businesses hoping to plug skills gaps.

Why are big tech companies shedding staff?

There are three key arguments for shedding staff, industry insiders tell IT Pro. Firstly, businesses are undergoing a course correction after a period of over-hiring and endless optimism about market conditions. Secondly, the prospect of an economic downturn provides cover for companies to reorganise without denting their reputations catastrophically. Finally, the direction of innovation and the emergence of tools – such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) – have sparked companies into questioning the skill sets of some workers.

For Chris Federspiel, CEO and co-founder at Blackthorn.io, a company that develops Salesforce-native apps, it’s a question of the bottom line, with venture capital investors tightening purse strings. Larger companies are also looking to drastically cut payroll – their biggest expense. “Because all of this debt is now expensive, you can't raise, you can't get access to capital, you have to be forced to reduce your costs,” he says. “So, because all these things are shaping up in the industry, it's now an excuse to drop your much higher-paid individuals.”

Michael Gibbs, CEO of tech training platform Go Cloud Careers and a longtime employee of Cisco before, says he’s noticed that companies are heavily leveraged, staff-wise, towards roles focused on making money when layoffs like these happen. “In tough economic times, organisations fight for revenue,” he says, adding salespeople alongside cloud architects and sales engineers are the last to go. “But the back-end people, HR, even if they're great, they get laid off,” he continues. “Software developers get laid off because it doesn't matter if you're coding in Cameroon, Cambodia, China, or California, the only difference is the salary that people get paid.”

Tim Rowley, CTO and COO of PeopleCaddie, has a different take. He argues these layoffs, particularly at massive companies, have more to do with C-suite executives capitalising on an opportunity for a reshuffle than it does any real or perceived economic uncertainty. For him, these layoffs are in large part the result of business leaders who know they won’t be judged as harshly for making such sweeping cuts now.

“If you look at the balance sheets of these big tech companies, and you see that, in some cases, they have billions of dollars in cash stacked up, they clearly have the financial resources to weather the storm,” he tells IT Pro. “I would posit that the CEOs, in particular, and the leadership teams at these big tech companies are being opportunistic. What I mean by that is, occasionally the markets present you with an opportunity to both right size expenses and realign expenses with your current priorities.”

Losing your job isn’t a moral failing

Identity is so often conflated with employment in modern society, especially in the US where the majority of the job losses are being sustained, co-founder and partner in investment firm Zelkova Ventures, Jay Levy, says. It’s important, therefore, that workers who’ve been recently let go don’t see their exit as the result of some sort of moral failing.

“Most of these layoffs, not all, but most of these layoffs are not a reflection on your ability,” he advises former employees. “These are corporate layoffs to impact the bottom line, as companies may have gotten too bloated. And the marketplace realises that.” Levy adds, unlike 18 months ago at the height of the sector’s upward trend, other tech companies are unlikely to see a layoff as a red flag related to performance.

Gibbs, meanwhile, says that while the collective sadness of this shakeup can be disheartening, it’s important for tech workers to focus on what they can do – like update their CVs and invest in new training and skills. “A layoff is not a death sentence,” he says. “It's just a small setback and a chance to get something even better.”

People who have been laid off from roles they needed to maintain their US immigration status are in a particularly difficult spot. Dr Kyle Elliot, a California-based career coach, says people who need to quickly regain employment should focus on what they can control, like how often they apply and to which companies, but that it’s okay to sit with the fact that the experience can be deeply alienating. “Find your community and connect with people because then it feels less lonely,” Elliot says. “The job search is lonely for anyone. It can be particularly lonely if you're facing possible deportation.”

What can employees do if they’re let go?

Elliot, who holds a graduate degree in education and is a member of Forbes’ Coaches Council, a career coach with expertise with tech sector clients, says that these layoffs are “a wake-up call”. He adds: “This allowed a lot of employees to recognise that really, no company is safe, and they really need to keep thinking about their backup plan and their backup to their backup plan.”

Elliot says the key for employees looking for new work is to broaden their horizons outside of certain technology hotspots like Silicon Valley and to identify what they want out of their next role, what they need, what they don’t want, and what they don’t need. For instance, many roles across the industry are compatible with remote or hybrid work, with some companies also really pushing the boat on hybrid work.

“Then, use those parameters as guardrails or GPS directions, as I like to call them,” he continues, “so that when an industry or a specific company comes up – and when you receive a job offer – you can then compare it to those four quadrants.” In his experience, he’s found that to be really helpful for people who feel lost.

There’s another opportunity at play here, too. Levy says employees being laid off from big companies, especially those with a little bit of capital, are in a really good spot to try to build their own companies, even if valuations of startups are trending lower and lower.

“These layoffs are freeing up resources – people mostly – for startups,” Levy says. “I think we're going to see better startups, And I think we're also going to see more startups because a lot of these people will look at this as an opportunity to take risks. I think, ultimately, this will help fuel innovation.”

Can SMBs exploit the wave of job losses to plug skills shortages?

Levy says with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) being priced out of talent, these layoffs will even out the market. With that, though, will come a baseline compensation drop for those switching companies. It’s a shift that Blackthorn.io’s Chris Federspiel says will be difficult for those used to the level of resources and company culture at an enterprise.

“It sucks, but it's not the worst thing because they can still get a job,” says Federspiel. “It's not like they're farmers and we're facing a ten-year drought and there's nothing to do. If you have a skill where you can still land a job pretty quickly, just get something a bit lesser paid for a year or two and see what happens.”

For small businesses and startups, who’ve traditionally lost out on top talent because they haven’t been able to boast the lure of huge benefits or salaries, they can lean on the situation to attract the talent they’re seeking. The company culture at smaller companies, for example, tends to be warmer and more favourable and, now more than ever, employees might value the feeling of being valued, rather than a higher salary. Some of the biggest companies, too, are turning back the clock on hybrid work, with SMBs and startups more inclined to be forward-thinking on reimagining the structure of work.

Gibbs adds that while the industry may be aflutter with the tech that could conceivably replace workers across various roles, it’s important to focus on what these tools just can’t do. “[Generative AI] can't be human; it can't lead a team, it can't connect with others with other areas of expertise, it can't bring out the best in others, it can't build a business case,” he points out. “That's what I think organisations should look for. People that have extremely good tech skills, people that are wanting to work very hard to solve a problem, people that are bought into the mission, and people that are not just techs, they're well rounded.”

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