The former CEO of TalkTalk, who witnessed the fallout from the telecom provider's 2015 hack, has issued a stark warning to companies, advising them to invest in decommissioning their legacy technology systems before it's too late.

Speaking at the annual InfoSecurity Europe conference in London, Dido Harding told attendees that if they did not take the time to audit their legacy technology, it may have dire consequences further down the line.

Harding speaks from experience; it was a flaw in a legacy system that caused the catastrophic data breach of TalkTalk's systems in 2015 and led to the theft of 157,000 customers' bank details and personal information, as well as a then-record breaking fine from the ICO of 400,000.

"We were a business that had grown through a lot of acquisitions, and a business that we had bought had bought a business, that had bought a business, that had a legacy website that had an extremely simple SQL injection vulnerability in a legacy website that had not been used in two of those three acquisitions."

TalkTalk failed to properly scan the infrastructure of Tiscali when it bought the company's UK business in 2009, and was unaware that three vulnerable webpages enabled hackers to gain access to a database holding customer information, or that the database version was outdated and out of support.

According to Harding, the flaw went undiscovered despite penetration testing, security audits and other forms of cyber due diligence being carried out at the time Tiscali was acquired by TalkTalk. "None of us found it. We should have done, but none of us did."

"It is the legacy that gets you," she added. "It's acquisitions and legacy within acquisitions that gets you. And it's business leaders not really hearing from their security experts that they need to spend money in decommissioning the legacy - whether they acquired it or built it themselves. And that's pretty much what happened to us."

Harding also talked in more detail about the infamous hack, including laying out TalkTalk's immediate response to it in more detail. She said that her biggest regret was not informing customers earlier, and reminded attendees that three months after the hack, TalkTalk's customer base reported higher satisfaction and lower churn than it did before.

One of the former CEO's most important takeaways from the hack was that security is a board-level issue, but also that boards are looking at security in the wrong way. Rather than looking at security as a black-and-white, pass-fail metric, boards need to see security as a spectrum of risk.

"The vast majority of boards want to be able to abdicate responsibility by asking their security professionals 'are we ok?'," she said, "and you mustn't let them ask that question."

"If you're running an oil rig, as the chief exec, you wouldn't go 'are we physically OK?'. You'd ask a different question; you'd say 'what are the risks? What are the risks I'm happy to accept, and what are the risks that I'm really worried about that we need to be pushing to mitigate?'"

Embattled UK phone and broadband provider TalkTalk is planning to rip out around half of its IT in order to streamline its bloated infrastructure, IT Pro can reveal. The cull is intended to precede the adoption of modern technologies like microservices and containerisation.

"We've got quite a large amount of 'tech debt' in our estate, and it's really holding us back from being more efficient," TalkTalk tooling and environments manager, Gareth Watson, told IT Pro. "So in the next 12-18 months, we're going on quite a radical drive of simplification. We're looking to rip out almost 50% of our estate."

When TalkTalk performed a full audit of its estate earlier this year, the company discovered it's suffering from massive inefficiencies due to a gargantuan sprawl of applications and hardware, Watson revealed.

"We discovered that we have 84 million lines of code spread across 600 applications, across 3,000 servers, with 5,000 interdependencies," he said. "Some of it we've turned off already, because it's not being used - it's just on there doing nothing. It's ridiculous."

By Watson's estimation, around 60% of TalkTalk's codebase is unnecessary. "We've got twice as much [code] as the Large Hadron Collider. It's maybe a smidge more than we need, you know?"

Increased efficiency is something that the telco is currently in dire need of; it reported a 75 million pre-tax loss for the first half of this financial year earlier this week, thanks in part to a 31 million charge to write off assets in its mobile business, and a 59 million charge for an organisational restructure.

The company also suffered a catastrophic data breach in 2015 that compromised 150,000 customers' details.

But by streamlining its IT systems, TalkTalk hopes to transition to a much leaner and more agile approach, Watson told IT Pro. The company has already started using CA Technologies' release and testing automation tools to speed up internal testing, and has already condensed the number of development processes that can be used by its developers from 32 down to three.

TalkTalk is expecting efficiency gains of around 80% from deploying CA's automation software, derived from speeding up the way in which its engineers test and deploy code.

"It takes them 2.4 days to take an application from their development environment, through all the test environments and into production," Watson said. "Using CA's release automation, we're looking to reduce that down to half a day."

He added that while "2.4 days per application doesn't feel like a lot, we do 50 application deployments per release and eight releases a year - that's nearly 1,000 days a year, just wasted on people getting files moved between servers and things like that. By using CA's tools, we'll take that down to roughly 200 a year".

The ICO has fined TalkTalk 100,000 for failing to protect consumer data from hackers in 2014, when personal details of 21,000 customers were leaked into the public domain.

The regulator said TalkTalk had breached the Data Protection Act because it didn't safeguard the huge amounts of data it held about its customers from staff. Employees were able to imporperly access the information, which was used by fraudsters to make scam calls to customers, using their names, addresses, phone numbers and account numbers.

The investigation revealed it was actually employees of Wipro, a third party company working with TalkTalk to resolve complaints about network coverage, that were able to access and swipe the data. The ICO found three Wipro accounts that had siphoned off the data, although 40 employees in total had access to the information.

"TalkTalk may consider themselves to be the victims here," Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said. "But the real victims are the 21,000 people whose information was open to abuse by the malicious actions of a small number of people. TalkTalk should have known better and they should have put their customers first."

The ICO said TalkTalk's actions breached the seventh principle of the Data Protection Act because it didn't have the appropriate technical or operational safeguards in place to prevent employees from accessing the confidential information. This is despite the company being aware of regulations surrounding data protection and having ample time to fix the flaws.

"This incident highlights why it is essential for companies to understand exactly how users are interacting with the network and data," Nir Polak, CEO at Exabeam. "Had TalkTalk had a means to monitor the activities of employees and third parties, its incident response team could have spotted the inappropriate access to customer data."

Measures TalkTalk could have taken to prevent employees accessing the data include ensuring the portal where the customer details were stored could only be accessed from authorised devices and preventing anyone from accessing or exporting the information via the portal.

"Big companies have been able to get away with lax security for years," said Jan van Vliet, Digital Guardian's vice president and general manager for EMEA. "Thankfully, with the GDPR now on the horizon, the days for such complacency really are numbered. These businesses can expect to swap a 100,000 fine for data protection breaches for one in the millions."

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Latest News

27/04/2017: Two men have admitted their part in a hacking attempt on TalkTalk's website.

Matthew Hanley, 22, and Connor Allsopp, 20, pleaded guilty to charges relating to the massive data breach in October 2015.

The pair admitted their part in a plot to steal the personal details of thousands of customers, the Old Bailey heard. The pair from Tamworth, Staffordshire, will be sentenced in May.

The court heard how Hanley hacked into TalkTalk's website and obtained a spreadsheet containing TalkTalk customers' details.

Hanley also pleaded guilty yesterday to three offences under the Computer Misuse Act, including the hacking of the TalkTalk website, obtaining files that would enable the hacking of websites and supplying files to enable the hacking of websites to others.

Allsopp pleaded guilty on 30 March to assisting fraud and sharing a file that could help other hackers.

The Metropolitan Police identified Hanley as a suspect in their investigations and was arrested last October. Officers seized computers and devices from his address but found they had been wiped or the data encrypted so they couldn't access it.

Police then looked at Hanley's social media accounts and found conversations where Hanley had been discussing his involvement and actions in hacking into TalkTalk's website and discussing how he had deleted incriminating data from his computers and encrypted his devices to cover his tracks.

The online conversations also revealed that having stolen data from the telco, Hanley then got Allsopp to try and sell the personal data of customers so that the pair could profit from it.

Police arrested Allsopp this month and showed him these chat logs. Allsopp admitted that he had unsuccessfully tried to sell customer data that Hanley had stolen, as well as sell details of the vulnerabilities on TalkTalk's website that would enable others to hack into it.

Detective chief inspector Andy Gould, from the Met's Falcon Cyber Crime Unit, said that no matter how hard criminals try to conceal their activity, "they will leave some kind of trail behind".

"This investigation has been painstaking and the work our detectives have done to trace and identify those involved has combined cutting-edge digital forensic techniques, with old-fashioned detective work that has led to the conviction of several of those involved and the investigation continues," he added.

The pair are due to be sentenced on 31 May at the Old Bailey.

15/11/2016: A 17-year-old boy has admitted to seven charges of hacking, two of which relate to the TalkTalk data breach in October 2015.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to all seven offences under the Computer Misuse Act at Norwich Youth Court today.

TalkTalk lost 60 million as a result of the hack, in which 157,000 customers had their details stolen, including bank account numbers, sort codes, and dates of birth.

UK data protection regulator the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) fined the mobile operator a record 400,000 for the incident. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said last month: "TalkTalk's failure to implement the most basic cyber security measures allowed hackers to penetrate TalkTalk's systems with ease."

The teenager will be sentenced on 13 December, after also targeting Manchester University Library and Cambridge University Library, among others. According to Sky News, he told the court: "I didn't really think of the consequences at the time. I was just showing off to my mates."

05/10/2016: TalkTalk has been issued with a record 400,000 fine by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) following the large-scale data breach in October 2015, due to "security failings".

The ICO's in-depth investigation found that the attack on the company last year could have been prevented if TalkTalk had taken basic steps to protect customers' information and that the firm allowed the cyber attacker to access customer data "with ease".

ICO investigators found that the cyber attack took advantage of technical weaknesses in TalkTalk's systems, allowing attackers to access the personal data of 156,959 customers including their names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses. In 15,656 cases, the attacker also had access to bank account details and sort codes.

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said: "TalkTalk's failure to implement the most basic cybersecurity measures allowed hackers to penetrate TalkTalk's systems with ease.

"Yes hacking is wrong, but that is not an excuse for companies to abdicate their security obligations. TalkTalk should and could have done more to safeguard its customer information. It did not and we have taken action."

The data was taken from an underlying customer database that was part of TalkTalk's acquisition of Tiscali's UK operations in 2009, and was accessed through an attack on three vulnerable webpages within the inherited infrastructure.

The ICO said TalkTalk failed to properly scan this infrastructure for possible threats and so was unaware the vulnerable pages existed or that they enabled access to a database that held customer information.

TalkTalk was also not aware that the installed version of the database software was outdated and was no longer supported by the provider.

A criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police has been running separately to the ICO's investigation.

A TalkTalk spokesperson did not indicate if the telco will appeal the fine.

They said: "TalkTalk has cooperated fully with the ICO at all times and, whilst this is clearly a disappointing decision, we continue to be respectful of the important role the ICO plays in upholding the privacy of consumers.

"During a year in which government data showed nine in ten large UK businesses were successfully breached, the TalkTalk attack was notable for our decision to be open and honest with our customers from the outset. This gave them the best chance of protecting themselves and we remain firm that this was the right approach for them and for our business.

"As the case remains the subject of an ongoing criminal prosecution, we cannot comment further at this time."

20/07/2016: Around 9,000 TalkTalk customers left the provider in its latest quarter, as the operator continues to feel the aftereffects of last year's hack that spilt the data of 157,000 users.

Revenues declined 0.4 per cent year-on-year and TalkTalk also lost 23,000 TV customers.

However, it added 48,000 mobile users to its books and 36,000 fibre customers.

TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding said: "We are very pleased with how the year has begun. Revenue growth was level year on year despite a smaller customer base and churn was down year on year as we drove growth in mobile and fibre, and delivered real improvements in our customers' experience.

22/06/2016: TalkTalk's chief executive, Dido Harding, has earned 2.8 million in the last 12 months, despite the performance of the network being subject to a number of hacks and staff's bonuses being cut substantially.

This is almost triple the amount Harding was paid in the previous 12 months and has caused some controversy within the company.

Around 2 million of the Baroness's pay relates to a long-term incentive scheme linked to the company's performance over the last three years, according to The Financial Times, despite profits having declined by 50 per cent over the course of the year.

However, Harding has said that the 220,000 bonus she was supposed to be paid for the last year's performance will be donated instead to the Ambitious About Autism charity, rather than her receiving it. The reason for this, she said, is because the company caused such strife to those involved in the operator's hack in October.

TalkTalk said it would be cutting bonuses of the company's senior staff from 62 per cent to 40 per cent due to profits reducing as a direct result of the hack. It is estimated the slip up will cost TalkTalk 60 million to rectify.

12/05/2016: Customers have forgiven TalkTalk for last year's devastating cyber attack, CEO Dido Harding claimed today, despite profits halving and 100,000 users jumping ship.

The telecoms provider, which released its annual financial report today, was adamant that customers are positive about the company, despite losing thousands of customers' data last October.

Harding said: "The vast majority of customers believe we looked after them. The business bounced back strongly in the final quarter following the cyber attack in October."

She added that the number of customers leaving has been the lowest ever in the last three months, saying this is "testimony to the speed with which customer sentiment towards TalkTalk has recovered", and that "trust in the brand and brand consideration [are] both higher than they were before the attack".

However, the report also revealed that the company lost more than 100,000 customers and had to spend over 40 million as a direct result of the attack, which slashed its annual profits by more than half.

TalkTalk's customer loss only amounts to around three per cent of its total customer base. While this is a substantial loss for a major business, Cable.co.uk telecoms expert Dan Howdle believes that it should have been substantially higher.

"TalkTalk suffered three major security breaches in 2015, something savvy customers should not easily forgive," he said. "That TalkTalk lost only three per cent of its existing customer base, however, points to problems... with the switching process itself."

He pointed out the fact that while the company dished out unconditional free upgrades to its customers in response to the attack, it did not allow unhappy customers to freely leave their contracts.

"Clearly the situation needs improvement. If a provider fails in its remit to protect its customers and their data there should be a free get-out clause. There isn't, and that has allowed TalkTalk to limit the damage the attack caused it," he concluded.

15/04/2016: Over 125,000 customers have abandoned TalkTalk's broadband services during the first four months of this year.

It is estimated that around 17 per cent of their customers are considering leaving their broadband services as well, according to The Register.

TalkTalk has continued to lose broadband customers, but has gained an overall increase of business partly due to lowered prices and promotional offers.

Thus far TalkTalk has had a strong first quarter, with 40 per cent of their new customers choosing to subscribe to their services due to competitive pricing. The company's "triple play" service also yielded an increase of 3.2 per cent, raising their total market share for the category to 12.2 per cent.

BT remains the most dominant provider, having captured nearly one third of the market (31.5 per cent) in competition with other service providers. Their closest competitor, Sky, having recently lost 5 per cent of their market share, now holds 23.3 per cent of the market.

This progress shows that the company is gaining forward momentum since they were hacked, which compromised personal data of over 150,000 customers. The incident ran up a bill of around 60m and a loss of over 100,000 customers.

17/03/2016: TalkTalk is swapping passwords for voice biometrics following the cyber attack that affected 157,000 of its customers.

The mobile operator will let users access their accounts via voice recognition, rather than requesting their passwords or answers to pre-set questions, which may have been compromised by hackers.

Nuance, the company providing TalkTalk with the voice recognition technology, said its software compares a customer's voice to their unique voiceprint and securely authenticates the customer - or flags the call if fraud is suspected.

TalkTalk claimed it is the first mobile operator to introduce the technology, doing so after the cyber attack it suffered cost the firm an estimated 60 million, as well as 100,000 customers leaving the firm.

The banking industry already uses voice recognition, with HSBC most recently deciding to replace passwords with biometrics, also supplied by Nuance.

02/02/2016: TalkTalk has revealed last year's cyber attack cost the company 60 million, almost double an initial estimate.

A trading update on Tuesday revealed that the hack had cost far more than the estimated 35 million, though TalkTalk also experienced revenue growth of 1.8 per cent in Q3, with earnings expected to reach 255 million - 265 millon by the end of the year.

Dido Harding, TalkTalk CEO, said: "It is encouraging to see the business returning to normal after a challenging quarter that was dominated by the cyber attack. Our customers have responded well, with almost half a million customers choosing to take up our unconditional offer of a free uprade.

"Both churn and new connections recovered during December and January and independent external research has revealed that customers believe that we acted in their best interest. In fact trust in the TalkTalk brand has improved since just after the attack and consideration is higher now than it was before the incident."

28/01/2016: Police have arrested three people at one of TalkTalk's Indian call centres on suspicion of stealing customers' data, sparking further questions about the care with which the telecoms company treats its customer records.

The men were arrested by the Indian authorities in connection with the stolen data, which they allegedly used to make scam calls from a call centre in Kolkata, according to a Channel 4 investigation.

In response, TalkTalk said it is working with international outsourcer Wipro, which runs the call centre, and local police.

The mobile provider said in a statement: "Acting on information supplied by TalkTalk, the local police have arrested three individuals who have breached our policies and the terms of our contract with Wipro. We are also reviewing our relationship with Wipro."

It added: "We are determined to identify and deal effectively with these issues and we will continue to devote significant resource to keeping our customers' data safe. Data theft and scams are a growing issue affecting all businesses and they are notoriously difficult to investigate and prosecute. We are pleased that our investigations have yielded results, and will continue to do everything we can to tackle these crimes."

The incident is only the latest data breach TalkTalk has suffered, and it comes hot on the heels of an attack last October in which 157,000 customers had their details stolen, including bank account numbers, sort codes, and dates of birth.

Information commissioner Christopher Graham told MPs this week that companies needed to strengthen their security to prevent similar data losses, the Financial Times reported.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is investigating the TalkTalk data breach as part of the Cyber security: Protection of personal data online inquiry.

21/01/2016: Customers are leaving TalkTalk in their droves after the mobile operator's data hack last year, research from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows.

Seven per cent of TalkTalk's broadband base switched to a different provider in the fourth quarter of 2015, Kantar's figures show.

The research firm said there was "no doubt" that the company lost potential customers as a result of its data hack.

Almost a fifth of those leaving TalkTalk did so as a direct result of poor reliability a four per cent increase on the previous quarter, when fewer than one per cent cited this reason.

Imran Choudhary, consumer insight director at Kantar Worldpanel, said: "TalkTalk continues to offer some of the most attractive promotions across the home services market and almost a third of its new customers did choose it for this reason, but there can be no doubt that it lost potential customers following the major data hack.

"If it's to recover from recent events TalkTalk will need to offer more than just good value."

The telecoms firm's systems were breached last October, and 157,000 customers had their details stolen, which included bank account numbers, sort codes, and dates of birth.

The hack has already cost the company 35 million in one-off costs to resolve the immediate backlash related to 15,600 of those leaked bank details.

TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding talked down the long-term repercussions for the brand at the time, saying: "Customers think we're doing the right things".

BT benefitted from the exodus, with 12 per cent of its new customers saying their primary reason for joining was because they saw it as a trusted supplier. That figure was twice the market average.

16/12/2015: Police recommended that TalkTalk stayed quiet about attacks on its site while detectives carried out their investigations and made arrests.

At a House of Commons Culture, Media and Sports Committee, CEO Dido Harding told MPs that the cyber attack was "one of the most difficult periods for the TalkTalk board and for me personally".

"It was clear by lunchtime on Thursday (22 October) that the sensible thing to do to protect my customers was to warn all of them because I could help make them safer. I could give them free credit monitoring, I could warn them not to accept these scam calls," she told committee members.

"For completely understandable reasons, the advice we received that Thursday afternoon from the Metropolitan Police was not to tell our customers."

She said she opposed the idea of compensation claims being valid and added she was "not aware of anyone who has directly lost money as a direct consequence of the attack. Any who have suffered a direct financial loss should get in direct contact. We wish to deal with on a case-by-case basis."

Harding added that the Telecoms Ombudsman "is there to adjudicate, and customers not getting fair redress from their insurance company, bank, or telco, should go there."

In reply to questions over who was responsible, Harding said that no one individual in the firm was.

"It really does come back to the CEO and board. Was there sufficient oversight in terms of the security policies, the resourcing of the technology team to implement those policies, and the knowledge and understanding of best practice?

"It is a board level issue, not an individual issue below."

25/11/2015: An 18-year-old boy was arrested in Llanelli, Wales, over the TalkTalk data hack yesterday.

The teenager becomes the fifth person detained in relation to the cybercrime incident and was arrested on suspicion of blackmail, and taken into custody at a Dyfed Powys police station.

The four others arrested a 16-year-old boy from Norwich, on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act, a 20-year-old man from Staffordshire, a 16-year-old boy from Feltham and a 15-year-old from County Antrim, Ireland, all subsequently bailed.

A total 157,000 customers had data stolen in October's cyber attack, TalkTalk has confirmed, with cybercriminals making off with 21,000 bank account numbers and sort codes, along with 28,000 obscured credit and debit card details and 15,000 dates of birth.

20/11/2015: A law firm is considering legal action against TalkTalk on behalf of customers whose data was lost in the mobile operator's latest leak.

Hugh James law firm, based in Cardiff, told the Guardian it has been approached by victims of the data breach and is encouraging others to come forward to join a possible group legal action against the company.

Partner Gwen Evans said: "Since the serious security breach occurred last month, we have been approached by a number of TalkTalk customers who are naturally concerned about whether their personal data has been accessed and misused.

"We are considering whether there is a case to take group legal action against TalkTalk because it is highly likely that the Data Protection Act 1998 will have been breached during this time."

A total 157,000 customers had personal data stolen in the October attack, TalkTalk has confirmed.

Cybercriminals also made off with 21,000 bank account numbers and sort codes, along with 28,000 obscured credit and debit card details and 15,000 dates of birth.

16/11/2015:

Writing in the Guardian, professor of the public understanding of technology, John Naughton, said the mobile operator's board must take more responsibility for customer security, saying that the company's failure to encrypt users' data cannot be blamed solely on engineers.

"Companies like TalkTalk are up against professional criminals," he wrote. "They, therefore, need to up their amateurish game. If a company's business requires it to store customers' sensitive information, then data security has to be a board-level responsibility, up there with health and safety and regulatory compliance. It is not just a matter for techies and boffins."

He added: "There have to be serious criminal and civil penalties for carelessness, complacency or incompetence.

11/11/2015: TalkTalk's cyber attack will cost it between 30 million and 35 million, it has admitted.

Despite just 160,000 customers losing personal data in last month's hack, shares in the mobile operator have dropped by a quarter since news of the incident went public.

But it blamed one-off costs like the loss of online sales for the predicted dip in earnings, and CEO Dido Harding today announced a string of free offers to customers who have stayed with the firm as a way of thanking them.

Customers can choose a selection of free features, including extra TV channels, a mobile SIM with free texts, data and calls, and unlimited landline and mobile calls from 1 December.

Meanwhile, TalkTalk has announced a new bundle of online and telephone security features, such as F-Secure's anti-virus protection, web filter HomeSafe, and the ability to block cold callers.

Harding said: "TalkTalk takes the security of customers' data extremely seriously and we are taking significant further steps to ensure our systems are protected, as well as writing to all our customers outlining what we are doing to keep their data safe. "In recognition of the unavoidable uncertainty, and because we know that doing what is right for our customers will ensure the best possible outcome for the company over the longer term, we are today announcing the offer of a choice of free upgraded services to all our customers."

06/11/2015: Only 156,959 TalkTalk customers had any personal data stolen in the hack on its systems, the mobile network has claimed - far fewer than the 1.2 million originally feared. Of those, roughly 10 per cent had their bank account number and sort code stolen, about 5,000 fewer than stated last week.

"Ongoing forensic analysis of the site confirms that the scale of the attack was much more limited than initially suspected, and we can confirm only four per cent of TalkTalk customers have any sensitive personal data at risk. However, we continue to advise customers to be vigilant, and to take all precautions possible to protect themselves from scam phone calls and emails," the company said in an updated statement.

TalkTalk said it has now contacted all customers whose financial details were accessed and will be contacting all other affected customers over the next few days.

The company also claimed that "the financial information accessed cannot on its own lead to financial loss", however, stories of defrauded customers abound, including one man who was offered just 30 as a "goodwill gesture" after 3,500 was stolen from his bank account in the wake of the hack.

04/11/2015: Police have arrested a fourth person in connection with the TalkTalk data hack, this time a 16-year-old boy from Norwich.

The teenager was detained by police yesterday on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act after the National Crime Agency and the Met's Cyber Crime Unit obtained a warrant to search an address in the city.

The boy has been released on bail until late March 2016, after a 20-year-old man was arrested in Staffordshire in connection with the cybercrime incident, and bailed until early March.

Two other boys a 16-year-old from Feltham and a 15-year-old from County Antrim, Northern Ireland have also been arrested and bailed in connection with the attack.

More than a million customers were affected by the hack, TalkTalk has confirmed, while 21,000 bank account numbers and sort codes were stolen.

03/11/2015: TalkTalk customer data is being sold on the dark web for as little as 20p per record, according to reports.

An LBC investigation claimed it found 2,500 customer accounts on the dark web and used a sample of the data from the criminals selling it to contact victims of the hack, including a woman called Louisa Jenkins.

She told the Nick Ferrari Breakfast show: "I'm quite angry. It feels like your details are never safe."

The news comes days after a Sunday People investigation that found a criminal calling himself Martian claimed to sell TalkTalk data on a dark website called Alpha Bay for 1.62 a time, offering information in bulk.

02/11/2015: Hackers stole 1.2 million customers' email addresses, names and phone numbers in the TalkTalk data breach, the company has confirmed.

However, the cybercriminals only made off with 21,000 bank account numbers and sort codes, along with 28,000 obscured credit and debit card details and 15,000 dates of birth, the mobile operator said in a statement on its website.

With speculation over just how many of its four million customers were affected by the attack last month, TalkTalk said, "the extent of the data accessed is significantly less than originally suspected".

CEO Dido Harding said: "Today we can confirm that the scale of the attack was much smaller than we originally suspected, but this does not take away from how seriously we take what has happened and our investigation is still ongoing.

"On behalf of everyone at TalkTalk, I would like to apologise to all of our customers. We know that we need to work hard to earn back your trust and everyone here is committed to doing that."

Credit and debit card information, which was missing the middle six digits at the time that hackers accessed it, cannot be used to make financial transactions.

TalkTalk has shared the bank details of affected customers with their banks to help prevent fraud and has partnered with credit check company Noddle to offer customers a free year of credit monitoring alerts.

The Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit's criminal investigation is ongoing.

Detective Superintendent Jayne Snelgrove said: "TalkTalk have done everything right in bringing this matter to our attention as soon as possible. Our success relies on businesses being open with us and each other about the threats they encounter."

02/11/2015:

He was taken into custody by Staffordshire police on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act and is the third person held in connection with the case after one 15-year-old boy from Northern Ireland and one 16-year-old boy from west London were arrested and subsequently bailed last week.

The 16-year-old has been bailed until a date as yet to be revealed by police while the 15-year-old from Northern Ireland is on bail until later this month.

30/10/2015: Police have arrested a second teenage boy in connection with the TalkTalk hack, this time, a 16-year-old from West London.

The boy was arrested on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences, reports BBC News, but has since been bailed. This follows the arrest of a 15-year-old boy from Northern Ireland, who was arrested earlier in the week.

A property in Liverpool has also been searched, according to the Metropolitan Police.

27/10/2015: TalkTalk has announced it will still charge customers affected by the TalkTalk hack a fee if they want to discontinue their service and cancel their contract.

However, it will waive termination charges if a customer can prove they have had money stolen from their bank accounts, although it denies this is a likely scenario because neither bank details nor credit card information was stolen in the attack.

"In the unlikely event that money is stolen from a customer's bank account as a direct result of the cyber-attack [rather than as a result of any other information given out by a customer], then as a gesture of goodwill, on a case-by-case basis, we will waive termination fees," it said in a statement.

Also this morning, the Police Service of Northern Ireland revealed the 15-year-old arrested last night in County Antrim in relation to the hack has been released on police bail pending further enquiries.

However, Jonathan Craig, a member of the Policing Board in Northern Ireland, told the Belfast Telegraph that should the boy be found to be implicated in the attack it "raises questions" for TalkTalk as to how a teenager from County Antrim could have breached a major telecoms provider.

26/10/2015: Labour accused the government of chaos and incompetence over its response to the TalkTalk data breach today, as reports emerged of a 15-year-old boy's arrest in connection with the attack.

Shadow minister for culture and the digital economy Chi Onwurah questioned her Tory counterpart Ed Vaizey over Whitehall's data policy, claiming it has failed to keep up with cybercriminals' endeavour.

Speaking in the House of Commons today, Onwurah said: "This government's data policy is chaos illuminated by occasional flashes of incompetence. Will the minister acknowledge that all the innovation has come from the criminals while the government sit on their hands, leaving it to businesses and consumers to suffer the consequences?"

Her comments came hours before Scotland Yard confirmed a 15-year-old boy had been arrested on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Met's cybercrime unit arrested the teenager in County Antrim at 4.20pm today and have taken him into custody.

The hack has led to victims' bank accounts being emptied by cybercriminals, with millions believed to have had their personal details leaked after TalkTalk admitted it had not encrypted customer data.

Vaizey failed to confirm whether or not police would receive more resources to respond to the hacking case and its victims after Onwurah questioned how the government would help police.

Instead, he replied: "The police have extensive resources with which to combat cybercrime, and we are the government who set up the national cybercrime unit.

"We have invested more than 860 million in cyber-security and we have a number of very effective schemes with which to engage business."

TalkTalk reported the breach to UK data watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office on Thursday, Vaizey added, a day after the breach took place.

However, he refused to reveal how many customers TalkTalk believe have been affected by the breach it is thought to be in the millions, but the figure remains unconfirmed.

25/10/2015: TalkTalk has admitted it did not encrypt customer data such as credit card details and telephone numbers after hackers stole potentially millions of customers' information.

CEO Dido Harding told the Sunday Times today: "It wasn't encrypted, nor are you legally required to encrypt it.

"We have complied with all of our legal obligations in terms of storing of financial information."

The mobile operator has four million users but has not confirmed how many it believes were caught up in the data breach it suffered earlier this week.

However, TalkTalk could face thousands of legal claims from victims, with the total payout rising to around 20 million, according to insurance law firm BLM, including the cost of replacing four million credit cards.

Partner and head of technology Tim Smith told the Financial Times: "[It is] quite probable that customers will sue for a breach of the Data Protection Act and a breach of confidence and privacy rights."

Meanwhile, an 80,000 ransom note received by Harding from someone claiming responsibility for the hack included a table of 400,000 TalkTalk customers who have recently undergone credit checks with the company, KrebsOnSecurity reported.

It comes after the Times claimed yesterday that victims' bank accounts had been emptied by hackers, adding that TalkTalk had ignored criticism of its online security a year ago.

23/10/2015 3pm: TalkTalk's CEO has received a ransom note purportedly from the hackers responsible for a huge data hack that could affect millions of customers.

Dido Harding told BBC News: "It is hard for me to give you very much detail, but yes, we have been contacted by, I don't know whether it is an individual or a group, purporting to be the hacker.

"All I can say is that I had personally received a contact from someone purporting - as I say I don't know whether they are or are not - to be the hacker looking for money."

The email will be examined by the Metropolitan Police, which is investigating the hack.

It is not yet clear how many customers' data has been lost in the leak, but TalkTalk has four million users and the information lost includes names, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers and credit card details not all of this was encrypted.

The mobile operator lost the data in the middle of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, during which its servers crashed under huge volumes of traffic.

It is believed hackers may have used the DDoS attack to distract TalkTalk's security team while they pinched the data.

The mobile operator has recommended people change their passwords as soon as its site goes back online, and this latest breach is the third in 12 months to hit the company.

What could happen to customers?

Christopher Boyd, malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes, said hackers could target customers with phishing attacks now they have their details.

"People should be paying close attention to emails and other communication which appear to be genuine at first glance," said Boyd.

"If those messages are asking for additional information, service sign-ups or providing refund request attachments they should think very carefully before proceeding, lest they fall victim to a malware attack or yet another incident of data theft."

IT security company ESET warned that criminals will also use the data to steal customers' identities.

Security specialist Mark James said: "The data of all their customers will almost certainly be used for potential identity theft along with the obligatory attempts at financial access with any current information they may have attained.

"There was some partial' encryption of credit card numbers, we are led to believe, but businesses need to understand that all our private data has a value, not just the direct financial stuff."

The consequences for TalkTalk

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has been notified of the breach and will investigate it, potentially leading to a fine of up to 500,000 for TalkTalk.

But Mahisha Rupan, senior associate at law firm Kemp Little, said TalkTalk's swift notification to customers of the breach could mitigate any such penalty.

"The ICO is likely to take into account TalkTalk's response to the breach and its attempt to limit any losses incurred by the customer," said Rupan.

ESET's James added that TalkTalk should bolster its security following the attack, saying: "Companies should implement proper use of cryptography, encrypting the sensitive data and hashing the passwords in a cryptographically sound way. We are forced to trust companies with our data and so often that trust is lost through no fault of our own."

23/10/2015 10am: TalkTalk has confirmed that hackers have once again infiltrated its website in what the company has called a "sustained" cyber attack that took place on Wednesday this week.

It is not known just how many of the firm's four million customers have been affected but hackers are believed to have been able to gain access to a wide range of sensitive information including names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, telephone numbers and other TalkTalk-specific account data.

Perhaps more concerning for TalkTalk customers is the fact that credit card or bank details have also been exposed as the company confirmed that such information may be among the data hackers had access to during the cyber hack.

Yesterday, the comms giant announced that the Metropolitan Police had launched a full criminal investigation into the issue, in addition to issuing an apology to customers, which started with the words no customer wants to hear: "We're very sorry..."

"We are continuing to work with leading cyber crime specialists and the Metropolitan Police to establish exactly what happened and the extent of any information accessed," TaklTalk's managing director (consumer) Tristia Harrison said in a statement issued online.

TalkTalk said it had taken measures to secure the website after the hack and that it constantly reviews its system security to protect data and prevent subsequent attacks. However, many users will take convincing as this is not the first time TalkTalk has suffered a data breach. Back in February this year (see story below), the company confirmed hackers had stolen personal user information and were targeting customers with scam phone calls.

"We would like to reassure you that we take any threat to the security of our customers' data very seriously," Harrison's statement continued.

"...Unfortunately, cyber criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated and attacks against companies which do business online are becoming more frequent."

The incident has been reported to the ICO and TalkTalk has contained major banks to keep them on high alert for suspicious activity on customer accounts. It has also recommended that customers monitor their own accounts for any unauthorised or unusual activity and to also check their credit reports held with the main agencies Call Credit, Experian and Equifax.

TalkTalk has also addressed frequently asked questions related to the attack online to help customers better understand what has happened and how they might be affected.

In response to the question 'Why were you targeted?' the company has responded: "Unfortunately TalkTalk is by no means an isolated incident. Barely a week goes by now without cybercriminals using increasingly hostile and sophisticated methods to target companies that do business online. It's not just companies like TalkTalk that are being targeted, banks, retailers like Apple and even the US Government have been victims."

27/2/15: TalkTalk has confirmed hackers accessed its systems and stole personal information about its customers, resulting in some receiving follow-up phone calls from scammers.

In a statement issued to IT Pro, TalkTalk confirmed a small number of its four million customers had their account names and numbers compromised.

"We are aware of a small but nonetheless significant, number of customers who have been directly targeted by these criminals and we have been supporting them directly," the firm said in a statement.

"We want to reassure customers that no sensitive information like bank account details has been illegally accessed, and TalkTalk Business customers are not affected."

TalkTalk confirmed the Information Commissioner's Office, which is responsible for enforcing the Data Protection Act, has been made aware of the breach.

The data theft came to light following an uptick in reports from customers about receiving suspicious-sounding phone calls from individuals claiming to work for TalkTalk at the end of 2014, TalkTalk said in an email to customers.

"In a small number of cases, customers told us that the criminals were quoting their TalkTalk account number, as well as their phone number," it states.

"Following further investigation into these reports, we have not become aware that some of the information we have about some customers their name, home address, phone number and TalkTalk account number could have been illegally accessed in violation of our security procedure.

"Please rest assured that your sensitive information of date of birth, bank or credit card details have not been illegally accessed," it adds.

The email then goes on to reiterate that TalkTalk will never take its customers banking details over the phone or ask them to download any kind of software onto their computers.

"Preventing all scam and nuisance calls is a high priority for us. We are doing everything possible to prevent this from happening again, and to protect you from all malicious and nuisance calls.

"In some cases we are able to block certain callers, including those from these criminal organisations, from ringing customers on our network, if they've breached a strict set of criteria.

"You can also block your number from receiving unsolicited sales calls by registering with the Telephone Preference Service," the email concludes.

What to do if you have been affected by the TalkTalk hack

Advice from Wim Remes, Rapid7

"We often hear the question "What can users of a compromised service do?" - If you suspect that personal data is compromised, there are several steps you can take. These are actually the same steps you should consider in order to minimise the impact of a compromise:

• If you have used the same password as for the compromised service anywhere else, change the passwords for all those services. Consider configuring two-factor authentication if the service supports it.
• If your bank allows this, restrict the amount of money that can be transferred without additional authorisation to the lowest possible amount that keeps it practical for you.
• Never perform actions in relation to your bank account or customer record based on a phone call you receive from a self-proclaimed representative of your bank or service provider. It is your right to request additional identification and phone calls, while direct, are never used as a last resort before your account is blocked.
• Watch your bank statements closely and do not keep all money in your current account, just enough to cover expenses/bills for the next 30 days or whatever time period works for you.
• Keep track of all your online accounts and manage them as if they constitute the contracts they are related to. If an online account is not strictly necessary, consider to cancel it in order to limit your data footprint as much as possible."

This article was originally published on 27/02/15 and has since been updated numerous times as new facts emerge, most recently on 16/12/2015.

Security researchers at Imperva yesterday said that a number of home routers have been hijacked by a new Mirai-based botnet, with 99% of them belonging to TalkTalk customers.

The attack appears to have taken advantage of a new TR-064 vulnerability, and researchers said this could be a "threat to customers of ISPs around the world".

TR-064 is a protocol adopted by most ISPs when remotely operating routers and uses port 7547 to receive remote commands.

Imperva said: "One such command is Time/SetNTPServers, used to synchronise a router with an external time source. However, this same command can also be modified to let hackers remotely execute bash commands."

Although the security firm had not found any routers with open 7574 ports, it discovered that some ports had been left open until a few days ago.

All of the 2,398 attacking botnet devices were said to be located in the UK.

Imperva said: "This kind of IP distribution is uncommon for DDoS botnets. Typically it indicates a vulnerability in a device supplied by local retailers, which allows for such a regional botnet to appear".

The company had also found one of its clients, a Bitcoin company, had been hit by a series of GET and POST flood attacks on 5 December.

Imperva said it is hard to know for sure whether the malware that attacked these TalkTalk home routers was the same Mirai variant used in the Deutsche Telekom attack last week.

"The offenders' persistence, as well as its choice of targets, shows this to be a premeditated offensive- not the typical random burst launched from a rented DDoS-for-hire service," said the researchers.

According to Imperva, TalkTalk is aware of the attack and issued a fix for the TR-064 vulnerability and issued a fix for the vulnerability.

A TalkTalk spokeswoman said in a statement emailed to IT Pro: ""Along with other ISPs in the UK and abroad, we continue to take steps to review the potential impacts of the Mirai worm. A small number of customer routers were affected by this issue. We have made good progress repairing these and continue to deploy additional network-level controls to further protect our customers."

A week after Ofcom announced its decision to ban BT from bidding on half the frequencies available at the next spectrum auction in 2017, Three is once again campaigning to reduce BT's over dominance in the UK mobile market.

Three has been asking its customers to send letters to Ofcom to push for limits on BT and Vodafone's overall spectrum ownership.

The campaign, called "Make The Air Fair", is backed by Three, TalkTalk, CityFibre, Gamma, Relish and the Federation of Communication Services.

As part of this campaign, new advertisements with a cartoon superhero image of Ofcom CEO Sharon White started appearing on buildings around London.

Three and other mobile operators have been campaigning for a 30% cap on spectrum for months. In October, they sent an open letter to Sharon White asking for this cap to be established.

At the present moment, BT owns around 45% of the UK's usable spectrum, followed by Vodafone (28%), Three (15%) and O2 (14%).

BT's acquisition of EE at the beginning of the year made the situation worse, increasing its dominance over the UK's mobile market even further.

Last week, Ofcom said it has decided to reduce the amount of spectrum BT can acquire in the next spectrum auction, allowing the mobile operator access to the 3.4GHz spectrum, but not to the 2.3GHz.

The 3.4GHz is not immediately usable, but should be once 5G-supporting technology becomes widespread.

This decision did not satify Three and other mobile operators who own smaller amounts of spectrum. In a statement, Three's CEO Dave Dyson said: "The mobile industry is failing customers and Ofcom has showed it has no interest in addressing that. A 30% cap on total spectrum ownership and a spectrum reservation for smaller operators are the only measures that will preserve competition for the benefit of UK mobile consumers."

A number of TalkTalk services suffered an outage yesterday, with the telco blaming flash flooding for the problems.

Pages on the company's website displayed a holding message saying: "We'd like to apologise for any inconvenience during this time and suggest you try again later. Also due to severe weather conditions some of our systems are currently unavailable which means we may not be able to assist you when calling and suggest you don't call us right now unless it's urgent."

The services and webpages affected wereTalktalk.co.uk, Talktalk webmail, Help2.talkTalk.co.uk and talktalk.co.uk/contactus, making it tricky for users to report problems or get an update from the company.

Downdetector yesterday listed 521 reports of services not working.

Because the company did not tell customers it was planning to perform maintenance on its website, many users had speculated it could be another hack, after the company was breached last year.

Phat Monkey wrote on Twitter: "Anyone else not receiving#talktalkemail? Their site is down with a so called upgrade, hacked again? Why not warn customers 24hr before?"

However, TalkTalk has ruled out that possibility, blaming the outage on flash flooding in the Midlands, adding that its services are back online.

A spokeswoman toldIT Pro: "After the flash floods in the Midlands that led to some service disruption yesterday afternoon, we were able to bring the affected systems back online overnight. This means that all areas on our website are now accessible and email service should also be back up and running, although it might take a few hours for the backlog to clear."

High profile data breaches have decimated consumers' trust in companies, according to a survey by security firm FireEye.

Almost three-quarters of 1,000 UK respondents told FireEye they would not use services from organisations who lost their data in cyber attacks, and nearly two-thirds of people now trust companies a lot lessafter the torrent of high profile hacks that hit businesses last year.

A whopping 62 per cent of consumers said they will give companies less personal information as a result of a torrent of hacks on firms, FireEye'sBeyond The Bottom Line: The Real Cost of Data Breachesreport found.

FireEye's President of EMEA, Richard Turner, told IT Pro:"It's rare that a day goes past without news of a company being hacked. Consumers are learning more about the direct impact that these breaches can have on them when their data is out.

"Some of the breaches have been very visible in the media [and] the negative perception can be a consequence of customers finding out about breaches before the organisation informs them."

Dozens of high profile cyber attacks occurred in 2015, includinga hit on British broadband giant TalkTalk, which confirmed hackers accessed its systems and stole personal information on thousands of customers last October, resulting in some receiving follow-up phone calls from scammers.

The firm today recorded a 40 million financial hit, and lost 101,000 customers, as a result of the hack.

Online dating site Ashley Madison was another victim to a large scale breach. In July, the firm fell victim to hackers, who stole 37 million users' details from the dating website and posted them online for everyone to see.

The company, which provides a service for people looking to cheat on their partners, has sincetaken new steps to prevent users of the site from being identified. "We respect your need for discretion," the site says, "so we've added some tools to keep your identity a secret".

But 38 per cent of the 5,500 respondents to FireEye's study said that they now have a negative perception of companies that suffered data breaches last year, while 27 per cent said that the breaches made them view all organisations that they buy from more negatively.

UK high street firms Carphone Warehouse and T-Mobile were also hacked during 2015, whiletwo-thirds of large businesses have experienced a cybersecurity breach in the last 12 months, according to a government survey released this week.

And it doesn't look like they will stop any time soon. Turner said that by looking atthe current landscape, it is likely that these types of attacks will become more frequent.

"Breaches are inevitable - if the bad guys think there's something worth stealing, they're going to continue trying to steal it," he added. "We're seeing more disclosure going on, and more awareness, but it is important for the risk to remain top of mind in the boardroom. Businesses need to ensure that they prepare, react, and respond appropriately in order to reduce the impact to themselves and to their stakeholders."

FireEye's latest research into the opinions of UK consumers suggests that businesses may be underestimating the damage to their reputation that being a victim to a cyber security incident can cause, with almost half of consumers considering paying more to a service provider that had better data security.

TalkTalk has restored its service following an outage that affected many of its landline customers who said they couldn't hear a dial tone, let alone make or receive phone calls.

Some of the customers said they had been experiencing problems for most of this week, although the majority of complaints flooded in yesterday morning.

Many of the company's customers took to Twitter to complain of the bad service, with one angry grandchild saying her nan was unable to communicate without the use of her landline: "@TalkTalk_UK really hacked off with the service this morning my nan has no landline and ur service is as much use as a chocolate teapot," while another drew attention to the fact they had not been able to use their landline for almost a week: "@TalkTalk_UK @TalkTalkCare @TalkTalkTVStore your service is appalling. Problem with my landline since Monday and still not fixed #pathetic."

The company first said: "We're experiencing problems with no dial tones on some landlines. If you're affected by this, you may still be able to make or receive calls," in a statement and then updated this with an apology.

"We are sorry that some customers are experiencing problems with their landlines. Some affected customers may still be able to make or receive calls even though they cannot hear a dial tone. We're working hard to fix this issue as quickly as possible," the company added.

When further questioned about the outage, TalkTalk said services should be restored by 2PM, although many customers said they weren't able to use their phones until later than this.

However, the status page on TalkTalk's website that normally notifies customers about their service went down shortly after the service was due to be restored, meaning they were unable to check whether their landline was back up and running.

Earlier this week, EE and O2 customers reported problems calling landlines from their mobile phone lines. At first, the 11 January hiccup was thought to be a problem caused by BT, although the telecommunications provider said it was unable to find a fault on its side.

Even the most optimistic of observers would have to agree that, when it came to securing corporate networks and data, 2015 sucked elephants through a straw.

In fact, there were so many cybersecurity low points across the year, that when I was asked to write about the biggest fails I found myself drowning in examples. You may think that is not a good position to be in, but there are always positives coming out of these negatives and when it comes to security it has to be learning from those face-palm moments.

Irresponsible disclosure

Take, for example, the TalkTalk breach, which taught us that acting too quickly and making statements when not fully acquainted with the appropriate information is not a good move. Nick Pollard, general manager of the UK for Guidance Software, tellsIT Pro: "It was an example of a response to an incident that was ill-judged in the end, as the scale of the attack was less widespread that at first anticipated."

Indeed, had TalkTalk waited until all the facts were fully understood then much panic and reputational damage could have been avoided. There's a lesson to learn right there.

Risk intolerant

Another lesson is that all organisations can and will be targeted. This means, as David Kennerley, senior manager for threat research at Webroot, reminds us, "all organisations need to balance security resource against risk tolerance".

Everyone should take note of that after the massive security fail that was the breach of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which was discovered in April 2015, but initiated over a year before.

Data lifecycle planning

Talking of taking too long to realise you've been breached, we really do have to raise a glass in the direction of JD Wetherspoon. It took the well-known pub chain six months to discover it had been hit, but the hacked database was apparently related to an old version of its website that had since been replaced.

But Pat Clawson, CEO of data erasure specialist Blancco Technology Group, tells IT Pro: "It indicates the company's internal teams didn't do their due diligence and had a lax approach to monitoring and managing risk levels of their external supply chain."

The lesson to learn, then, is to have a plan for the entire data lifecycle that includes secure disposal of deprecated assets.

Application of insecurity

Another long term data exposure was reported right at the start of the year when an API flaw allegedly left millions of Moonpig customers open to potential compromisefor 17 months after a developer claims he first warned the company about it.

This was a complete failure as far as secure API authentication design is concerned. So what lessons can we learn from this?

"Organisations should take note that when it comes to breaches, shareholders and the bottom line matter less than the people that have helped you build your business," says Jim Sneddon, technical director at security firm Aditinet.

He adds: "Stay close to customers, communicate transparently around the breach and threats and show real empathy as to how potentially disastrous they perceive the risk to be."

We cannot leave the world of Android without mentioning Stagefright, which impacted millions of users and could mean that a single malicious MMS could introduce malware to your smartphone.

Duo Security VP Henry Seddon advises: "Have the latest upgrades of software installed on [your] devices, restrict access to sensitive data when those upgrades are not in place."

Security industry not eating own dog food

For many people, the biggest security fail of the year was the failure of the IT industry itself. OK, maybe that's a little harsh, but a number of security industry giants fell victim to attack when they really shouldn't have.

Kaspersky and LastPass were both hacked in 2015, just to pick two examples. Ex-FBI man, and current chief security officer with Cryptzone, Leo Taddeo, tells IT Pro there's one simple takeaway from this: "No organisation is immune, and the stakes can be high."

High indeed, as controversial cybersecurity outfit Hacking Team discovered when an arsenal of state-funded malware and exploits were leaked post-breach. The lesson was not perhaps the obvious one, as cybersecurity firms of all companies should do better. Instead, as James Maude, senior security engineer at Avecto, explains, "it showed organisations across the globe that even with all the latest patches and anti virus protections, they are still vulnerable to determined or nation state attackers".

To achieve security in 2016 you have to fight attacks by getting the foundations of security right, learning the lessons of others then build on this layering on security using defence in depth.

On a security downer, man

If, having read all of that, you are now feeling just a wee bit depressed about the state of security across the year, you are not alone.

Professor Steven Furnell, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and Professor of IT Security at Plymouth University, suggests the sheer volume of well-publicised breaches in 2014 means there should have been fewer this time around.

"[Instead] these will have done nothing to raise confidence in the ability of online services to protect their systems and safeguard data," Furnell says.

But he concludes that companies can begin by mastering the basics, telling IT Pro: "There are still baseline things that many organisations are not doing well, such as complying with the safeguards required to meet Cyber Essentials. While these will not guard against more advanced forms of attack, they will at least prevent organisations from retaining common vulnerabilities and falling victim to avoidable exploits."

The personal details of 1,827 Vodafone customers were stolen by hackers last week, the company has admitted.

The hack exposed those customers' passwords and email addresses, as well as victims' bank sort codes and the last four numbers of their bank accounts, after cybercriminals broke through Vodafone's security between midnight Wednesday, 28 October and midday Thursday, 29 October.

"This incident was driven by criminals using email addresses and passwords acquired from an unknown source external to Vodafone. Vodafone's systems were not compromised or breached in any way," the telco said in a statement.

The operator informed the National Crime Agency (NCA), the Information Commissioner's Office and Ofcom of the issue on the evening of Friday, 30 October, and said it is working with the NCA to support the ongoing investigation.

Such actions have meant that only a handful of customers have been subject to any attempts by hackers to use their data for fraudulent activity on their Vodafone accounts, the company claimed.

However, while claiming its security protocols were "fundamentally effective" and no credit or debit card details were obtained in the attack, Vodafone admitted the leaked information does leave affected customers "open to fraud and might also leave them open to phishing attempts".

Compromised accounts were all blocked on Friday evening and Vodafone contacted affected customers directly over the weekend to assist them with changing their account details.

"We have already contacted the banks of affected customers to alert them to the situation and they are following established procedures in order to protect customers," the firm added.

"We would like to make clear that only the 1,827 customers, who have all been contacted, have been affected by this incident: no other customers have been affected or need to be concerned, as the security of our customers' data continues to one of our highest priorities," the firm said.

The data leak comes a week after UK broadband provider TalkTalk was hacked by criminals, leading to the theft of 1.2 million customer email and phone numbers and 21,000 bank details. In that investigation, police have so far arrested a 15-year-old in Northern Ireland and a 16-year-old in West London, as well as a 20-year-old man from Staffordshire.

Ryan Wilk, director at NuData Security, said that the Vodafone and TalkTalk breaches suggest fraudsters seem to be one step ahead of firms' security measures.

"Any company in any vertical where sensitive data is stored will be a target of hackers and criminals," he said. "While the loss of this data is an issue in and of itself, the secondary use of the stolen data should a concern to every business."

He added that thieves sell this information to aggregators, who cross-reference and compile full identities, called "fullz," on the data black market.

"This increases the value and usefulness of the stolen data and is building countless identities for the fraudsters. With the amount of data on the black market, there is no end to the potential damage the fraudsters can do using the stolen data," he claimed.

"With this level of information, fraudsters can create new bank accounts or take out loans under an actual person's name, causing problems for victims for years to come."

It seems clear from the last 24 hours or so that the TalKTalk data breach is more worthy of the term "hack" than is usually the case with mass-market data theft incidents. This is not one of those times were a departing employee walked out with the information: it's a genuine bedroom-inhabitant intruder, a scenario much beloved of the few Hollywood attempts to portray the lifestyles of the Dark Web's operators.

Of course, we don't have a clear view of the actual events that led up to the breach, and there's an ongoing arrest and potential trial to look forward to -- but whoever did the deed, they used tools which are freely findable on the web, to probe and then exploit the small part of the TalkTalk website which is made out of an insecure software platform. The basic truth about the Dark Web these days is that the users of those tools, the guys who think of themselves as hackers just because they can pay in Bitcoin for something with a funky, subcultural name and completely opaque internal workings or provenance, are just as much victims, as the corporates they target. It's a mug's game, basically: the "sharp end" user of the tool is the source of money for the developers of the tool, and they can walk away with those bitcoins free and clear, without having to participate in any foolish mouse-clicks that lead the mug in question to that loud banging on the door at 5am, the handcuffs, and all the PCs in the house being carted off for forensic examination.

Notice that I said the tools to do this type of attack are "opaque". By that I mean that the mug who buys and runs it has no easy way of telling what's going on inside the cool tool he thinks he's mastered. Even if the police have the right guy this time, and he claims he did nothing himself, it makes next to no difference, because no purchaser of these types of hacker tool is in a position to be quite sure what that code is up to on their machine.

You can see this kind of problem for yourself, by looking at your firewall logs (and I mean network firewall, not PC personal firewall) for a day or a week. Most firewalls will emit a syslog format account of the traffic that passes through them, and there are many tools that will let you twist and turn that log to show up handy basic reports, like "most accessed site" and "top ten newest sites by IP address, for this week" and so forth. Can you account for all of the ones you see? No? Got any that turn out not to be "sites" but rather, consumer connections within a large ISP? Then you may well have a lurking Trojan infection. Or they could.

Data Analytics is a hot topic in late 2015, but while people mostly think about it as a tool for probing your customer data for trends, it's equally useful as a way of probing your IT data for trends of a much nastier kind. Thinking through the way the economics of the Dark Web produces an apparently-endless queue of mugs waiting to both be fleeced, and then take the rap, my conclusion is that there is no lower bound to the size of network that should be thinking about watching their own traffic. It's quite difficult to encourage would-be criminals to think about Best Practice Analysis, but if ever there was a field with lessons to teach everyone else, it's them.

Looked at from TalkTalk's side of the equation, I can see an endless bumpy, rutted, twisting road of hard-learned lesson. Much of the current criticism (ours included) has been focussing on their user data and how that can be secured as an exercise in custom software coding. Snippets of Java are floating around, and conversations about HTTPS and similar. It's actually not about this, really. First of all, let me summarise a lot of that code-cleanup territory by saying: this is all about inverted commas. I can remember having to tangle with them when I was a developer, and that was in COBOL and BASIC and Pascal on a VAX-11/780, and it appears that their status within computing as a tongue-twister for the brain and fingers is no less in 2015 than it was back in 1987. Fail to strip the end-quotes out of anything that comes in from your web pages, say hello to their attacks succeeding.

But that still isn't where I am going with this, technically. SQL injections can be warded off by many different techniques, ranging from ever-smarter firewalls through standard downloadable patches for the OS components, right up to analysers that go looking through source code for insecure habits on the part of the coders - but I am very much afraid that none of these would have helped TalkTalk one tiny bit. The breach was in their finance systems, and finance IT - even in a company whose business is technology - is a very different and peculiar place to the more regular type. It would be a gargantuan task to self-code your own personal accounting system, for example, and once you had it ready, it would be nigh-on impossible to hire any staff prepared to take responsibility for working on it. This means that finance products are often bought in locked-down packages, or in some cases even locked-down collections of hardware, software and even services. Exposing these to a web-page entry form which may be the subject of injection based attacks has been the downfall of far too many businesses.

TalkTalk's great shame, then, is one that isn't that uncommon at all - but it's not where most of the commentaries are aiming. It is likely to be an incompletely tested subsystem, possibly maintained solely by a contractual promise from an outside specialist - and a specialist in accounting software, not web security. Many people will say that there's no excuse for taking contractual promises at face value, and that automated penetration tools for black hats are easily and more honestly matched by automatic vulnerability-testing tools for white hats: but all of these are meant to be issues for backwater, overtaxed, understaffed non-technical business. Not for a frontline ISP prominent in the public arena and linked to the Prime Minister in an advisory capacity on the nature of "Digital Britain". That's why this incident takes them from policy pillar to laughing stock.

One of the most significant questions to have arisen from the hack suffered by TalkTalkis why customers' data stored in the company's databases wasn't encrypted.

It may seem like hubris to many that Dido Harding, TalkTalk's CEO, told The Sunday Times sensitive personally identifiableinformation, including bank account numbers, sort codes and full names, were stored unencrypted because there is no legal obligation to do so.

"We have complied with all our legal obligations in terms of storing of financial information," she claimed.

But is she right - did TalkTalk fulfil its legal obligations even though it didn't encrypt this data?

The answer is, yes and no.

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) toldIT Pro: "All organisations must have appropriate security measures in place to prevent the personal data they hold being accidentally or deliberately compromised. Any measures put in place should prevent security breaches or limit the damage if they do occur.

"As one single product cannot guarantee security, we would advise a combination of different tools and techniques. Encryption is just one way of doing this."

However, Mahisha Rupan a senior associate at law firm Kemp Little toldIT Pro: "If TalkTalk was not encrypting its customers' data, which is a fairly standard security technique, TalkTalk will need to show that it utilised other technology to secure and protect the data in a way that would otherwise fulfil its legal obligations."

The matter is now in the hands of the ICO, which will determine if TalkTalk did indeed comply with its legal obligations even though it didn't use encryption, and if the company is found to have failed in its duties, the ICO is able to fine the telco up to 500,000.

Affected customers also have recourse to independent legal action, should they wish.

"As an alternative to enforcement through the Information Commissioner's Office, customers may apply to directly to the courts to enforce their rights under the Data Protection Act 1998 in certain circumstances. Compensation to individuals can only be awarded by the courts and not by the Information Commissioner's Officer," explained Rupan.

However, she cautioned that "So far, very few claims for compensation have been made by individuals and, where they have, the awards have been low."

If you are worried you have been affected by the TalkTalk hack, get advice on what to do next here.

Some of the UK's biggest internet service providers (ISPs) are failing on customer satisfaction, a new survey from Which? has revealed, with smaller providers topping the list instead.

BT, Sky and TalkTalk were all outranked by smaller providers including Plusnet and John Lewis Broadband, with the former all receiving a customer score below 50 per cent in contrast to the latters' 70 per cent or higher.

Richard Lloyd, executive director for Which?, said: "Smaller suppliers are leaving larger rivals in their wake when it comes to the service they provide so we need to see the big players up their game. Ofcom is also currently reviewing this market and we now need it to identify how it plans to ensure broadband customers get a better deal."

This survey was conducted as part of Which?'s, Give us Broadband Speed Guaranteed', campaign for broadband providers to offer a better service for its customers, but the results indicated that this has not always been the case.

Both BT and Sky cast doubt on the report results, saying they're not echoed by Ofcom's numbers.

A BT spokesperson told IT Pro: "BT is surprised by this report especially as Ofcom's comprehensive broadband report showed us to be unbeatable for reliability and speed against comparable products. BT is investing in customer service and has introduced several new initiative to resolve problems for customers the first time they contact us."

A spokesperson for Sky added: "We take customer satisfaction very seriously. We continuously invest in improving the service and broadband experience for our customers and this has been reflected in the latest report from Ofcom. Bundling broadband and TV services together offers great value for money and plays an important role in people's satisfaction. Unfortunately the views of the vast majority of our customers who choose to do this are not reflected in this report."

TalkTalk, on the other hand, was happy to have beaten its larger rivals. "We're pleased customers rated us better than BT and are proud to be the only supplier to offer totally unlimited broadband as standard with no caps or hidden charges for features such as caller ID or voicemail," a spokesperson for TalkTalk told IT Pro. "Our network is faster and more resilient than ever before but we recognise that we can do more, which is why we are working hard to continually improve our customers' experience."

The results are based on a survey of 1,757 broadband users between December 2014 and January 2015. According to Which?, the campaign already has 50,000 supporters. Which? has asked advertising watchdogs, The Committee of Advertising Practice and The Broadcasting Committee of Advertising Practice, to better enforce the rules regarding ISPs living up to the promises they make to customers.

Ofcom is to carry out a wide-ranging investigation on the UK's telecoms market, leading to calls from rivals to break up BT.

The watchdog is to commence an overall strategic review into the sector to evaluate competition, investment and innovation across broadband, mobile and landline markets.

Ofcom has reviewed each of these markets separately every three years in the past.

The regulator is aiming to find out just how well rules set in place ten years ago have worked, after 2005's review led to BT's access network being separated from the rest of the company, creating a new firm called Openreach.

Three different areas will be the focuses of the review: plans from major operators for significant network investment; telecoms services increasingly operating over the internet; and various potential mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and partnerships in the sector.

According to Ofcom acting chief executive Steve Unger, major changes have taken place since the previous review with the advent of tablet, HD streaming and 4G networks.

"The boundaries between landline, mobile and broadband services continue to blur, and people are enjoying faster services on a growing range of devices," said Ungar.

"Our new review will mean Ofcom's rules continue to meet the needs of consumers and businesses by supporting competition and investment for years to come."

The initial phase of the review will examine current and future market factors that may affect digital communications services, and current regulatory approaches.

It will also be looking to ensure the right incentives exist for private sector investment, maintaining strong competition by removing bottlenecks and whether there is scope for further deregulation.

However, BT's rivals called for the complete separation of Openreach from BT.

TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding said spinning off the firm would force the subsidiary to maximise coverage and improve quality of service for customers.

"It would end BT's ability to erode competition, stimulating innovation, consumer choice and lower prices," she said.

"Separation would accelerate investment in Britain's digital infrastructure as other providers will have the level playing field they need to build the competing modern infrastructure that our economy desperately needs.

"Ofcom's review is very timely and is a crucial first step to securing a market that delivers for Britain."

Sky's chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, said that structural separation of Openreach would be "at the heart of creating a sustainable industry".

"Ofcom must now take the opportunity to address Openreach's conflict of interest as a subsidiary of BT or risk extending the problems that are affecting the industry and its customers today," he said.

BT may appeal against Ofcom's proposed superfast broadband pricing rules, which could affect the wholesale and retail costing of its services.

The regulator is seeking permission from the European Commission to introduce a new rule to ensure BT maintains a "sufficient margin" between its wholesale and retail pricing figures.

The rule would not remove BT's right to set the price of its wholesale fibre prices, but would prevent it from making changes that could stop rivals from profiting when offering competing services to customers.

TalkTalk and Sky are able to offer their customers access to superfast broadband services by paying BT a sum based on its wholesale purchase fees.

If the difference in BT's wholesale and retail pricing is too small, it is feared the companies may struggle to profit from the arrangement.

In a statement to IT Pro, BT labelled the decision "misconceived" and said it is now mulling over how to respond and possibly appeal against the proposed measures.

"We're not opposed to the principle of a test. In fact, we passed the standard Competition Act test recently and Ofcom has said our current prices will also pass this new test when it comes into force," a BT spokesperson said.

One point the telco does object to, however, is Ofcom's decision to include the cost and revenues generated by offering its BT Sport services free to its superfast broadband customers.

"We do not think our sports costs should be part of any assessment and we reject the notion that Sky and TalkTalk require further regulatory assistance. They have more than 40 per cent of the broadband market between them compared to BT's 31 per cent," the spokesperson continued.

"BT is trying to ensure real competition in pay TV sports for the first time in 25 years. Yet the UK's lop-sided regulatory regime means Sky remains largely unregulated, while further hurdles are proposed for us, the pay TV challenger."

Ofcom confirmed in its statement the difference between BT's two price points is fine at present, and that the rule is simply being introduced as a preventative measure.

"Today's draft decisions are aimed at ensuring that different operators can compete in the developing broadband market in years to come, so that consumers benefit from competitive prices, network investment and high-quality, innovative services," the Ofcom statement reads.

The proposals will be reviewed by the European Commission, and Ofcom said it hopes to be in a position to enforce the new rule from March 2015.

IT Pro contacted Sky for a response to this story, but was still awaiting a response at the time of writing. TalkTalk, meanwhile, told the publication it was "delighted" by Ofcom's actions.

"They [Ofcom] are right to be concerned that BT could abuse its position to undermine competition in superfast broadband. Robust regulation creates a more competitive market that better serves consumers and small businesses," TalkTalk said.

"We do think, however, that consumers should be disappointed that the proposals will not lead to an immediate price reduction. Broadband is critical to our future. This must be the beginning of the journey to bring down superfast broadband pricing and make consumers and Britain better off."

TalkTalk has signed a deal with O2 that will see its MVNO use the operator's network in future instead of Vodafone's.

The move comes as TalkTalk prepares to embark on a 4G network rollout for its customers.

The firm said O2's network represented a "major step forward in our long term strategy to build a small cell and Fibre-To-The-Premise network".

The multi-year deal will allow TalkTalk to use O2's 2G, 3G and 4G services across the UK.

Furthermore, the company said the agreement means it could offer its four million customers a high-quality mobile service and enable it to build up its quad-play business over the medium term. Currently, TalkTalk has 350,000 customers using its MVNO or 9.5 per cent of its total base.

"We are pleased to be able to announce our commercial MVNO agreement with TalkTalk, which builds on our heritage of being the trusted provider for many notable MVNO, public and private sector organisations in the UK," said O2 chief executive Ronan Dunne.

"This recognition, as a leading source of essential connectivity, comes as a result of our continued and significant investment in our nationwide network. We welcome the start of what we hope will be a successful and prosperous relationship for both parties."

The move comes as rival firms bolster their quad-play efforts. Virgin Media is already well established in the field with mobile services offered through EE's network. BT and Sky are also separately thought to be in the advanced stages of rolling out mobile networks as part of a quad play deal.

Dido Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk said the deal was a "significant development for TalkTalk, building on our success in mobile to date".

"We are ideally placed to benefit from the market shift to quad-play, with a sizeable and growing number of customers already choosing to take mobile from us. We see real opportunities in both the near term and further out, to work with Telefnica UK to further accelerate our quad-play growth," she added.

Five of the country's biggest ISPs have been asked to prevent access to six websites selling counterfeit goods in a High Court ruling - the first of its kind in this country.

Virgin, BT, EE, BSkyB and TalkTalk have been told to add an 'access denied' notice on the websites believed to be selling fake goods claiming to be authentic Montblanc-Simplo and Cartier International (collectively part of the Compagnie Financire Richemont group) products.

Judge Mr Justice Richard Arnold said: "The page should not merely state that access to the website has been blocked by court order, but also should identify the party or parties which obtained the order and state that affected users have the right to apply to the Court to discharge or vary the order."

The second part of the ruling is that the injunction issued by the Richemont group will expire after a certain amount of time unless they re-submit a request for extention of the ISPs agree to prolong the directive.

"This will enable the practical operation of the orders to be reviewed in the light of experience," Arnold said.

The websites in question are cartierloveonline.com, hotcartierwatch.com, iwcwatchtop.com, replicawatchesiwc.com, 1iwc.com, montblancpensonlineuk.com and ukmontblancoutlet.co.uk, all of whom are selling high-value items such as watches and pens.

Richemont told Torrentfreak: "We are pleased by this judgment and welcome the Court's recognition that there is a public interest in preventing trade mark infringement, particularly where counterfeit goods are involved. The Courts had already granted orders requiring ISPs to block sites for infringement of copyright in relation to pirated content. This decision is a logical extension of that principle to trade marks."

It said it will add more websites flogging fake goods to its list if it finds they are infringing copyright.

The company's representing law firm said: "In a comprehensive judgment, the court has considered the enforcement methods that are presently available to trade mark owners when tackling infringement online. The court has concluded that Internet Service Providers play an essential role' and that the court can and should apply Article 11 of the Enforcement Directive to require the application of technical measures to impede infringement of trade marks."

Following take-down requests by other industries, including the entertainment industry, it seems these types of requests will not become uncommon in the coming months.

In December last year, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), Europol and the US authorities closed down 90 websites selling counterfeit goods as part of its worldwide crackdown.

Virgin, BT, Sky and TalkTalk's porn filters are being used by less than one in seven households, Ofcom has reported.

The four main ISPs, Ofcom and the government discussed the plans last year, requesting all four providers installed such filters with a deadline of December 2013.

Virgin Media was the last to install the filter, which was completed in February. It says only four per cent of its new customers are using the tool, which is much lower than TalkTalk customers, where it is thought 36 per cent of customers are doing so.

TalkTalk had previously been using its HomeSafe tools that also protect children and families from harmful websites, just like the porn filter, so it's no surprise uptake was so high. BT said five per cent of its customers were using its tools, while eight per cent of Sky users had opted in to block porn websites.

The report revealed that Virgin Media was only offering the service to 35 per cent of its customers, while the three other ISPs offered every new customer the tools.

Ofcom said: "The majority of new Virgin Media installations involve an engineer visit. Virgin Media believes that in many cases the engineer runs the broadband activation process and bypasses or ignores the filtering choice. It has recognised that this is a failure in process and indicated it is taking steps to address this gap.""

Virgin Media's chief executive, Tom Mockridge, responded to the report saying: "Ofcom's report clearly highlighted where Virgin Media has fallen short in meeting our original commitments.

"We take our responsibility to help families stay safe online very seriously and have taken immediate action to improve how we meet our commitments to government."

EE has once again been hailed as the UK's most complained about broadband provider.

New figures published from Ofcom found that it had generated the most complaints for broadband as a proportion of its customer base during the first quarter of this year 0.42 per 1,000 customers.

According to the watchdog, complaints were primarily driven by service faults, billing and issues with changing provider.

BT and TalkTalk also had above average complaints about their broadband, at 0.33 and 0.24 per 1,000 customers respectively.

Sky and Virgin Media received fewest complaints. Virgin Media's service garnered 0.07 per 1,000 customers, while Sky received 0.09 per 1,000 customers.

At 0.12 per 1,000 customers, EE's pay-monthly mobile complaints volumes were double the industry average and mainly driven by problems over complaints handling, billing and issues with changing provider.

In a statement, EE told IT Pro that it would be working to cut complaints and improve the service it gave customers.

"We are committed to improving service levels and have plans to return over 1,000 customer service roles to the UK from overseas call centres, the first phase of which will see two new UK call centres open in the next few weeks," a spokeswoman said.

She added that the firm was "disappointed" over the figures, but would be "taking on board the findings of this latest Ofcom report as we strive to offer our customers the best-possible service."

TalkTalk generated the most complaints about its landline service. During the first quarter of 2014, it received 0.28 complaints per 1,000 customers. BT also generated complaints above the industry average for landlines at 0.23 per 1,000 customers in Q4 2013.

A spokeswoman for TalkTalk said that complaints about broadband were two-thirds lower than three years ago and that it was seeing far fewer complaints about landlines.

"We've continued to make significant improvements while building a TV business of over one million customers in just under 18 months. We set out to do this in a careful and managed way, which is reflected both in high levels of customer satisfaction and the low numbers of complaints for such a fast growing business," she said.

Moves to combat online film and music piracy with the help of the ISP community have been criticised for being too lenient.

The big four ISPs - BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin Media are close to striking a deal with the BPI and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) to clamp down on individuals who illegally download music and films online.

As part of this, repeat offenders will receive "educational" letters from their ISPs that will reportedly point them in the direction of sites offering legal download services.

Individuals will receive a maximum of four such alerts, in the form of either a written letter or email, but they will face no further action from their ISP after this point.

The ISPs will only be allowed to send out 2.5 million of these warnings per year, although this number is expected to go up if other ISPs decide to join the scheme.

The first letters are expected to be sent out next year.

According to a report on the BBC, the original draft proposals suggested these letters should warn people who repeatedly download illegal content about the legal implications of their actions.

The BPI and MPA had also originally requested access to a database listing details about repeat offenders, so that they could pursue legal action against them.

However, the final draft of the proposals which have been four years in the making contain no mention of either of these measures.

In a statement, the MPA and BPI said: "Content creators and ISPs, with the support of government, have been exploring the possibility of developing an awareness programme that will support the continuing growth of legal creative content services, reduce copyright infringement and create the best possible customer experience online."

Andrew Goode, COO of ad tech provider Project Sunblock, hit out at the plans, claiming the ISPs' proposed letter writing campaign will not stop people downloading content illegally.

"Sending out letters to consumers won't come close to quelling the tide of illegal downloads from sites like the Pirate Bay. Letters issued by ISPs will be entirely unenforceable and without threats of punitive measures, like internet throttling, it simply won't work and, even worse, the initiative targets the wrong side of the illegal download exchange," he said.

"Instead of targeting consumers, what's needed is to cut off the flow of advertising revenue that fuels these copyright infringing sites. These sites are funded almost exclusively by ad revenue, which in many cases comes from some of the UK's biggest brand names."

Therefore, he wants to see more being done to cut the flow of ad revenue to the sites that facilitate illegal downloads.

"Advertisers must act in collaboration with the police and other enforcement bodies in order to make any real impact; otherwise, letters from ISPs will fall on deaf ears," he added.

Sky and TalkTalk have partnered with CityFibre to provide York homes and businesses with ultra-fast internet, offering speeds up to 1Gbps.

CityFibre already provides the city with its fibre-based broadband solution and once the new network is installed, both Sky and TalkTalk will offer competing ultra-fast internet services in the area.

Stephen van Rooyen, managing director of Sky's sales, marketing and brand group, said: "This trial will help us understand the potential for cutting-edge technology to help us give customers an even better quality of service."

Dido Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk Group, said the partnership will allow Sky and TalkTalk to offer better value services for faster speeds in comparison to what is currently available, forming part of TalkTalk's current broadband rollout strategy.

"This marks TalkTalk taking its first steps into investing in building infrastructure as part of our mission to make British homes and businesses better off," she explained.

Fujitsu will deploy the fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) network, allowing Sky, TalkTalk and CityFibre to test a new cost-effective solution to building an ultra-fast fibre network, separate from BT Openreach.

York will be the first of three cities to test the set-up, with two others being announced in the coming months.

Councillor James Alexander, leader of City of York council, said: "This announcement makes York the digital infrastructure capital of the UK. Gaining ultra fast broadband across the city is a huge boost for our economy; providing significant new opportunities for businesses based here and better quality and value to our residents.

"I'm delighted that York has been chosen as the first city, building on work over the last two year's to improve the city's digital infrastructure, and that we'll see this in place as soon as 2015."

Ofcom has released its latest report on the volume of complaints it receives regarding the major providers of telecoms and pay TV services.

According to the report, which covers Q4 2013, TalkTalk is the most complained about landline provider a position it has held since 2011 followed by BT, which has consistently been second or joint-second since Q3 2012, Sky and Virgin.

However, while TalkTalk holds the dubious honour of coming out on top, the proportion of complaints has decreased year-on-year, dropping from 0.84/1,000 customers in Q4 2011 to 0.27/1,000 in Q4 2013.

The industry average has also been steadily dropping, standing at 0.16 in the most recent report, compared to 0.19 in Q3 2013 and 0.3 back in 2011.

When it comes to fixed broadband, Virgin and Sky continue to perform well, remaining below the industry average in this area.

BT comes off worst, with 0.32 complaints per 1,000 customers, followed closely by EE at 0.29 with TalkTalk coming in third place with 0.21. The industry average is 0.17.

The two companies that make up EE, Orange and T-Mobile, were ranked worst in terms of the number of complaints regarding pay-monthly mobile phone providers at 0.12/1,000 customers and 0.11/1,000 customers, respectively.

O2 is the best performing, at 0.029 complaints per 1,000 customers, followed by Three at 0.033/1,000 customers. This is a significant drop for Three, from 0.06/1,000 in Q3.

Claudio Pollack, director of Ofcom's consumer group, said: "This report acts as a significant incentive to providers to work to address issues driving complaints and deliver an improved quality of service to their customers.

"We're committed to giving consumers valuable information to help them choose a provider that best suits their needs. Consumer complaints also help us to identify where enforcement action is needed and ensure that providers comply with our rules."

Anti-porn filters may be responsible for blocking updates to popular PC game, League of Legends.

Users trying to download patches to the game found the update stalled when downloading two files called VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj and XerathMageChainsExtended.luaobj.

Both files contain the letters S,E and X in succession, prompting fears the files have been blocked by internet filters looking for questionable content based on keywords.

The problem was discovered by gamers and posted on social news site Reddit. According to site user LoLBoompje, UK porn filters are to blame. The problem was also discussed on the game's user forum.

At present the problem does not appear to be extensive, as only new internet subscribers or those changing ISPs are affected by porn filters.

Users may have to turn off any filters to allow the update to come through or have a fellow player email the updates in a zip file to get round this.

Last October, ISPs BT, Virgin, Sky and TalkTalk said subscribers to their services would have to opt out of filters to view adult content. However, concerns have been raised over how far the filters go in stopping content.

As reported by IT Pro, attempts to block porn have been panned by experts. At the time, Jim Killock, executive director of civil liberties campaigners the Open Rights Group said "promoting reliance on network filters is very bad advice."

League of Legends developer Riot Games told gaming publication Eurogamer that it was monitoring the situation and asked users that are having problems to contact them.

"Our feedback to players is to double check with internet service providers and if anyone experiences a problem, get in touch and we will be able to help," a Riot spokesperson told the publication.

TalkTalk is making all privacy features free for landline customers to help them avoid nuisance, scam and unwanted calls.

The telecoms company claims to be the first and only internet service provider in the UK to offer Last Caller Barring and Anonymous Caller Reject for free to both new and existing customers.

The free features come in additions to Caller Display, Withhold Number and 1571 voicemail services, which are already free to all customers on TalkTalk's network.

The Last Caller Barring feature allows users to block the last number to call or specific numbers of your choice, while the Anonymous Caller Reject feature blocks incoming calls from anyone who withholds their number.

Set to come into effect from 19 January, TalkTalk said the measures would save customers up to 140 a year when compared to BT.

This is because charges for Last Caller Barring and Anonymous Caller Reject can cost as much as 3.70 and 4.50 per month, respectively.

"Nuisance and unwanted calls are a huge source of stress and frustration," said TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding. "We don't believe that people should be charged for the privilege of protecting their privacy.

"Our customers can now benefit from even more free features to help them avoid nuisance calls, helping to make TalkTalk homes even better off," she said.

Marie-Louise Abretti, telecoms expert at uSwitch.com, said up until now phone users had to make a choice between protecting themselves from nuisance calls and keeping a lid on their bills.

"It's particularly welcome as those who rely most heavily on their landline are often those who require the most protection, but can least afford to pay for it. We now hope that other providers follow TalkTalk's lead and start to protect their customers for free from this scourge too," she said.

BT, EE and TalkTalk have emerged as three of the most complained about comms and broadband providers, according to new quarterly figures from Ofcom.

The mobile regulator has published details about the volume of complaints it received about landline telephone, broadband and paid-for TV providers between July and September 2013.

While complaint volumes about landline, broadband and paid-for TV services were higher than the previous quarter, the number of people complaining about mobile providers was down overall.

TalkTalk was the most complained about landline provider during the third quarter of 2013, garnering 0.31 complaints per 1,000 customers. This was higher than the industry average.

Even so, the volume of complaints against the firm during Q3 2013 was the lowest they have ever been.

"The main issues driving complaints were service faults and problems with changing provider," Ofcom said, in a statement.

The volume of criticism levelled at BT's landline services was also higher than the industry average, with 0.23 complaints per 1,000 customers.

Virgin Media received the fewest complaints overall, with just 0.08 per 1,000 customers.

From a broadband perspective, Orange/EE received the most complaints, at a rate of 0.45 per 1,000 customers. This was more than double the industry average.

BT was the second most complained about broadband provider, with 0.41 complaints per 1,000 customers, while TalkTalk chalked up 0.27 for every 1,000 customers.

Once again, Virgin Media received the fewest complaints, followed by Sky.

On the pay monthly mobile services front, T-Mobile clocked up the most complaints during Q3 2013, at a rate of 0.13 per 1,000 customers. The majority of these concerned the operator's billing and complaints handling procedures.

Orange and Virgin Mobile also generated complaints in excess of the industry average, while O2 remained the least complained about mobile services provider.

Claudio Pollack, director of Ofcom's consumer group, said releasing the data would make it easier for end users to make "informed decisions" when choosing new suppliers.

"We also hope this data will incentivise providers as they work to address issues driving complaints and improve their performance," Pollack added.

The Government wants four of the UK's largest internet service providers to make urgent changes to their internet safety strategies, according a letter leaked to the BBC.

The document was sent by a Department for Education representative, and sets out four areas it claims the Prime Minister David Cameron would like Talk Talk, Sky, Virgin Media and BT to address as a matter of urgency.

For example, the letter asks the group to help fund an internet safety awareness campaign, the details of which still need to be hammered out, the letter acknowledges.

"The Prime Minister would like to be able to announce a collective financial commitment from industry to fund this campaign," the letter states.

"I know it will be challenging for you to commit to an unknown campaign, but please can you indicate what sum you will pledge to this work that the PM can announce."

Elsewhere, the letter also requests the ISPs follow Talk Talk's lead by "trialling a browser intercept" that prompts customers to make a decision about the parental controls they employ.

"The Prime Minister wants to announce that by the end of the year, every household with a broadband internet connection will have had to make a decision to opt-out' of installing filters," the letter reads.

"Will the other three ISPs consider making a commitment to adopting this approach, even before it has been trialled?"

Further to this, it also calls on the ISPs to clarify the steps they take to verify the ages and identities of people that try to make changes to their household's internet filters, and adapt the language they use when discussing internet safety.

All of the major ISPs gave their backing to an initiative last year called active choice, which lets users choose between enforcing online parental controls.

However, the letter asks the ISPs to consider replacing the words "active choice" with the phrase "default-on", for simplicity purposes.

"Without changing what you will be offering, the Prime Minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions as default-on' as people will have to make a choice not to have the filters [in place]," the letter explains.

"Would you be able to commit to including default-on' or similar language both in the set-up screen and public messaging?"

The letter gives the ISPs until Friday to respond to the requests, and warns them they will receive further missives from the Home Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about how to clampdown on illegal images online.

"We are all aware of the really excellent work that you are doing...but there are a number of specific areas that the prime minister thinks need further immediate action," the letter concludes.

According to the accompanying report on the BBC, the ISP community has taken a dim view of the letter and its content, with one source telling the site he found the requests "staggering."

Virgin Media has reinforced its commitment to letting customers make an "active choice" about accessing explicit web content.

The company was responding to national news reports over the weekend that claimed it was one of several internet service providers (ISP) planning to rollout an opt-in system for customers that want to access explicit content by 2014.

However, a Virgin Media spokesperson played down the reports during a conversation with IT Pro, and said the ISP will not block content by default.

"The bottom line is, all of the major ISPs signed up to something last year called Active Choice. A principle by which as a customer you have [to decide] do you use parental controls?

"That's what we did last year, we're not going to filter stuff ahead of people making that decision, we are certainly not going to filter content without people's knowledge or understanding.

"They must make that decision and depending on what that decision is, we will act accordingly," the spokesperson added.

Talk Talk was another ISP name-checked in the weekend's articles. It recently started rolling out Home Safe, an Active Control-like service to its existing customers, that allows them to choose if they want to block adult content or not.

The company introduced the service to new customers back in early 2012.

Dido Harding, the company's chief executive, said one-in-three of its customers have opted to block adult content.

"[In June] we became the only company to begin asking all our existing customers to make the same unavoidable decision," said Harding.

"Currently about 6,000 more homes each day are choosing to use our HomeSafe scheme and to help keep their children safer online as a result."

In a statement to IT Pro, Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA), said these Active Choice schemes should also be backed by education to help users to make informed choices about the content they want to view.

"Whilst filtering has a role to play, it should not be viewed as a silver bullet, and in agreement with a majority of respondents to the government consultation, we do not support a default filter," Lansman added.

Last month, Claire Perry MP, David Cameron's special advisor for the prevention of childhood sexualisation and commercialisation, announced that ISPs will be forced to offer parental filters that block pornographic content by default to new and existing customers before the end of 2013.

Efforts to curb the availability of child abuse images online should not be limited to the searchable web, as criminals are increasingly turning to P2P networks and the dark web to distribute content.

This week has seen a series of ISPs and web firms talk up the work they are doing to clamp down on the proliferation of child abuse images on the net.

Google announced plans to invest millions of pounds in this area, while Talk Talk, BT, Sky and Virgin Media committed to collectively invest 1 million over the next four years in tackling the problem.

The bulk of their activities seem to be centred on the eradication, tracking and blocking of child abuse images on the searchable web,

However, concerns have been raised that not enough is being done to clampdown on similar content being shared via P2P and anonymised web networks.

Speaking to IT Pro, Christian Berg, chief executive of NetClean, said criminals are likely to use these alternative networks more to distribute illegal content if it becomes harder to do on the searchable web.

"You cannot solve this problem simply by blocking [http traffic]. It is an important piece of the puzzle, but there are so many ways of sharing this material and http [addresses] are not the preferred [method of distribution]," he explained.

"There's definitely not enough being done to tackle these [hidden networks], and I know there is a will by law enforcers to do more, but resources are tight."

He also said it is easy to tell search engines, social networks and the ISP community they need to do more, but the issue is not quite as straight forward as that.

"People look at Google and the ISPs and say this is a problem of the internet and you're a bit part of the internet, you have to fix it," he explained.

"Obviously, the internet is being used to spread it, but child abuse is really not an internet problem. It's a human one."

A lot of this week's discussions about how to approach the issue have centred on URL blocking, but Berg questioned how effective a tool this is.

"It is usually employed to protect UK citizens from accidentally stumbling on illegal content, rather than track down criminals, he said.

"If you are into this material you don't have to be very tech savvy to know how to circumnavigate it," he added.

His company develops technologies and software that blocks and tracks the online spread of child abuse content, which is used by law enforcement agencies and enterprises.

"We sell our software to organisations that can scan their servers, their laptops and desktops for known child abuse images and videos," he explained.

"We're not talking about URLs, but actual files, which means we can find things on USB sticks too, [and]

"[We then tell] the organisation they need to do an investigation and notify the police," he added.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has welcomed news that four of the UK's largest ISPs are to stump up 1m over the next four years to arrest the online spread of child abuse images.

BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin Media announced the funding in a joint statement yesterday, where they set out their commitment to eradicating child abuse material from the net.

"ISPs have a zero tolerance to this material [and] this funding will help to target those individuals that create and distribute the content," the statement said.

The companies said they plan to work with the Government, the IWF and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to decide on how the money should be spent.

They have also committed to stepping up the work they do with the IWF by participating in a review of its activities, which currently focus on allowing people to report criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK and child abuse images hosted anywhere in the world.

All four already work closely with CEOP, and are reported to be among the IWF's largest funding providers.

"This additional funding will supplement the existing zero tolerance approach to child abuse material online, adding to the existing contributions that each company makes both in relation to the ongoing battle against illegal material and investment in technology and awareness raising to help parents protect children in the online world," the statement reads.

In a further statement, Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF, said the funding would help the organisation make some "real headway" into its goal of creating an internet free of child abuse content.

"This is a great commitment from the UK internet industry," said Hargreaves. "We are ready to step up the fight against online child sexual abuse content."

News of the funding follows on from a meeting chaired by Culture Secretary Maria Miller yesterday, which was attended by ISPs and web giants such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

Pressure has been growing on ISPs, search engines and social networks to step up their efforts when it comes to clamping down on child pornography and abuse images online, in the wake of the April Jones and Tia Sharp murder trials.

In both cases, the perpetrators were found to have trawled the internet for child abuse images in the past.

The aim of yesterday's meeting was to hammer out exactly what needs to be done to halt the spread of child abuse images online, but according to our sister publication PC Pro little progress was made.

A source, speaking to the publication under condition of anonymity, claimed the meeting was hijacked by MPs with little techical knowledge of the challenges involved with filtering child abuse images.

Representatives from the world's biggest internet firms will meet with Culture Secretary Maria Miller today to tackle the prevalence of child abuse images online.

The meeting is expected to be attended by representatives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, as well as ISPs Talk Talk, O2, BT and Sky.

The attitudes of ISPs, search engines and social media networks to halting the spread of child abuse images online has come under close scrutiny in the wake of the April Jones and Tia Sharp murder trials.

In both cases, the perpetrators were found to have trawled the internet for child abuse images, prompting calls for web firms and ISPs to do more to restrict access to such content.

The Prime Minister David Cameron led calls earlier this month for members of the technology industry to pool resources to prevent online access to child pornography.

In a statement at the time, he said: "The time for excuses and blame is over. We must all work together [because] the safety of our children is at stake and nothing matters more than that."

As reported by IT Pro yesterday, Google has announced a $7 million package of measures to help clamp down on offensive web content.

The money will be invested in organisations and technology tools that can be used to remove the child abuse images from the net.

Further to this, BT recently set out plans to send an alert to customers that attempt to access web pages listed on the Internet Watch Foundation's database of child abuse images.

This message will inform them that access to the site has been blocked, as well as the reason why.

Ahead of today's meeting, Miller referenced the recent efforts that have been made in this area, but stressed there is still more to do.

"Child abuse images are horrific and widespread public concern has made it clear that the industry must take action," she said.

"In recent days we have seen these companies rush to do more because of the pressure of an impending summit.

"Imagine how much more can be done if they seriously turn their minds to tackling the issue. Pressure will be unrelenting," she added.

Ofcom will investigate BT over its dominance in the broadband market following complaints by rival TalkTalk.

The complaint, alleges that BT has squeezed margins between its upstream costs and downstream prices. TalkTalk has complained that the telco is charging ISPs too much for access to its fibre network.

Investigations are in an early stage according to the regulator. Ofcom said that claims will be looked into before deciding if BT has a case to answer for.

"In the initial phase of the investigation in Spring/Summer 2013, we expect to gather further information using our powers under the Competition Act 1998, and to analyse this information," said the regulator in a statement.

"We expect this initial analysis to inform consideration of whether and how to proceed further with the investigation, during Autumn/Winter 2013."

BT said that it was disappointed that Ofcom has opened the case and claims there is no evidence.

"It would be better if the industry's and Ofcom's focus was on investing in the future of the country rather than on spurious actions designed to hold up fibre in the UK," BT said in a statement.

However, TalkTalk welcomesd the news to investigate BT and said that it has "long maintained that there needs to be tighter regulation in superfast broadband to ensure a level playing field and therefore deliver real benefits for consumers and businesses."

"We are pleased that Ofcom is taking this matter seriously and have decided there is reasonable suspicion to investigate BT's fibre pricing," a TalkTalk spokesman said.

BT is currently spending 2.5 billion of its own money to connect around two-thirds of the UK to its fibre network by 2014.

Telecommunications provider TalkTalk has been fined 750,000 by UK regulator Ofcom for repeatedly subjecting potential customers to abandoned and silent calls.

Citing "persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or electronic communications service", Ofcom conducted an investigation into TalkTalk and found it responsible for making 9,000 silent calls to consumers between 1 February and 21 March 2011.

This is not the first time TalkTalk has been targeted by the watchdog. In 2011, the company was fined 3 million for billing thousands of customers for services it never rendered.

While organisations are allowed to get away with making a certain number of abandoned calls, Ofcom's investigation found that TalkTalk had far exceeded this limit.

Abandoned calls occur when a person answers a phone, but the caller hangs up. Silent calls are what happen when a person answers the phone, only to be greeted with silence on the other end.

"Silent and abandoned calls can cause annoyance and distress to consumers," said Ofcom consumer group director Claudio Pollack.

"Today's penalty sends out a strong message to organisations using call centres that they must comply or face the consequences."

TalkTalk has moved to distance itself from any allegations of misconduct by focusing the blame on two of its call centre operators: Teleperformance and McAlpine Marketing.

In a statement to IT Pro, a TalkTalk spokesperson said: "TalkTalk demands high standards from the companies it works with, and as a result [we] immediately stopped using these suppliers.

"TalkTalk works with all its partners to ensure that regulations are adhered to and that customers continue to get good service and best value," it added.

TalkTalk has up to thirty days to pay the Ofcom fine, the entirety of which will be passed onto the HM Treasury.

A High Court judge has ordered several UK ISPs to block access to notorious file sharing site, The Pirate Bay.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media will have to stop customers from accessing the Swedish website, which features pirated films and music.

We will comply with the decision made by the court and are in the process of doing this.

Geoff Taylor,BPI chief executive, welcomed the ruling and claimed The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale.

"Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists. We urge anyone using The Pirate Bay to explore the many digital music services operating ethically and legally in the UK especially those carrying the Music Matters trustmark," he said in a statement.

TalkTalk and Virgin Media have confirmed they will accept the ruling.

"We have received a court order requiring us to block access to The Pirate Bay. We will comply with the decision made by the court and are in the process of doing this. TalkTalk have always maintained that we are not in principle against blocking provided there is a court order," said TalkTalk.

Virgin Media claimed that legal alternatives also need to be put forward to help change consumer behaviour.

"As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company, but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives."

Justice Arnold had ruled in February that The Pirate Bay infringed on the copyright of major record labels. BT faced pressure to block the website, but is one of the high-profile ISPs that is missing from judgment.

"We continue to have discussions with the BPI and we hope to announce an outcome acceptable to both of us soon," BT said in a statement.

Since it was rushed through the legislative process, both before and after the general election of 2010, the Digital Economy Act (DEA) has been a contentious piece of work.

ISPs, with some justification, didn't take kindly to this plan.

The result of an initial report by Lord Carter Of Barnes, it headed to the statute book with concerns about just how deeply it had been interrogated. It was introduced by the Labour government just before the close of Parliament, and picked up by the subsequent coalition administration, none of whom threw any particular sticks in its wheels.

Alarm

From the off, many businesses and professionals, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) very much included, were sounding alarm bells. In particular, the proposed three strikes rule for broadband customers has remained a major point of contention. For amongst its many clauses in the Act is one demanding that ISPs send warning letters to people suspected of illegally downloading copyrighted material, and in extreme cases, terminating their connection.

ISPs, with some justification, didn't take kindly to this plan (which gives them a policing role of sorts), and many have been strongly resisting it ever since. BT and TalkTalk, in particular, have been following due legal process in their battle against parts of the Digital Economy Act, arguing that asking them to effectively police their customers by sending them letters and threats was in contravention of European Union law.

Earlier this month, this case finally made it to the Court Of Appeal. Unfortunately for BT and TalkTalk, their appeal was dismissed, and that's certainly cleared the path a little more to the implementation of the act.

The Court basically rejected the suggestion that the Act was in contravention of EU laws in its ruling, and that leaves the pair of ISPs with a decision to make. Their next step, if they want to take it, is to argue their case at Supreme Court level. This is trickier (and further appeals become trickier still), as the court can refuse to even hear the case should it choose. It's unclear, at this stage, whether TalkTalk and BT want to pursue this path, although neither is showing any signs of wanting to give up the fight.

The upshot of the failed appeals is that this puts the Digital Economy Act very much back on schedule.

It's not an inexpensive business, though, with this latest appeal reported to have cost at least six figures, the two firms responsible for paying the vast bulk of costs.

Back on track?

The upshot of the failed appeals is that this puts the Digital Economy Act very much back on schedule, with a summer 2013 target date in place for the sending out of the first batch of letters.

It's only at this stage the long-mooted three strikes policy will properly come into force. This, as most are aware, introduces some warning stages to users, before they're hit with the aforementioned possibility of having their account revoked.

Many groups for creative industries have expressed their pleasure that things are finally pressing ahead, with the likes of the BPI expressing their happiness with the ruling. Given that it's been talked about in one shape or another for two to three years, there's a vocal group who are simply keen for the government to finally enact the legislation.

The onus, then, will be on the ISPs to keep tabs on the customers suspecting of downloading copyrighted material, and furthermore, the legislation requires that they can marry up an IP address to a user.

There's still technical work that needs to be undertaken here, which is likely to be going on for much of the year.

As things stand, the Digital Economy Act targets the named person to whom a broadband bill is sent, irrespective of whether they've personally done anything or not.

Happiness

Unsurprising, the ISPs remain unhappy. TalkTalk, for its part, has taken umbrage not with the fight against piracy per se, but rather the way it's being handled.

As things stand, the Digital Economy Act targets the named person to whom a broadband bill is sent, irrespective of whether they've personally done anything or not. Also, there's widespread displeasure at the plans to charge 20 for a user to appeal if they think they've been wronged by the process.

For small businesses, and perhaps even bigger ones, there are obvious concerns. Who is supposed to take responsibility for the actions of employees? What can a business do to ensure that its own web connections aren't abused? There are obvious answers, in terms of the technical restrictions that are easily deployable, and a firm acceptable use policy is clearly a must.

It's unlikely that a business runs the risk of losing its web connection altogether, though, with arguably the bigger threat coming from potentially negative publicity.

The road ahead

That said, there's still some way to go. Proposed US law was affected by the strength of the protests against SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), which eventually resulted in a government climbdown.

For the time being, though, the Digital Economy Act is flying under many people's proverbial radar, only likely to resurface when it starts to affect end users in some way. That moment is likely to come when the first letters arrive on people's doormats, and the full extent of the Act is implemented.

End of the road?

However, pressure from creative industries is telling, and the Digital Economy Act's teeth are surely soon to be felt. There's only so much of a battle that ISPs can put up, and the runes thus far seem to indicate that the chances of successfully appealing parts of the Act, in the immediate future at least, look slim.

Whether the likes of BT and TalkTalk want to gamble another hundred thousand or so on a further legal challenge remains to be seen. Either way, it seems all but certain that the force of the legislation is about a year away from being felt.

Despite having three of its ads banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), TalkTalk has hailed the decision as a success for the company.

BT and two others lodged a complaint with the ASA over the use of the phrase "UK's safest broadband" in the TalkTalk adverts, which appeared on TV, a poster and in the national press.

TalkTalk argued that the claim was based on the company being the only home broadband provider in the UK to apply security features at the network level.

This probably wasn't the outcome that BT wanted when they made the complaint.

The telecoms company provides this in along with its HomeSafe service and means all devices using the TalkTalk connection are given protection. The company said other companies only provided protection for a limited number of devices, rather than at the network level.

The ASA said it took the "UK's safest broadband" claim as implying TalkTalk was promising the safest online experience, rather than making it clear about the unique network protection.

"We considered that the claim implied that customers would enjoy the safest online experience when using TalkTalk broadband," the ASA said.

"We also considered that the images shown in the ad reinforced this impression, as a father was pictured relaxing in an armchair whilst two children used the internet, giving the impression that using TalkTalk meant the actual online experience was the safest."

The ASA also claimed HomeSafe "only offered a basic range of security features" and suggested consumers would not understand what "network level security" would mean.

"As it was not a commonly used term in home broadband, and that it could be easily misinterpreted to refer to other features such as the security of the wireless connection," the body continued.

"We considered that the claim implied that customers would enjoy the safest online experience when using TalkTalk broadband, and that the qualification used did not sufficiently counteract this impression."

Despite the ASA's claims, TalkTalk has claimed victory from the decision. The telecoms firm suggested ASA had confirmed "once and for all, that TalkTalk offers the UK's safest broadband connection."

It claimed all TalkTalk has to do in future advertising is emphasise the network aspect.

"We've never been more delighted with a ruling that, on the face of it, would be seen as going against us," TalkTalk communications director Mark Schmid told IT Pro.

"What it means is that we can now say, beyond dispute, that we are the UK's safest broadband connection. This probably wasn't the outcome that BT wanted when they made the complaint."

BT said it had no further comment on the ASA decision.

Communications watchdog Ofcom has given itself a pat on the back after fewer consumers complained of silent or abandoned calls.

Almost a quarter of consumers said they had an abandoned call in 2011, down from 35 per cent in 2009.

The number of those who had been hit by silent calls went down from 30 per cent in 2009 to 24 per cent in 2011.

Ofcom said the drops were due to its increased focus on targeting companies who make such calls.

Businesses which break the rules face fines of up to 2 million. TalkTalk is one company facing action from Ofcom for breaking rules.

In October, Ofcom said it had "reasonable grounds for believing that between 1 February 2011 and 21 March 2011, TalkTalk persistently misused an electronic communications network or electronic communications services, through two call centres, one based in the UK and one in South Africa."

The result of the action is expected to be revealed early next year. Homeserve and nPower are also facing action from Ofcom.

Ofcom also boasted about the increased consumer awareness surrounding such calls.

"In 2011 Ofcom received around 30,000 visits to the consumer advice on its website about silent and abandoned calls," the regulator said in a statement.

"Increased media coverage, and improvements to Ofcom's online complaints process have also resulted in an increase in the number of complaints it receives."

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is continuing to lead the charge in asking ISPs to block access to Newzbin 2, although providers indicate they may not play ball.

BT was told to shut off access to Newzbin 2 last month after a lawsuit issued by rights holders was successful.

Now those rights holders are going after other ISPs as they look to get filesharing sites shut down.

"We have received a letter from the MPA asking whether we would object (in court) to an order for TalkTalk to block access to Newzbin," said Andre Heaney, executive director of strategy and regulation at TalkTalk.

"We are considering our position since there are some objectionable elements to the proposed injunction."

Virgin said it would like to see legal alternatives used to fight piracy.

We are considering our position since there are some objectionable elements to the proposed injunction.

"The recent Newzbin2 ruling clarifies the legal process for content owners to challenge alleged copyright infringement," a Virgin Media spokesperson said.

"As a responsible ISP, we will comply with any court order addressed to us but strongly believe such deterrents need to be accompanied by compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, which give consumers access to content at the right price."

Earlier this week, music industry body BPI joined forces with a number of other record companies and Hollywood film studios to send a letter to BT asking it to block The Pirate Bay.

BT said it is looking for court orders before blocking any websites in the future.

"In line with the Newzbin judgment, a court order will be needed before any blocking could begin," a BT spokesperson said.

UK web denizens are being asked to give up an hour of their time to help others get online.

The UK's Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox has launched a campaign asking people to use the extra hour they get when the clocks go back to assist someone they know in using the internet.

It forms part of the Race Online 2012 initiative, which was launched in July 2010 with the aim of helping the nine million who have never used the internet online.

"There are still 8.7 million people in the UK who've never made a free Skype call, explored and expanded their interests or got a great deal online. Yet, it's impossible to imagine life without the web for anyone who uses it regularly," Fox said.

We live in an age when digital' is a vital life skill - as basic as knowing how to read and write.

"We live in an age when digital' is a vital life skill - as basic as knowing how to read and write. 90 per cent of new jobs require it, you're 25 per cent more likely to get work when you have web skills and once in work you'll earn up to 10 per cent more. It's simply unacceptable that so many people are still unable to benefit from what the web can offer."

A host of tech companies are contributing to the project, including mobile provider 3, whose store workers are giving more than 10,000 hours of their time to show people the benefits of the internet.

Microsoft previously pledged to provide 95 refurbished computers, available from getonlineathome.org. Remploy, which IT Pro interviewed in May about the project, and PCXUK are offering refurbished PCs as well.

BT and TalkTalk are also heavily involved, encouraging customers to help out.

Earlier this year, the campaign recruited 100,000 digital champions to spread the word.

BT and TalkTalk have been granted permission to appeal against a controversial decision to uphold much of the Digital Economy Act (DEA).

The telecoms rivals joined forces to fight the Act, which was rushed through Parliament last year before the general election took place.

BT and TalkTalk secured a judicial review in 2010 only to have their claims against the Act, suggesting the law contravened the EU Electronic Commerce Directive and the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, dismissed. They then chose to contest that decision, which they have now won.

We now expect the hearing will take place as soon as possible.

Many have taken umbrage with the law's ruling that ISPs can be forced to send letters to suspected copyright infringers threatening legal action. The Act could also ask ISPs to block file sharers believed to have broken the law.

However, the Act was written in a suitably vague manner, making it difficult to interpret the extent to which ISPs could be forced to clampdown on file sharers.

"We're pleased to have been granted permission to appeal the High Court judgment and we now expect the hearing will take place as soon as possible," a BT spokesperson said.

Back in July, BT was forced to block site Newzbin2 for containing links to pirated material, although that was not under the DEA. In that case, it was under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

Rights holders have already shown their dismay at the decision.

"Naturally, we are disappointed at this further delay," John McVay, chief executive of production company PACT, told the BBC.

"However, we respect the decision and are pleased that the appeal hearing will be fast tracked because, in the meantime, online piracy continues to wreak havoc on the legitimate market, threatening jobs and livelihoods."

Despite reports suggesting a fifth of people prefer Facebook to using a mobile phone to contact people, the social network remains bottom of the pile in UK communications methods.

Respondents didn't say they preferred Facebook at all, the TalkTalk survey showed. Instead, it found 22 per cent of people said they regularly used Facebook to contact others.

Even in countries where Facebook leads, the differences between market shares are often not as dramatic as they are in the US.

This was almost half the figure for those using mobile phones, 10 per cent less than email and over 20 per cent less than both landline calls and texting.

"In an age where the rise of social media as a way for people to contact each other is frequently discussed, it's good to see that verbal communication is still important," said Mark Schmid, spokesperson for TalkTalk.

Facebook is evidently attempting to boost its communications offerings, bringing in Skype functionality and offering users the ability to have their own @facebook.com address.

Yet in the business world, the mobile phone still dominates. Almost half of respondents said they used their mobile to contact workmates, compared to 26 per cent who used Facebook.

Mark Zuckerburg and his underlings will still be over the moon about the company's success, however. Facebook revenue doubled to hit $1.6 billion in the first half of 2011, according to a source with knowledge of the company's financials, Reuters reported.

Facebook currently has over half of the estimated 1.5 billion social network users in the world, yet some believe others can compete with the industry's number one. In emerging countries in particular, Facebook's dominance could be under threat.

"Facebook has had tremendous success, but select markets such as China, Japan, and South Korea remain challenges to the veritable social networking juggernaut," said ABI Research senior analyst Michael Inouye.

"In addition, even in countries where Facebook leads, the differences between market shares are often not as dramatic as they are in the US."

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt called for the bitter war between ISPs over pricing of fibre broadband infrastructure to end, during a speech yesterday at the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention.

Earlier this year, a host of ISPs, including Virgin and TalkTalk, sent a letter to the Government complaining about BT's pricing of ducts and poles for fibre provision.

They argued BT was charging too much for Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA), yet the telecoms giant said its prices were noticeably less than the European average.

We need to ensure we do not make the same mistake in broadband that we made in railways.

Now Hunt has stepped in, calling for a resolution and indicating he may intervene with Ofcom to ensure progress is delivered.

"The process to reach a satisfactory conclusion on PIA prices for the use of BT's ducts and poles is taking too long," Hunt said.

"PIA has to be sorted out and quickly - in a way that allows fair competition with different providers able to invest in our broadband infrastructure. It's also important that we have a properly competitive market in retail fibre."

BT responded to the comments by pointing to a lack of competitor interest in its trials. In an IT Pro special report on fibre from earlier this year, BT was at a loss as to why rivals had not taken part in the trials.

It said the trials would provide real information on how the wholesale fibre process would work then competitors could make more valid complaints based on the lessons learnt.

"BT was keen to announce new PIA pricing earlier this summer but the trials were delayed due to some companies being slow to sign up," a spokesperson said today.

"The trials have been underway for some time now and the evidence is helping us revise the related prices so that they are more flexible and tailored to the needs of industry."

BT is to issue revised prices for duct and pole access in the coming weeks.

Over the weekend, TalkTalk reentered the debate, saying it feared BT was using public funds to assert a monopoly on the fibre industry.

"At all times BT is thinking about how it can recover the monopoly position that it lost many years ago," TalkTalk's group commercial director David Goldie told the Observer.

BT again pointed to its pricing, also noting how it had "provided reciprocal wholesale access to its fibre network from the outset," unlike other ISPs.

Hunt warned the UK risked getting left behind if more progress was not made.

"We need to ensure we do not make the same mistake in broadband that we made in railways - building our high speed network 45 years after the French and 62 years after the Japanese," he added.

"I am a strong believer that competition is the biggest driver of investment both at the retail and infrastructure level. But I do not believe the market is working as well as it should."

Just days after BT was lambasted for its alleged control over the fibre industry, Openreach has announced access for over one million more businesses and homes.

Another 114 exchange locations were announced today for other providers to use and supply fibre connections from. They should be up and running by Autumn next year.

Local monopolies benefit no-one and no public funds should go to supporting them.

Over the weekend, TalkTalk claimed BT was trying to assert a monopoly on the fibre industry, having previously suggested its rival was charging too much for infrastructure.

TalkTalk's group commercial director David Goldie told the Observer he thought BT was using up public funds to gain control over the industry.

BT has been particularly bullish in arguing it is committing substantial funding to fibre in the UK and is opening up its infrastructure something others are not.

Today, it again took the opportunity to promote its fibre efforts and state it was not attempting to monopolise the industry.

"No other company is doing as much as Openreach to bring super-fast broadband to the UK," said Mike Galvin, Openreach managing director for next generation access.

"There is no substitute for experience when it comes to fibre deployment and we have more experience than anyone. We are also committed to offering open and equivalent access so that customers can benefit from a competitive market. Local monopolies benefit no-one and no public funds should go to supporting them."

Openreach has committed to providing two-thirds of the UK with fibre by 2015. It wants the support of the public sector to expand its rollout.

The fibre broadband wars continue in the UK as TalkTalk again lashes out at BT over fears of a monopoly.

TalkTalk's commercial head claimed BT was trying to establish control over fibre, which would leave the UK with a weaker infrastructure than competitive nations.

"At all times BT is thinking about how it can recover the monopoly position that it lost many years ago," TalkTalk's group commercial director David Goldie told the Observer.

We've got to have fair pricing so that these other companies can have a good crack at the whip.

"I don't think that is going to represent good value for the British taxpayer."

TalkTalk has slammed BT over its stance in the fibre industry before. In IT Pro's special report on fibre rollout, another of the telecoms company's employees raised concerns about BT's pricing of its wholesale infrastructure.

"We've got to have fair pricing so that these other companies can have a good crack at the whip," said Andrew Heaney, executive director of strategy and regulation at TalkTalk.

"Openreach don't want us to have fair pricing because that's their way of protecting their monopoly and making sure they're the only game in town."

BT bashing

The back and forth over fibre stems back to a letter sent to the Government from a host of ISPs earlier this year, complaining about BT's pricing of underlying fibre infrastructure.

BT was accused of charging too much for its Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA). Virgin, TalkTalk and others claimed BT spends far less on implementing PIA than it charges for it.

BT thinks its prices are more than fair, claiming it is offering 10-15 per cent below the average cost elsewhere in Europe in terms of rental per metre.

Furthermore, it has pointed to its own 2.5 billion investment into fibre in the UK.

"Unlike other companies, BT has provided reciprocal wholesale access to its fibre network from the outset," a spokesperson said.

"This allows other operators to piggyback off our investment, while encouraging competition and the take-up of fibre services to thrive. We've also volunteered to provide additional forms of wholesale access via our ducts and poles."

BT said it expected to announce revised pricing for its wholesale services soon to "provide Openreach's customers with more clarity when bidding for BDUK funds." BDUK is the fund set up by the Government to help spread superfast connections across the UK.

"We will continue to take the views of industry into account as the roll-out progresses," the spokesperson added.

Ofcom has slapped TalkTalk with a 3 million fine for wrongly charging customers for services they never received.

More than 1,000 customers had lodged complaints by the time Ofcom started investigating both TalkTalk and its subsidiary Tiscali in late 2010.

The pair had incorrectly billed over 62,000 customers between 1 January and 1 November 2010. At this point, Ofcom issued the companies with a notification telling them to rectify their billing problems by 2 December 2010.

Yet despite efforts by TalkTalk and Tiscali to make changes, they still incorrectly billed nearly 3,000 consumers between 2 December 2010 and 4 March 2011.

"Ofcom has therefore issued TalkTalk and Tiscali UK with a financial penalty to reflect the seriousness of their breach of the rules and to act as a deterrent to them and other telecoms companies who must comply with the rules," the watchdog said in a statement.

TalkTalk and Tiscali UK have already paid over 2.5 million in refunds and good will payments to more than 65,000 affected consumers.

We are of course disappointed at the scale of the fine and feel it is a disproportionate penalty.

Ofcom said the fine would have been higher had it not been for the providers' moves to remedy the harm caused.

TalkTalk was still unhappy about the amount it was fined.

"We are of course disappointed at the scale of the fine and feel it is a disproportionate penalty," said Dido Harding, chief executive (CEO) of TalkTalk.

"Last year I recognised that we needed to invest in our systems, processes and customer services and we are making significant progress. We have seen a 40 per cent year-on-year reduction in customer service calls; Ofcom receives three times fewer calls about TalkTalk than they did at the height of the Tiscali integration; and our 5 million customers are more loyal and more satisfied than they were 12 months ago."

BT and TalkTalk will not be allowed to appeal the decision on their judicial review of the Digital Economy Act (DEA), the High Court has ruled.

The two Internet Service Providers (ISPs) won the right to a review of the controversial Act back in November, which would see alleged illegal filesharers have their internet cut off after "three strikes."

Their legal campaign was quashed when Mr Justice Kenneth Parker dismissed the case in April.

Yet, both BT and TalkTalk vowed to fight on, albeit dropping the claims against proportionality one of five issues they had with the DEA. They launched an appeal against the decision at the end of May.

However, their fighting words have been silenced yet again in the High Court this week, with Judge Sir Richard Buxton refusing to grant the appeal.

Tony Ballard, digital media specialist at law firm Harbottle & Lewis, said: "If it really marks the end of the litigation, its significance lies in Ofcom being able now to implement the procedure for discouraging peer-to-peer file sharing under the Digital Economy Act without the cloud of uncertainty as to the validity of the Act hanging over it."

"Opinion in the industry remains divided, however, as to whether the procedure is a good idea or not."

It may not be the end of the fight though, as Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk's director of strategy, told IT Pro.

"There are a number of options open to us and we are considering these," he said. "We still consider our challenge is sound."

A BT spokesperson merely added that the company was "considering our position."

The Digital Economy Act was brought in during the wash-up phase of the last Government in April 2010, drawing criticism it was rushed through without proper scrutiny.

Fibre broadband is spreading rapidly across the UK, but all is not as rosy as it seems.

In reality, the rollout of superfast connections to the majority of the nation is in jeopardy.

Both Government and industry have made solid commitments, yet a number of potential pitfalls could make the road to fibre a rocky one.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt plans to make the UK the top broadband nation in Europe. Yet those plans might fall into disarray thanks to industry squabbling over infrastructure and uncertainty surrounding actual enthusiasm for fibre.

The Government believes the UK will be the best-connected nation in Europe by 2015, so deadlines are looming. If they are to be met, the great fibre debate needs to spawn genuine progress and fast.

A slow nation?

Looking at the history of fibre in the UK, it's clear this country hasn't always been the most forward-thinking nation. The case for next-generation connections was made as far back as the 1980s, during Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister.

The UK isn't even close to achieving world-beating speeds. Comparatively, we're positively sluggish.

When BT proposed the case for fibre then, Thatcher snubbed the telecoms giant. Amongst other concerns, she cited anxieties over a lack of competition in the market a theme which still resonates today.

Over the following decades, South Korea, Japan and European nations like Sweden rolled out their own fibre networks, whilst the UK floundered. It has only been in the past two to three years that this nation has truly got a grip on fibre.

Right now, however, the UK isn't even close to achieving world-beating speeds. Comparatively, we're positively sluggish.

Just one British city, Bradford, appeared in Akamai's top 100 broadband speed rankings earlier this year, creeping in at 99, whilst South Korea and Japan dominated.

Gaining momentum

Rollouts are now progressing at breakneck speeds, however. BT and Virgin are the two major players here.

BT has staked its claim on the fibre landscape with a massive 2.5 billion investment on infrastructure to cover two-thirds of the UK by 2015.

Last month, BT said it was bringing connections to an extra 80,000 additional premises every week, in one of the fastest rollouts in the world. It also has plans to almost double the speed of its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) based service in 2012.

Virgin is investing in a fibre optic network it hopes will pass close to 85 per cent of all UK businesses. The company has started offering 100Mbps services over its fibre network which spans 186,000 km.

These "ultrafast" connections can now be accessed by over 100 towns across the UK. Virgin's also been trying out some 200Mbps services, posing itself as the Speedy Gonzales of the nation's ISPs, quite literally.

As for the so-called "final third" those remote parts of the UK which haven't been guaranteed fibre access some headway is being made.

Fujitsu is planning a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network to provide for a further five million rural homes, in a project which has already attracted Virgin Media and TalkTalk.

The Government is firmly on board too, allocating 830 million from its BDUK fund to help bring services to remote areas. The Coalition plans to have 90 per cent of all homes and businesses connected to speeds of at least 25Mbps by 2015, whether via fibre or not.

All of the above might lead you to believe the UK is set to become a true world leader in broadband. Sadly, you would be mistaken.

The main sticking point ISPs are quarrelling over is the pricing of infrastructure itself. A bitter war of words has broken out thanks to a certain letter sent to the Government in April.

We've got to have fair pricing so that these other companies can have a good crack at the whip.

In that letter, a host of providers, including big players TalkTalk and Virgin, said BT was charging too much for its Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA). Their argument was simple: BT spends far less on implementing PIA than it charges for it.

The issue reared its ugly head again when Fujitsu announced its plans for a fibre network, saying the project needed BT to offer acceptable pricing before any work could begin.

Andrew Heaney, executive director of strategy and regulation at TalkTalk, wondered whether BT hadn't just "plucked their numbers from the air."

"We truly believe the price is being charged way above cost," Heaney told IT Pro

"We've got to have fair pricing so that these other companies can have a good crack at the whip. Openreach don't want us to have fair pricing because that's their way of protecting their monopoly and making sure they're the only game in town."

Heaney compared the fibre situation to local loop unbundling (LLU) issues at the turn of the Millennium, when similar problems with pricing arose. ISPs have learnt from that episode, he believes.

"The good thing is we know where the pitfalls are and we know the tricks that Openreach will play and we're prepared to fight it intensely," Heaney added.

"It would be lovely if Openreach came out with the right answer, but I'm not holding out much hope."

BT, of course, is strongly of the opinion its prices are more than fair. When talking about ducts, BT believes its prices are 10-15 per cent below the average cost elsewhere in Europe in terms of rental per metre.

The telecoms giant suspects a little bit of gamesmanship on behalf of other industry players too.

"I'll be honest with you, I think certain people are using the squabble for certain ends and certain people are not quite sure what they're squabbling about," said Fergus Crockett, product director for Openreach.

It doesn't look likely this feud will end with hugs and kisses all round. A good bet would be on an Ofcom intervention.

If Openreach doesn't do what other ISPs want and a stalemate is reached, the regulator may have to issue a dispute resolution. With gritted teeth, BT might be forced to change its pricing.

Get trialling

In a bid to avoid that potential outcome, BT has tried to play nice, to some extent at least.

Over the past 10 months, the provider has been running a number of industry collaboration groups on fibre deployment, hence its surprise when rivals lodged their complaint with Ed Vaizey.

More significantly, BT has also set up trials to see how PIA sharing would work.

I think certain people are using the squabble for certain ends.

Up to seven other ISPs can join in, but only two have so far. Crucially, Sky has jumped on board to test out the infrastructure, showing the big boys of the ISP world can work together.

"The trials are so important because they will actually allow us to understand whether our costs are right," said Bill Murphy, managing director of next generation access at BT. "Do the trial... you can argue the prices at the same time."

Others don't quite see it BT's way. Heaney claimed BT was "talking nonsense" in suggesting others should join the trials to test pricing.

"It is clear today that most of their PIA prices are excessive. You don't need to build equipment to do that, you just need a calculator to work out the costs of their existing assets," Heaney added.

"BT's behaviour is merely obfuscation and trying to delay the setting of fair PIA prices."

And Virgin's response on why it hasn't joined in with the trials? It didn't give us one.

What this tells us is simple: PIA is one serious sticking point, a significant obstacle potentially preventing a large chunk of the UK from getting fibre.

If matters aren't settled, Ofcom will have to step up to the plate, but the bitter taste left in the mouths of ISPs will linger for some time.

In turn, this will only lead to less collaboration in the future, potentially stunting the growth of fibre when other issues arise in the years ahead. No one needs, or wants, that.

Another area where views differ widely is demand. Although Government and industry have waxed lyrical about the supposed benefits of fibre over ADSL, there are some doubts over whether businesses, and indeed some ISPs themselves, actually care much about it.

Is all the investment in and arguing over infrastructure worth it? Do people even want fibre?

TalkTalk's own fibre offerings have seen little interest and the provider hasn't given the product much backing itself, according to Heaney.

"We've launched our fibre booster and we're not really marketing it. It's there if customers want it," he said. "There is very, very small demand."

Heaney was dubious about others' success with fibre too. "After BT launched its Infinity product, for the first two or three months they were trumpeting that they had 50,000 customers in the first few weeks or whatever. Now they're not talking about the number of customers," he added.

"I would bet my bottom dollar that they're not seeing as much demand as they'd hoped for."

You might want to take TalkTalk's stance with a pinch of salt, given its involvement in the aforementioned Fujitsu consortium.

Yet Heaney's bottom dollar might have made him a little bit richer. BT, the most fibre rich of all ISPs in the UK, was fairly sheepish about current global demand for fibre when speaking to IT Pro.

"If you look around the world, take-up isn't actually as dramatic as you might think," Murphy said. "Demand stimulation is quite critical."

However, BT was relatively pleased with uptake of its fibre product, Infinity, when it announced its results last month. Infinity's customer base then stood at 144,000. It's not a startlingly high number, but it's not infinitesimal uptake either.

Virgin, meanwhile, has been hugely positive about fibre work, saying it had seen plenty of demand, particularly from businesses.

"We're seeing huge demand both in volume terms and also in potential revenue terms, and we've got very bold and brave ambitions for the business division," said John Heraghty, managing director of Virgin Media Business.

"The underlying reason why we need high capacity networks is because that enables an IT transformation to take place. It's not so much about being able to download stuff quickly from the internet, interesting though that is, it's the ability to move data around the network."

At the minute, it would be fair to say BT and Virgin are by far the two biggest proponents of fibre in this country. Competitors simply aren't putting in anyway near as much work. We also suspect that low customer interest in fibre is due to cost, especially in the current economic climate. A BT Infinity subscription can cost as much as 38 per month including line rental.

This leads to the question of why other ISPs aren't yet wholly convinced, especially when there are some significant cases where fibre has proven to be the difference between a successful business process and a failed one.

For instance, Virgin has a contract with North Lancashire Healthcare Trust, in which the latter needs fibre to run high definition video equipment. This includes HD cameras with screens hooked up to Wi-Fi, enabling a consultant working remotely to diagnose patients over the network, in particular looking at facial characteristics in stroke victims.

It saves the hospital time and money having a doctor able to work from wherever at whatever time. Without the high quality connection there, the service simply wouldn't be available.

Lift this into the business world, and you imagine the benefits. Think of crystal clear video calls, superfast cloud computing and speedy mining of so called 'Big Data.' Particularly with large projects in the modern world, copper ADSL connections simply won't match up to fibre.

Ofcom should not be forced to intervene. All the infighting and bickering needs to stop.

Regardless of what the reality is with demand, the case for business benefits is hard to deny. Once businesses realise these benefits, uptake will increase and the UK will become a speedier broadband nation.

Again, progress here requires the industry to act together, alongside Government, to extol the virtues of next-generation services to citizens and businesses alike. It is in everyone's interest.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

Clearly, the industry needs to collaborate more in the fibre space. Currently, the PIA argument and the lack of enthusiasm on the behalf of a few players are stunting the spread of fibre across the UK.

Industry needs to recognise there is an opportunity here. The fibre market is a nascent one. It remains open to collaborative innovation. Coming together at an early stage will breed future cooperation, which in turn will help the UK become a world beater in broadband.

The only thing companies should be arguing over is who offers the best services to the end user. Quality competition will push the market forward even more, helping the industry mature and flourish. If one or two company monopolise the industry, it will stagnate and fail.

Ofcom should not be forced to intervene. All the infighting and bickering needs to stop.

The UK's economy, its businesses and its people are relying on ISPs to deliver. Let's hope they do.

BT and TalkTalk have confirmed they are launching an appeal after losing their judicial review of the Digital Economy Act (DEA).

The Internet Service Providers (ISPs) won the right to a review on the controversial legislation back in November, which would see illegal filesharers getting their internet connections cut off.

However, their claims the Act went against the EU Electronic Commerce Directive and the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive were dismissed by the High Court in April, with Mr Justice Kenneth Parker claiming no directives had been breached.

The ruling hasn't silenced the companies though and today both ISPs joined together again to launch a new case at the Court of Appeal.

"BT and TalkTalk believe that the DEA measures aiming to prevent online copyright infringement are inconsistent with European law," said a joint statement from the two firms.

"Quite apart from the potential impact on their businesses, BT and TalkTalk believe the DEA could harm the basic rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."

The appeal will be based on four of the initial five complaints BT and TalkTalk made against the act, letting the issue of proportionality drop.

"Both companies continue to take the view that the regime represents a disproportionate interference with the rights of internet service providers, subscribers and internet users and with the concept of freedom of expression," read the statement.

"They recognise, however, the Court's view that there is an exceptionally high threshold to show that this legislation was not a proportionate response prior to the code of practice being published and have concluded not to pursue leave to appeal on this ground."

Although the companies are keen to get their voices heard, there is an air of caution around launching this second case.

IT PRO spoke to BT this afternoon to ask how long they expected to wait for a response on whether they would be granted the appeal and how hopeful they were, but a spokesperson told us: "We just have to try and get through this stage first, then we will see what happens."

We also contacted the Department for Media, Culture and Sport, responsible for the legislation, to question whether they thought the appeal had any legs, but it had not responded to our request at the time of publication.

ICO dominates InfoSec

InfoSec 2011 may have been filled to the brim with vendors and had numerous debates going on, but the centre of the security world's attention fell on the ICO this week.

A freedom of information (FoI) request showed the organisation had fined less than one per cent of all cases referred to it, and only taken action on a mere 36.

However, deputy commissioner, David Smith, claimed the figures were false and the ICO went back and forth with numerous numbers in a confusing effort to prove its effectiveness.

An interesting reaction considering it is the ICO which is tasked with ensuring the smooth running of FoI requests

Digital Economy Act lives on

Fans of the Digital Economy Act (DEA) were celebrating this week, whilst critics licked their wounds.

BT and TalkTalk lost their judicial review of the DEA when the presiding judge, Kenneth Parker, deemed the legislation proportionate.'

Obviously the Government and groups like the BPI were very pleased with the results, but the ISPs and rights groups are already planning their appeal, with the possibility of heading to the European courts.

We are pretty sure this isn't the last we will hear of the DEA trials.

We're watching you

The almighty Apple was revealed to be wielding even more power this week when research unveiled its flagship smartphone could track user's movements.

The study found hidden files within iOS 4, used on the iPhone 4, which stored location data unencrypted on the device and passed it on when syncing with a PC.

Although Apple's terms and conditions technically say it is allowed to gather user data, the technology within the device has been hidden for some time and the reaction against the so-called tracking' has been negative.

Maybe more users will scarper off to alternative operating systems but we have a feeling the Apple fan boys are happy with the company knowing what they are doing anytime of day.

TalkTalk has been named the most complained about UK telecoms provider, according to findings released today by Ofcom.

The ISP topped the complaints list from the telecoms watchdog for both landline and broadband services, with 1.78 customers per 1,000 complaining about the former service and 1.27 customers per 1,000 criticising the latter.

Rival ISP Virgin Media took the more positive prize of least complained about, with just 0.21 customers per 1,000 taking issue with its landline services and 0.2 customers per 1,000 disapproving of its broadband.

The award for mobile provider with the most criticisms went to 3, with 0.15 customers per 1,000 lodging a complaint. However, it was very closely followed by T-Mobile with 0.13.

The least moaned about honour fell to O2, with just 0.04 customers per 1,000 making a negative noise about the service.

The figures came from complaints sent to Ofcom between October last year and February 2011 and only included providers with more than five per cent market share.

The watchdog said it received an average of 450 complaints a day, on issues ranging from bills and customer service problems to mis-selling.

"Consumers should have access to as much information as possible to allow them to choose between providers and to take full advantage of the competition in the sector," said Ofcom's chief executive (CEO) Ed Richards.

"By publishing complaints data, Ofcom aims to provide useful information to consumers, and also to give telecoms providers an incentive to improve their customer service."