Lloyds Bank Compensates Another 1,625 Customers After ‘Alarming’ Data Breach
UK's Lloyds Banking Group has issued additional goodwill payments to 1,625 customers after a March 12 app programming error exposed transaction details of other account holders. The breach affected an estimated 114,182 customers who could view others' payments, and total compensation now stands at £201,000 (≈$255,270) for 5,250 customers. Lloyds reported no statistically significant increase in fraud among the roughly 447,000 customers impacted. The incident comes amid a Treasury Committee review that identified 158 IT failures across the nine biggest UK banks, totaling over 800 hours of service downtime.
Almost 90% of Women Leave Tech Industry Within 10 Years
A new Akamai study reveals that almost 90% of women in the UK tech sector exit their roles within ten years, with more than half leaving in the first five. The primary reasons cited are a lack of inclusive culture,...
Three-Quarters of UK IT Leaders without Strong AI Governance Plans
Red Hat’s survey of 500 UK IT decision‑makers shows 87% have deployed agentic AI, yet only a quarter have robust governance frameworks. Just 67% possess an AI exit strategy, and only 48% expect full visibility into data location by 2026. A...
Capita Lacked ‘Detail and Thoroughness’ in Planning Botched Civil Service Pension Scheme Takeover
Capita took over the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) on Dec. 1, 2025 under a seven‑year, £239 million (~$300 million) contract covering 1.7 million members. The transition was marred by a backlog of 16,000 unread emails and 20 million database errors, leading to severe...
Dubai Rolls Out AI Training for 50,000 Government Staff
Dubai has unveiled the AI Workforce Transformation Program (AI+), a large‑scale initiative to train 50,000 government employees in artificial intelligence. The program, run by Digital Dubai, the Human Resources Department and the Dubai Centre for AI, offers role‑based tracks for...
One Year on From the M&S Cyber Attack: What Did We Learn?
One year after the Easter‑week 2025 Marks & Spencer cyber breach, analysts confirm the attack originated from a simple social‑engineering phone call that compromised a third‑party help‑desk and cascaded into ransomware across VMware hosts. The incident sparked a wave of...
UAE Education Builds Digital Resilience as Regional Tensions Accelerate Shift to Remote Learning
UAE’s education sector is accelerating digital resilience amid regional tensions, led by edtech enabler Ankabut. The company provided free access to interactive tools like WeVideo during recent disruptions, ensuring continuity for schools and universities. Ankabut’s 2026 roadmap focuses on a...
Sustaining Education in the Middle East: Innovation and Adaptation Amid Regional Disruption
Regional tensions involving Iran, Israel and the United States are prompting Gulf nations, especially the UAE, to fast‑track digital education initiatives. The UAE’s national research and education network, Ankabut, is deploying cloud‑based platforms, secure hybrid learning environments, and advanced learning‑management...
AI-Driven Identity Must Exist in a Robust Compliance Framework
Enterprises are rapidly adopting AI‑driven identity and verification tools, but UK regulators are demanding that governance, risk and compliance (GRC) precede deployment. New legislation such as the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, the Online Safety Act 2025, and updated ICO guidance...
AI Driving Changes in Nordic Financial Services
Nordic banks and insurers are accelerating AI adoption as digital‑only challengers like Lunar capture market share. Lunar has raised €540 m (≈ $594 m) to turbo‑charge its AI‑driven expansion, while incumbents such as Tryg, Danske Bank and If Forsikring launch AI hubs and digitisation...
HMRC Is Watching You…
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has purchased advanced phone‑scanning hardware and analysis software to extract data from seized mobile devices, bolstering its electronic intelligence capabilities. The move signals a shift toward digital surveillance in tax enforcement, aligning the agency with...
Stop Scams Steps up to Online Fraud Challenge
Stop Scams UK, a not‑for‑profit founded in 2020, is scaling its data‑sharing platform to combat online fraud across banks, telecoms and tech firms. In the first half of 2025, UK scams cost roughly $800 million, with two‑thirds originating online. The organisation...
Designing Water‐smart AI Datacentres in GCC and MENA
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the world’s most water‑stressed region, yet it aims to become a global AI hub. Analysts forecast GCC hyperscale datacenters could consume 426 billion litres of water annually by 2030, dwarfing the already limited...
Oracle Endows Fusion Applications with More AI Autonomy
Oracle unveiled a new generation of Fusion Agentic Applications, adding over 20 AI‑autonomous modules across ERP, HCM, SCM and CX. The agents can reason, decide and act on business goals by leveraging existing transactional data, policies and approval hierarchies, while...
Bucks Landfill Datacentre First to Get Nationally Significant Status
A 300 MW datacentre planned on the Veolia‑run Wapseys Wood landfill in Buckinghamshire has been granted Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project status, allowing it to bypass local planning controls and move toward a Development Consent Order. The scheme includes three data‑hall buildings...
Lloyds Banking App ‘Glitch’ Shows Transactions of Strangers
Lloyds Banking Group’s mobile apps briefly displayed other customers’ transaction histories on the morning of 12 March 2026. The glitch affected users of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland apps before being resolved within minutes. The incident has reignited parliamentary...
UK Government Announces Package to Get More Women in Tech
The UK Home Office and Ministry of Justice have launched a returnship scheme that offers senior software developer positions to women who have been out of the workforce for 18 months or more. The scheme is part of a wider...
Child Rapist Could Have Profiled Victims Through Unaudited Access to NHS Databases
A former NHS analyst and convicted child rapist, Paul Lipscombe, is alleged to have used unaudited SQL queries to extract personal details of his victims from hospital databases. The whistleblower highlighted that while patient administration systems are logged, analysts can...
CISOs on Alert: Strengthening Cyber Resilience Amid Geopolitical Tensions in the Middle East
Rising geopolitical tensions between Israel, the US and Iran are prompting CISOs across the Gulf to tighten cyber resilience. Leaders emphasize readiness over panic, focusing on nation‑state threat monitoring, rapid incident response, and robust data protection. Immediate measures include enhanced...
Open Banking Presents £43bn Opportunity for UK Economy if Warnings Are Heeded
Open banking is projected to generate £43 bn a year for the UK economy when fully mature. Research commissioned by Open Banking Limited and conducted by EY shows the sector has already delivered £8.2 bn in benefits, with an expected £7.4 bn annual...
IWD 2026: How the Middle East Is Building a New Generation of Women Leaders in Technology
Across the Middle East, especially the UAE, women’s participation in technology is evolving from basic STEM entry to senior leadership in AI, cyber security, and digital infrastructure. Government policies, education reforms, and industry initiatives have created a knowledge‑based ecosystem that...
NS&I’s Modernisation Programme: A £3bn Lesson in How to Lose Public Trust
The Public Accounts Committee has labeled the National Savings and Investments (NS&I) digital modernisation a “full‑spectrum disaster” after four years of a £3 bn programme that lacks an integrated plan, has seen costs triple and deadlines disappear. Parliament found the project...
Interview: CyrusOne on the Sustainable Innovation that Drives Datacentre Business Outcomes
CyrusOne’s vice‑president of environmental, health, safety and sustainability, Kyle Myers, says the company treats sustainability as a profit centre rather than a cost centre. By centralising ESG functions into a cross‑functional working group, CyrusOne has integrated green‑building standards across its...
Qatar Advances Sovereign Cloud Strategy to Strengthen Digital Trust and National Autonomy
Qatar is accelerating a sovereign cloud strategy to keep sensitive data under domestic law, leveraging its Personal Data Privacy Protection Law as a regulatory backbone. Deloitte’s Cloud Centre of Excellence in Lusail is driving the effort, having migrated over 3,000...
G42 Expands Global AI Ambitions with Sovereign Cloud Partnership in Vietnam
Abu Dhabi‑based G42 has inked a Framework Cooperation Agreement with Vietnam’s FPT Corporation and Viet Thai Group to build sovereign AI and hyperscale cloud infrastructure. The deal, backed by up to $1 bn in consumption commitments, will see three new datacenters...
Fractile Expansion Demonstrates UK Growth Opportunity
UK chip startup Fractile announced a £100 million expansion across its Bristol and London sites, creating a national industrial hardware engineering hub and adding 40 new roles to its 70‑person team. The company claims its in‑memory compute architecture can run AI...
NTT Data Deepens Middle East Cloud Push with Acquisition of UAE-Based Zero&One
NTT Data has acquired Dubai‑based cloud consultancy Zero&One, strengthening its cloud and artificial‑intelligence services in the United Arab Emirates. The deal, undisclosed financially, adds AWS expertise, regional regulatory know‑how, and delivery capacity to NTT Data’s portfolio. It underscores the UAE’s...
UAE’s TII Challenges Big Tech Dominance with Open Source Falcon AI Models
The United Arab Emirates’ Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has released its Falcon family of large language models as open‑source, positioning the nation as a challenger to big‑tech AI dominance. Falcon models emphasize efficiency, with the 7‑billion‑parameter H1R delivering high‑performance reasoning...
DWP Rejigs Operating Model for Data Transformation by 2030
The UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) unveiled a seven‑year data strategy (2023‑2030) that pivots to a federated hub‑and‑spoke operating model for data management and governance. The plan targets a 20% cost reduction over five years, modernises legacy systems,...
Gartner: AI and Datacentre Spending Ramps Up
Gartner projects global IT spending to rise 10.8% to $6.2 trillion by 2026, with datacentre equipment spending surging 32% and software up nearly 15%. AI investment will total $2.52 trillion, a 44% year‑over‑year jump, driven largely by hyperscale cloud providers expanding AI‑optimized...