Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Most organisations patch on a schedule. For the majority of vulnerabilities, that makes sense. Updates need testing, maintenance windows need planning and nobody wants to cause an outage while trying to fix a security problem. But what happens when something can't wait? That's the bit I think organisations need to be looking at more closely, particularly as AI starts to change how quickly vulnerabilities can be found and analysed.

This year's Cyber Security Awareness Month is encouraging us to "Make Life Difficult for Cyber Criminals" and I think this is a really useful way of looking at security awareness. We cannot stop criminals from targeting our organisations and we cannot expect every employee to recognise every attempt. What we can do is reduce the opportunities available to an attacker and make sure that one mistake, one compromised account or one weakness is not enough to get them where they want to go.

AI has quickly become a boardroom priority. Organisations are investing heavily in governance frameworks, usage policies and risk controls as employees adopt AI technologies across the business. Yet as boards look to understand AI risk, many are overlooking a more immediate frontline challenge: the impact AI is having on the threat landscape and the ability of security operations teams to keep pace.

Businesses are managing increasingly complex technology environments. Infrastructure, cloud, data protection, cybersecurity and continuity services all play a critical role in keeping organisations productive, resilient and ready to grow. At the same time, technology leaders are under pressure to improve efficiency, control costs and demonstrate clear value from every investment. In this environment, the challenge is not just choosing the right technology, but creating an operating model that gives the business control without adding unnecessary complexity.

The UK is in the middle of a data centre building boom. Government forecasts put AI capable capacity needs at 6GW by 2030, three times what exists today, while electricity demand from the sector is also expected to rise significantly.

For years, security teams have built behavioural models around people. We learned that valid credentials only tell so much. A user can have legitimate access to a system and still behave in a way that deserves attention, which is why User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA) became such an important part of modern security operations today - intersecting data from multiple sources over extended periods of time to build a story indicating risk has become an essential tool to identify malicious actors, both insiders and outsiders.

Ransomware and ransomware-style attacks can have a catastrophic impact within healthcare, where disruption directly impacts safety and continuity. Today's ransomware groups increasingly operate as sophisticated criminal enterprises, sharing tools, infrastructure, and expertise through ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) models. This lowers the barrier to entry for cybercriminals while allowing experienced threat actors to focus their efforts on identifying and exploiting high-value targets.

Cyber risk has become a dominant priority for organisations across nearly every sector. As the severity and velocity of the threat landscape and technological change continue to accelerate, organisations are under increasing pressure to ensure they can keep pace and recover quickly in the aftermath of a cyber event. A core focus for many organisations is strengthening their incident response capability: how effectively the business can react and recover when an attack occurs.