SpaceX, the aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company founded by Elon Musk, has set its sights on expanding the broadband capacity of its Starlink satellite internet service in the United Kingdom.  The initiative involves seeking approval from Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, for a variation of its existing gateway licence. The proposed expansion aims to bolster Starlink’s capabilities by increasing the number of gateway antennas at several sites across the UK.  This enhancement would enable Starlink’s mega constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low ..read more

UK cybersecurity and AI company Darktrace has agreed a $5.3bn (£4.2bn) sale to US private equity business Thoma Bravo. Darktrace, whose co-founding investor Mike Lynch is currently on trial for fraud and conspiracy in the US, agreed to an offer 44% higher than its average share price over the past three months. In a statement to investors, the Darktrace board said that its “operating and financial achievements have not been reflected commensurately in its valuation, with shares trading at a significant discount to its global peer group”. The comment will fuel fears that the FTSE is haemorrhagi ..read more

AI investments appear to be a defining factor in market value and quarter results among tech giants. Both Microsoft and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) saw sharp rises in their market share values thanks to investment in AI, whereas Meta has seen a slump. Of the big tech companies, these three have reported their quarter results, with economists still waiting to see how Amazon will perform in turn. Microsoft and Google have both taken bit leaps in the AI market, with Microsoft implementing their AI Co-Pilot across their Office Suite, and investing in AI for their cloud subsidiarity Azure. T ..read more

In a move signalling a shift in its regulatory approach, the FCC has voted to reinstate net neutrality rules, marking a departure from the deregulatory stance of the previous Trump administration. This decision now marks broadband as an essential service, subjecting it once more to oversight akin to that of telephone networks and cable TV. The reclassification under Title II of the Telecommunications Act empowers the FCC to prevent blocking, throttling, or prioritising online content based on financial arrangements. This reinstatement echoes efforts made during the Obama administration followi ..read more

The Researcher Access Service is a new streamlined end-to-end digital service that will enable academics and data users conducting research for the public good to access secure data in a faster and simpler way. Data is often restricted to individual systems across different organisations and is not in a format that makes access or integration easy. As a result, accessing the data we need can be a complex and lengthy process, leading to missed opportunities in research or creating and improving policy.  The Researcher Access Service streamlines and simplifies the data access process so tha ..read more

Businesses in Scotland saw a rise in both advanced and early signs of financial distress in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period last year. The latest data from business rescue and recovery specialist Begbies Traynor, whose Red Flag Alert has measured and reported corporate financial distress for two decades, found that there was a 22.6% increase in more advanced or “critical” distress among Scottish businesses in Q1 2024 compared to Q1 2023. This type of severe distress affected over 2,060 businesses in Scotland. The level was also greater than the UK-wide figure which saw ..read more

In a development aimed at combating crypto-related crime, law enforcement agencies in the UK have been granted enhanced powers to seize cryptocurrency assets more easily. With the implementation of new rules that came into effect today (26 April), authorities will no longer be required to await an arrest before confiscating crypto holdings. The UK Home Office disclosed that the enforcement of these new regulations marks a pivotal shift in the country’s approach to tackling financial crimes involving cryptocurrencies. Following the passage of a crime bill last year, law enforcement agencies hav ..read more

The global legal technology market has grown significantly in recent years and generative AI (GenAI) will accelerate this growth, meaning the market will reach $50 billion in value by 2027, according to Gartner. “GenAI has huge potential for bringing more automation to the legal space,” said Chris Audet, chief of research in the Gartner for legal, risk & compliance leaders practice. “Rapid GenAI developments, and the widespread availability of consumer tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, will quickly increase the number of established legal technology use cases, in turn creat ..read more

CirrusHQ have announced a multi-year global Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This agreement builds on the successful relationship that AWS and CirrusHQ have built over the last 10 years. The agreement reinforces CirrusHQ’s ability to deliver its services to education, public sector, E-commerce and media organisations worldwide, building on that long-term relationship through the development of specific solutions to help enable customers to modernise applications, optimise costs and migrate services to the cloud. The agreement will continue to expand on the expe ..read more

New research conducted by ISC2 sheds light on the state of gender diversity within cybersecurity teams, highlighting significant disparities and challenges faced by women in the industry. According to the study, only 4% of cybersecurity teams have a majority of women, with a staggering 11% lacking any female representation at all. The global average suggests that 23% of teams are women, indicating a persistent gender gap in the field. The research was gathered from 2,400 women participants, out of a total of 14,865 global participants. Job title distribution among women participants revealed t ..read more