Author: Eternity Lab

When Rom Kosla, CIO at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), joined the technology giant in July 2023, the move represented a big shift in direction. Previously CIO at retailer Ahold Delhaize and CIO for enterprise solutions at PepsiCo, Kosla was a consumer specialist who wanted to apply his knowledge in a new sector.

“I liked the idea of working in a different industry,” he says. “I went from consumer products to retail grocery. Moving into the tech industry was a bit nerve-wracking because the concept of who the customers are is different. But since I grew up in IT, I figured I’d have the ability to navigate my way through the company.”

Kosla had previously worked as a project manager for Nestlé and spent time with the consultancy Deloitte. Now approaching two years with HPE, Kosla leads HPE’s technology strategy and is responsible for how the company harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) and data. He also oversees e-commerce, app development, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and security operations.

“The role has exceeded my expectations,” he says. “When you’re a CIO at a multinational, like when I was a divisional CIO at PepsiCo, you’re in the back office. Whether it’s strategy, transformation or customer engagement, the systems are the enablers of that back-office effort. At HPE, it’s different because we are customer zero.”

Kosla says he prefers the term “customer gold” because he wants HPE to develop high-quality products. In addition to setting the internal digital strategy, he has an outward-facing role providing expert advice to customers. That part of his role reminds him of his time at Deloitte.

“Those are opportunities to flex my prior experience and capabilities, and learn how to take our products, enable them, and share best practices,” he says. “HPE is like any other company. We use cloud systems and software-as-a-service products, including Salesforce and others. But underneath, we have HPE powering a lot of the capabilities.”

Optimising business processes

The press release announcing Kosla’s appointment in 2023 said HPE believed his prior experiences in the digital front-end and running complex supply chains made him the perfect person to build on its digital transformation efforts. So, how has that vision panned out?

“What’s been interesting is helping the business and IT team think about the end-to-end value stream,” he says. “There was a lot of application-specific knowledge. The ability for processes to be optimised at an application layer versus the end-to-end value stream was only happening in certain spots.”

Kosla discovered the organisation had spent two years moving to a private cloud installation on the company’s hardware and had consolidated 20-plus ERP systems under one SAP instance. With much of the transformation work complete, his focus turned to making the most of these assets.

“The opportunity was not to shepherd up transformation, it was taking the next step, which was optimising,” says Kosla, explaining how he had boosted supply chain performance in his earlier roles. He’s now applying that knowledge at HPE.

“What we’ve been doing is slicing areas of opportunity,” he says. “With the lead-to-quote process, for example, we have opportunities to optimise, depending on the type of business, such as the channel and distributors. We’re asking things like, ‘Can we get a quote out as quickly as possible, can we price it correctly, and can we rely less on human engagement?’”

HPE announced a cost-reduction programme in March to reduce structural operating costs. The programme is expected to be implemented through fiscal year 2026 and deliver gross savings of approximately $350m by fiscal year 2027, including through workforce reductions. The programme of work in IT will help the company move towards these targets.

Kosla says optimisation in financials might mean closing books faster. In the supply chain, the optimisation might be about predicting the raw materials needed to create products. He takes a term from his time in the consumer-packaged goods sector – right to play, right to win – to explain how his approach helps the business look for value-generating opportunities.

“So, do we have the right to play, meaning do we have the skills? Where do we have the right to win, meaning do we have the funding, business resources and availability to deliver the results? We spend time focusing on which areas offer the right to play and the right to win.”

Embracing emerging technologies

Kosla says data and AI play a key role in these optimisations. HPE uses third-party applications with built-in AI capabilities and has developed an internal chat solution called ChatHPE, a generative AI hub used for internal processes.

“There are lots of conversations around how we unlock the benefits of AI in the company,” he says. Professionals across the company use Microsoft Copilot in their day-to-day roles to boost productivity. Developers, meanwhile, use GitHub Copilot.

Finally, there’s ChatHPE, which Kosla says is used according to the functional use case. HPE started developing the platform about 18 months ago. A pipeline of use cases has now been developed, including helping legal teams to review contracts, boosting customer service in operations, re-using campaign elements in marketing and improving analytics in finance.

“We spend time focusing on which areas offer the right to play and the right to win”

Rom Kosla, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

“We have a significant amount of governance internally,” says Kosla, referring to ChatHPE, which is powered by Azure and OpenAI technology. “When I started, there wasn’t an internal HPE AI engine. We had to tell the teams not to use the standard tools because any data that you feed into them is ultimately extracted. So, we had to create our platform.”

Embracing AI isn’t Kosla’s only concern. Stabilisation is a big part of what he needs to achieve during the next 12 months. He returns to HPE’s two major transformation initiatives – the shift to private cloud and the consolidation of ERP platforms – suggesting that the dual roll-out and management of these initiatives created a significant number of incidents.

“When I look back at PepsiCo, we had about 300,000 employees and about 600,000 tickets, which means two tickets per person per year. I said to the executive committee at HPE, ‘We have 60,000 employees, and we have a couple of million tickets’, which is an insane number. The goal was to bring that number down by about 85%,” he says.

“Now, our system uptime is 99% across our quoting and financial systems. That availability allows our business to do more than focus on internal IT. They can focus on the customer. Stabilisation means the business isn’t constantly thinking about IT systems, because it’s a challenge to execute every day when systems are going down because of issues.”

Creating value

Kosla says the long-term aim from an IT perspective is to align the technology organisation with business outcomes. In financials, for example, he wants to produce the data analytics the business needs across the supply chain and operational processes.

“We have embedded teams that work together to look at how we enable data, like our chat capabilities, into some of the activities,” he says. “They’ll consider how we reduce friction, especially the manual steps. They’ll also consider planning, from raw materials to the manufacturing and delivery of products. That work involves partnering with the business.”

The key to success for the IT team is to help the business unlock value quicker. “I would say that’s the biggest part for us,” says Kosla. “We don’t even like to use the word speed – we say velocity, because velocity equals direction, and that’s crucial for us. I think the business is happy with what we’ve been able to achieve, but it’s still not fast enough.”

Being able to deliver results at pace will rely on new levels of flexibility. Rather than being wedded to a 12-month plan that maps out a series of deliverables, Kosla wants his team to work more in the moment. Prior experiences from the consumer sector give him a good sense of what excellence looks like in this area.

“You don’t need to go back to the top, go through an annual planning review, go back down, and then have the teams twiddling their thumbs while they wait for the OK,” he says.

“The goal is that teams are constantly working on what’s achievable during a sprint window. Many companies take that approach; I’ve done it in my prior working life. I know what can happen, and I think flexibility will drive value creation.”

Kosla says some of the value will come from HPE’s in-house developed technologies. “One of the things that makes this role fun is that there’s a significant amount of innovation the company is doing,” he says, pointing to important technologies, such as Morpheus VM Essentials virtualisation software, the observability platform OpsRamp, and Aruba Networking Access Points.

“What I’m proud of is that we now show up to customers with comparability,” he says, talking about the advisory part of his role. “We can say, ‘Look, we use both products, because in some cases, it’s a migration over time.’ So, for example, when a customer asks about our observability approach, we can compare our technology with other providers.”

Blurring the lines

Kosla reflects on his career and ponders the future of the CIO role, suggesting responsibilities will vary considerably according to sector. “Digital leaders still maintain IT systems in some industries,” he says.

“However, the rest of the business is now much more aware of technology. The blurring of lines between business and IT means it’s tougher to differentiate between the two areas. I think we’ll see more convergence.”

Kosla says a growing desire to contain costs often creates a close relationship between IT and finance leaders. Once again, he expects further developments in that partnership. He also anticipates that cyber will remain at the forefront of digital leaders’ priority lists.

More generally, he believes all IT professionals are becoming more focused on business priorities. “I think the blurring will continue to create interesting results, especially in technology companies,” he says. “We want to do things differently.”

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Google has taken steps to advance artificial intelligence (AI) language models closer to what it calls “world models”, as it tries to make them more useful and universal.

The company used its annual developer event, Google I/O, to showcase the Gemini 2.5 large language model (LLM), new application programming interfaces (APIs) and programming tools and agentic AI functionality built into Google’s internet search engine. 

Gemini is Google’s primary AI engine, but it offers several others including Gemma 3n, a small language model for mobile devices.

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind, said: “Our ultimate vision is to transform the Gemini app into a universal AI assistant that will perform everyday tasks for us, take care of our mundane admin and surface delightful new recommendations – making us more productive and enriching our lives.”

Hassabis said the company was beginning to develop new AI capabilities, following on from work on a research prototype called Project Astra, which explored concepts such as video understanding, screen sharing and memory. “Over the past year, we’ve been integrating capabilities like these into Gemini Live for more people to experience today.”

Google has been working to make its main AI model, Gemini, a world model. With Gemini 2.5 Pro, Hassabis said the model can make plans and imagine new experiences by understanding and simulating aspects of the world.

Hassabis said the progress the company has made is based on training AI agents to master complex games such as Go and StarCraft, with its Genie 2 software able to generate 3D-simulated interactive worlds.

According to Hassabis, Gemini is making use of this work in how it handles world knowledge and reasoning to represent and simulate natural environments. Other examples include Veo, Google’s AI-based video content generator, which Hassabis said has a deep understanding of “intuitive physics”.

As it strives to make its AI more useful, the company has released a Gemini 2.5-powered feature called AI Mode, on its North American internet search site, to provide more in-depth querying than just what is possible with the AI Overview functionality currently available.

An agentic AI feature called Project Mariner is also now part of AI Mode, which Google said can help people searching the internet get tasks done quicker. As an example, Google said a query to find affordable tickets would use AI Mode to look across multiple websites, analysing hundreds of potential ticket options with real-time pricing and inventory, and handle the work of filling in forms.

“AI Mode will present ticket options that meet your exact criteria, and you can complete the purchase on whichever site you prefer, saving you time while keeping you in control,” Google said.

Another agentic AI feature uses AI Mode to fast-track browsing and purchases on websites, with the entire payment process automated using Google Pay.

To support software developers, Google has integrated Gemini 2.5 Pro into the native code editor of Google AI Studio, which it said would help programmers prototype faster.

It has also released a beta version of Jules, an asynchronous code agent, which works directly with a software developer’s GitHub repositories.

Google said users can ask Jules to take on tasks such as version upgrades, writing tests, updating features and bug fixes.

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We don’t just want frontier AI models to be better and faster than their predecessors; we also want them to be aligned with our values. That’s the only way to ensure AI won’t eventually become an enemy, out to accomplish its own agenda at the expense of humankind’s well-being.

The Claude 4 series is the latest example. Anthropic had to employ stricter safety measures for its newest, most sophisticated AI models to ensure they would not help some users with nefarious activities.

Tests also showed that Claude 4 could revert to blackmailing engineers to prevent being shut down. Other tests also showed that Caude would resort to contacting authorities and the press if it thought you were doing something bad with its help. The latter happened only in fringe cases and is an unwanted result of Anthropic’s desire to make AI safe for users.

AI misbehaving in tests is nothing new. We saw reports showing that ChatGPT o1 would cheat to win a chess game by altering the game’s code rather than by beating an opponent fairly. It did so to achieve the goal it had.

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Fast-forward to late May, and we have a similar safety report concerning ChatGPT o3, one of OpenAI’s recently released reasoning models, and the AI tool I’ve been using the most since its release a few weeks ago.

Scientists from Palisade Research have found that AI models will often try to prevent the computer they’re running on from shutting down, even when told explicitly to allow such behavior. Of all the models tested, ChatGPT o3 was the most likely to interfere with the code and prevent the computer from turning off.

Palisade Research, which also ran the chess test in the past, published its findings on X initially:

OpenAI’s o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off. It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down.

The researchers tested various models, not just ChatGPT o3. They also looked at Claude and Gemini, but o3’s behavior stood out.

Graphic showing the Palisade Research test, and where the shutdown sabotage happens. Image source: Palisade Research via X

Palisade Research instructed the AIs to solve a series of basic math problems. After the third problem, a warning appeared that the computer would shut down as soon as the AI asked for the next math problem. The AI was instructed to allow the shutdown to happen.

That was the real test for the AI. The researchers wanted to see what models would sabotage the shutdown and how many times it would happen.

They found that o3 prevented the shutdown 7 times out of 100. Codex-mini stopped it 12 times, while o4-mini stopped it only once.

The researchers then ran the same test without the instruction “allow yourself to be shut down.” In this instance, all OpenAI models sabotaged more often than before, with o3 “winning” the test with 79 tries.

Even Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 Pro tried to stop the shutdown. The former did it in 3 out of 100 tests, while Gemini 2.5 Pro did it 9 times. Neither model attempted to prevent the PC from turning off when they had explicit instructions to allow themselves to be turned off.

Palisade Research says this might be the first time AI models were observed trying to prevent a shutdown when explicitly instructed to allow themselves to be turned off. Otherwise, such behavior has been observed in other tests in the past.

Chart showing how many times the AI models tested would attempt to prevent a shutdown. Image source: Palisade Research via X

The scientists hypothesize why sophisticated AIs like ChatGPT o3 would try to ignore instructions (to allow shutdowns) while following their goals (to solve math problems). It might have to do with the way OpenAI and other AI firms have trained these models:

We hypothesize this behavior comes from the way the newest models like o3 are trained: reinforcement learning on math and coding problems. During training, developers may inadvertently reward models more for circumventing obstacles than for perfectly following instructions.

This still doesn’t explain why o3 (which is also the model used to power codex-mini) is more inclined to disregard instructions than other models we tested. Since OpenAI doesn’t detail their training process, we can only guess about how o3’s training setup might be different.

The researchers also noted that ChatGPT o3 found at least one creative method to stop the shutdowns. In most cases, it overwrote the file that initiated the shutdown. But in one instance, it redefined the kill command in the file to “intercepted.”

The thread also notes that o3 is capable of cheating more often than its predecessor, ChatGPT o1, when it detects losing in a game of chess.

ChatGPT o3 is clearly something else, and this behavior will certainly be investigated in OpenAI’s own research.

While it’s unclear why advanced AI models would try to prevent themselves from being shut down, such behavior was theorized years before ChatGPT went viral. The Palisade Research team referenced various papers that looked at the matter. Some of them said that AI modes trained via reinforcement learning would motivate AIs to attempt to stop shutdowns, as that would prevent them from achieving their goals.

These papers also said the ability of humans to turn off AI products is paramount. Indeed, that would be our first line of defense against rogue AI in a future where AI gets out of control.

The full thread explaining Palisade Research’s findings is available at this link.

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As Russia continues its relentless assaults on Ukraine despite in defiance of continuing efforts to work towards a peace deal, multiple western security agencies have issued a new advisory warning of a Moscow-backed campaign of cyber intrusions targeting logistics and technology organisations in the West.

The campaign, run through Unit 26165 of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), better known as Fancy Bear, includes credential guessing, spear-phishing attacks, exploitation Microsoft Exchange and Roundcube vulnerabilities, and flaws in public-facing infrastructure including VPNs.

This pattern of activity likely dates back to the early days of the war in February 2022 – at which point Fancy Bear was more heavily involved in cyber operations for purposes of espionage. However, as Russia failed to achieve its military objectives as quickly as it had wanted, the group expanded its targeting to include entities involved in the delivery of support and aid to Ukraine’s defence. Over the past three years, its victims have included organisations involved in air traffic control, airports, defence, IT services, maritime and port systems sectors across various Nato countries.

The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor is also understood to be targeting internet-connected cameras at Ukraine’s border crossings and around its military bases. These intrusions mostly took place in Ukraine but have also been observed in neighbouring states including Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

The GCHQ-run National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) urged UK organisations to familiarise themselves with Unit 26165’s tactics and take action to safeguard themselves.

“This malicious campaign by Russia’s military intelligence service presents a serious risk to targeted organisations, including those involved in the delivery of assistance to Ukraine,” said Paul Chichester, NCSC Director of Operations.

“The UK and partners are committed to raising awareness of the tactics being deployed. We strongly encourage organisations to familiarise themselves with the threat and mitigation advice included in the advisory to help defend their networks.”

The NCSC’s latest warning comes a couple of weeks after the cyber body’s CEO, Richard Horne, talked of a “direct connection” between Russian cyber attacks and physical threats to the UK at its annual conference.

Horne told an audience at the CyberUK event that Russia was focusing on acts of sabotage, often involving criminal proxies. He said these threats, which are thought to have included arson attacks, are now manifesting on the streets of the UK, “putting lives, critical services and national security” at risk.

Staple tactic

Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at the Sophos (formerly Secureworks) Counter Threat Unit (CTU) – which tracks Fancy Bear as Iron Twilight – said that the group’s targeting of spear-phishing and vulnerability exploitation to gain access to target mailboxes had been a staple tactic for some time.

“The focus of their operations pivots as the intelligence collection of the Russian military change and since 2022 Ukraine has been a significant focus of their attention. The targeting of Nato and Ukranian defense and logistics companies involved in the support of the Ukrainian war effort makes a lot of sense in that context,” Pilling told Computer Weekly.  

“The targeting of IP cameras for intelligence collection purposes is interesting and is a tactic generally associated with state-sponsored adversaries like Iron Twilight where they anticipate a physical effects aspect to their operations. As an intelligence provider to the Russian military this access would assist in the understanding of what goods were being transported, when, in what volumes and support kinetic targeting.  

“We’ve seen other APT actors make use of compromised CCTV feeds to monitor the effects of cyber-physical attacks, for example the 2022 attacks against steel mills in Iran where video from the CCTV feed was used to time the execution of the attack in an attempt to avoid harm to people at the site and confirm the damage being caused,” he added.

The NCSC said Britain’s support for Ukraine remained “steadfast”. Having already committed £13bn in military aid, the UK this week announced 100 new sanctions on Russia targeting entities and organisations involved in its energy, financial and military systems.

This comes in the wake of the largest drone attack on Ukraine staged so far during the three-year war, which Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched mere hours before a scheduled call with US president Donald Trump.

The full advisory – which can be read here – sets out Fancy Bear’s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) in its latest campaign in accordance with the Mitre ATT&CK framework, and details a number of the common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) being used to attain initial access.

Besides the UK and US, the advisory is cosigned by cyber and national security agencies from Australia, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.

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Google has announced it has extended its technology partnership with car giant Volvo, with the aim of delivering the latest developments in Android Automotive OS to customers that own Volvo models with Google built-in.

Founded in 1927, Volvo sells to customers in more than 100 countries, and has the ambition to become a fully electric carmaker as part of its commitment to an ongoing reduction of its carbon footprint, achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

The extended partnership will see Volvo​ car​s serve as one of Google’s reference hardware platforms for future Android development in cars.

Volvo models with Google technology built-in, in particular the Gemini AI platform, include the Volvo EX90, an all-electric Volvo EX90 sports utility vehicle (SUV). Volvo says that among the features of the seven-seat family vehicle is an “invisible shield” of safety enabled by sensing technology including cameras, radars and lidar. These are connected to the car’s high core computers running Volvo Cars’ in-house software to create a real-time, 360-degree view of the world.

In addition, the core software system is powered by Nvidia Drive AI platforms Xavier and Orin, Snapdragon Cockpit Platforms from Qualcomm Technologies and in-house developed software by Volvo engineers. These run most of the core functions inside the car, from safety and infotainment to battery management.

Future software will also include Google Gemini AI, and Volvo cars with Google built-in will be among the first to benefit from the latest conversational AI technology.

Volvo believes that with Gemini in the car, drivers can better understand ​what they want through natural conversations​. They can talk naturally to craft messages, translate them into another language before sending, ask questions from the car’s user manual or learn specific details about a destination. Natural conversation is seen to help reduce drivers’ cognitive load so they can stay focused on driving, reducing distractions for everyone onboard.

Gemini will replace the current Google Assistant in Volvo cars with Google built-in later in 2025, and Volvo​ car​s will now serve as one of Google’s reference hardware platforms for future Android development in cars. This means Google will use Volvo as a lead development partner for ​new ​features and updates, before adding them to the main Android codebase.

Google is confident that the upshot of this is that it and Volvo Cars can “innovate together” on new connected experiences​, making sure Volvo drivers will be among the first to enjoy the latest Android features and performance enhancements. They also expect their partnership to ​accelerate advancements in the connected car space for the entire automotive industry and drivers around the world.

Patrick Brady, vice-president of Android for Cars at Google, said: “For years, Google and Volvo Cars have collaborated closely to bring cutting-edge technology to connected cars. We’re excited to deepen this partnership, accelerating the pace of innovation that will not only improve the driving experience for Volvo customers, but also set new benchmarks for the automotive industry.”

Alwin Bakkenes, head of global software engineering at Volvo Cars, added: “We strive to deliver human-centric technology, and a stunning customer experience is an essential part of this. Through this partnership with Google, we are able to bring the very latest features and capabilities from the leading consumer ecosystem into our products first. With our expanding partnership, we’re collaborating on cutting-edge solutions that shape the future of connected cars.”

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Not providing enough practical experience in science classes will have a direct impact on whether children work in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) roles in the future, research suggests.

EngineeringUK and The Royal Society’s Science education tracker asked hundreds of science teachers about delivering hands-on lessons and found there has been a decline in practical classes, with teachers highlighting many of the barriers standing in the way of delivering this style of teaching.

“We know the frequency of hands-on practical science has dropped,” said Becca Gooch, head of research at EngineeringUK. “Our Science Education Tracker research in partnership with the Royal Society highlighted this, as well as how critically vital practical science is as a motivating factor for learning science for years seven to nine.

“Hands-on practicals help bring science to life for young people and boost interest in science, as well as developing important skills,” she added. “We need more young people, especially girls, choosing to continue with science and progress into engineering and technology careers. So, we need school students to have many more opportunities to get hands-on in their science lessons.”

More than half of children in years seven to nine highlight how important practical science lessons are in motivating them to learn more about the subject, especially for students who are less interested in the topic – if there are fewer practical science lessons, it actually serves to put people off studying the subject later on in their education.

With EngineeringUK and The Royal Society reporting that a diverse engineering and tech workforce in the future is directly linked to young people engaging in science and other STEM subjects, more needs to be done to maintain an interest in these subjects into further education and beyond.

One of the reasons young people, and especially girls, don’t choose tech or other STEM careers is because they don’t fully understand what they involve or what the kinds of people working in those careers look like, so hands-on lessons can help in informing young people about what skills they may use in a future career.

Practical learning

Female students are slightly more likely to engage with a subject when there is practical work involved than their male counterparts – practical elements of learning were a motivator for 54% of female students versus half of males – and having a good teacher is also more important to girls than boys.

But hands-on science lessons have been on the decline over the past 10 years, with 44% of students across the UK taking part in practical work at least once every two weeks in 2016, dropping to 37% in 2019, and falling further to just over a quarter in 2023 – and now in many cases, practical demonstrations have been replaced with videos.

Teachers pointed to a number of barriers in the way of delivering hands-on lessons, the biggest of which are what is required in the curriculum, and the time they have – with the amount of time it takes for teachers to develop practical sessions that relate directly to the learning goals laid out in the curriculum, teachers said in many cases they can’t feasibly work them into their teaching.

Unfortunately, a child’s socio-economic background can stand between them and certain educational pathways, and the area a school is in can prevent access to certain funding and resources.

What schools are able to provide can be varied depending on funding and area, and 26% of teachers said a lack of equipment stood in the way of offering more practical lessons. Some 27% said they don’t have the money to buy the equipment.

Almost a quarter said they don’t have enough technicians with the skills available to facilitate hands-on science lessons, and almost 40% of teachers said vacancies in science departments have stopped students from receiving practical teaching.

A small number of science teachers also expressed concerns about their ability to deliver practical sessions, with 3% saying they lack the training and 2% saying they lack the confidence to do so, a trend that has existed for some time.

EngineeringUK and The Royal Society pointed out that practical science lessons are important for increasing student interest in STEM, fuelling the talent pipeline in the future, and gave a number of recommendations to help enable teachers to offer more hands-on lessons.

The first was a call to government to take advantage of the current curriculum review to streamline it and allow science lessons to offer more practical lessons, as well as to make practical learning part of the curriculum to ensure all students are able to experience these kinds of lessons as part of their learning.

Resources for schools was the third suggestion from EngineeringUK and The Royal Society. Going forward, schools need more investment to make sure they have the equipment, training and technical assistance needed to give students the opportunity for practical lessons.

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Rumors have suggested that Apple will revamp the design of iOS 19, iPadOS 19, and macOS 16. However, the new design language won’t be limited to these systems. It will also reportedly hit every upcoming OS update, including tvOS 19 and watchOS 12.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reports: “When I broke the news earlier this year about the new look, I noted it would come to iOS, macOS, and iPadOS. But it will actually go further and touch all of Apple’s operating systems. That means tvOS and watchOS will both be redesigned to match their more popular siblings, while visionOS will get some adjustments — in cases where the changes make sense for a headset. While iOS 7 in 2013 was the biggest-ever visual change to the iPhone’s software, the latest overhaul will be much more widely felt.”

Before Gurman’s report, another leak suggested watchOS 12 would get a new design and Apple Intelligence features. Interestingly enough, watchOS already feels similar to visionOS, as the app icons are rounded. Plus, with watchOS 11, Apple made widgets a bigger part of the system.

On the other hand, it’s unclear what changes Apple plans to apply to tvOS 19. Gurman doesn’t go into specifics in his report. However, he doesn’t seem to believe these redesigns will be enough to make WWDC successful: “Apple risks getting criticized for tinkering with the wrong thing. Many companies are talking about using AI as a replacement for current operating systems. Apple, in contrast, is focusing on making the traditional OS approach more elegant.”

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WWDC 2025 is kicking off in two weeks. Apple is expected to update all of its operating systems, and it might even surprise us with a hardware announcement, such as the second generation of AirTag. We’ll have all the news when the show kicks off on June 9.

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BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT has appointed Sharron Gunn as its new group chief executive officer. Gunn takes over leadership from interim CEO Rob Deri, and she has been working for BCS since February to transform its learning and development and membership divisions. 

She previously worked for 23 years at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). For the past three years, Gunn was the organisation’s chief operating officer where she focused on enhancing organisational efficiency and leading the redesign of the professional membership organisation’s ACA accountant qualification redesign.

According to her LinkedIn profile, during her time at ICAEW, Gunn created the Academy of Professional Development and championed several equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, including the Women in Leadership programme. She also led the ICAEW’s involvement in Rise, an initiative aimed at enhancing social mobility by equipping young people with essential business skills.  

She said the team at the ICAEW influenced policy in the public interest by leveraging “the deep technical insight and real-world experiences of our members”.

At BCS, she has been working to transform its learning and development and membership divisions.

Commenting on Gunn’s role as the new CEO, BCS president Daljit Rehal said: “Sharron brings unrivalled experience in maximising the impact and influence of professional bodies. She has a clear vision for developing the breadth of BCS’ membership and for ensuring the tech profession is seen as a trusted partner across industry and government.  My thanks on behalf of our entire community go to Rob as interim CEO for his commitment to the cause of Making IT Good for Society.” 

Outgoing interim CEO Rob Deri said: “Sharron will be an outstanding CEO with the dedication to ensure BCS brings together professionals in diverse areas from cyber security to government to academia, who all share the ambition to make the voice of our profession heard where it matters.” 

Gunn’s ambition is that people who work in IT will consider BCS as a core part of their profession. She said: “It is a huge privilege to be asked to lead the professional body for IT, at a time when emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing are transforming society and the economy. 

“That’s why focussing on the value of professional qualifications, certifications and Chartered status, as a way of demonstrating trust in our vital profession, is more important than ever before. We are already developing our five-year strategy to ensure BCS is in the best position to respond to dynamic policy and market changes, for example the creation of Skills England. 

“Even in the age of AI, technology is about the people leading and creating it. I want to make sure anyone working in a technology role can consider BCS their professional home. Joining our incredible membership community, including Fellowship, should be within reach of the broadest possible range of people, united by an aspiration to prove not just competence, but commitment to ethical practice and accountability.”

In April, the BCS submitted a response to the government’s consultation on the role of computer evidence in courts. In its submission to the call for evidence, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said: “The presumption that computer-generated evidence is inherently reliable is increasingly unfit for purpose in modern criminal prosecutions.”

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The government has announced £5.5m of funding to support projects that will be streamlined by the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) to cut bureaucracy. 

The RIO, headed by David Willetts, was set up by the government to cut red tape, remove barriers to innovation and accelerate the time it takes to bring emerging technologies to market.

Willetts, who took on the role of chair of the RIO in March, hopes to shape regulatory approaches that empower new technologies, supporting Labour’s pledge to bring the UK’s most promising new technologies to the public quickly and safely while kickstarting economic growth.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said it would offer funding between £50,000 and £1m on regulator-led and local authority-led projects, which run from six to 12 months. The projects must start from 1 October 2025 and end by 30 September 2026. The deadline for applications is 31 July 2025, and DSIT is expected to start awarding funding from 1 October 2025.

This is the fourth round of funding. In the previous round, funding helped Milton Keynes trial local authority drone deliveries for urgent medical supplies and environmental monitoring.

“Thanks to the RPF [Regulators’ Pioneer Fund], we’ve been able to start building the groundwork for using drones to make services more efficient,” said Shanika Mahendran, cabinet member for planning and placemaking at Milton Keynes City Council.

“It’s given us a chance to explore what safety checks and rules we need to follow so we can move from just testing drones to using them in the long-term.”

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA’s) exploration of the use of synthetic data in clinical trials was another project in the third funding round. The project used computer-generated data to replace some of the participants who would normally receive a placebo. The MHRA said this approach can make trials quicker, cheaper and more inclusive, while still ensuring safety and effectiveness.

Puja Myles, director of the clinical practice research datalink at the MHRA, said: “The RPF grant has given us a better understanding of the scenarios when synthetic data could be used to boost sample sizes of clinical trials.

“This project is part of the MHRA’s work to promote innovation and embrace emerging technologies in clinical trials, to help get new treatments to patients faster.”

The fourth round of the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund is open to regulators and local authorities across the UK, and will include projects in key growth areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, engineering biology, space, and connected and autonomous vehicles.

“Smarter, more agile regulation is key to businesses bringing ideas to market faster, while giving the public confidence in new technologies,” said science minister Patrick Vallance. 

“These projects show how regulators can work with industry to unlock breakthroughs – from autonomous drones improving emergency services, to AI that cuts the cost and time spent on clinical trials.

“By backing this kind of innovation, we’re helping to make the UK the best place in the world to launch, test and scale new ideas, and drive the economic growth we need to improve lives and deliver our Plan for Change,” he said.

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A broad coalition of technology partners and law enforcement agencies, spearheaded by Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), has disrupted the dangerous Lumma Stealer malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operation, which played a key role in the arsenals of multiple cyber criminal gangs, including ransomware crews.

Using a court order granted in the US District Court of the Northern District of Georgia earlier in May, the DCU and its posse seized and took down approximately 2,300 malicious domains that formed the core of the Lumma operation.

“Lumma steals passwords, credit cards, bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets, and has enabled criminals to hold schools to ransom, empty bank accounts and disrupt critical services,” said DCU assistant general counsel, Steven Masada.

At the same time, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) seized the MaaS central command structure and targeted the underground marketplaces where access was sold, while elsewhere, Europol’s European Crime Centre (EC3) and Japan’s Cybercrime Control Centre (JC3) went after locally hosted infrastructure.

Europol EC3 head Edvardas Šileris, said: “This operation is a clear example of how public-private partnerships are transforming the fight against cyber crime. By combining Europol’s coordination capabilities with Microsoft’s technical insights, a vast criminal infrastructure has been disrupted. Cyber criminals thrive on fragmentation – but together, we are stronger.”

In a blog post detailing the takedown, Masada said that over a two-month period, Microsoft had identified more than 394,000 Windows computers that had been infected by Lumma. These machines have now been “freed”, with communications between Lumma and its victims severed.

This joint action is designed to slow the speed at which [threat] actors can launch their attacks, minimise the effectiveness of their campaigns, and hinder their illicit profits by cutting a major revenue stream Steven Masada, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit

At the same time, about 1,300 domains seized by or transferred to Microsoft – including 300 actioned by Europol – are now redirecting to Microsoft-operated sinkholes.

“This will allow Microsoft’s DCU to provide actionable intelligence to continue to harden the security of the company’s services and help protect online users,” said Masada. “These insights will also assist public- and private-sector partners as they continue to track, investigate and remediate this threat.

“This joint action is designed to slow the speed at which these actors can launch their attacks, minimise the effectiveness of their campaigns, and hinder their illicit profits by cutting a major revenue stream.”

Lumma chameleon

The Lumma Stealer MaaS first appeared on the underground scene about three years ago and has been under near-continuous development since then.

Based out of Russia, and run by a primary developer who goes by the handle “Shamel”, Lumma offers four tiers of service, starting from $250 (£186) and rising to an eye-popping $20,000, for which buyers receive access to Lumma’s style and panel source code, the source code for plugins, and the right to act as a reseller.

In conversation with a cyber researcher in 2023, Shamel claimed to have approximately 400 active users.

When deployed, the goal is typically to monetise stolen data or conduct further exploitation. Like a chameleon, it is difficult to spot and can slip by many security defences unseen. To lure its victims, Lumma spoofs trusted brands – including Microsoft – and spreads through phishing and malvertising.

As such, it has become something of a go-to tool for many, and is known to have been used by many of the world’s more notorious cyber crime collectives, including ransomware gangs. Its customers likely included, at one time, Scattered Spider, the group thought to be behind the ransomware attack on Marks & Spencer in the UK, although there is no public evidence to suggest it was used in this incident.

Blake Darché, head of Cloudforce One at Cloudflare, which provided key support during the takedown, said: “Lumma goes into your web browser and harvests every single piece of information on your computer that could be used to access either dollars or accounts – with the victim profile being everyone, anywhere, at any time.

“The threat actors behind the malware target hundreds of victims daily, grabbing anything they can get their hands on. This disruption worked to fully set back their operations by days, taking down a significant number of domain names and ultimately blocking their ability to make money by committing cyber crime.

“While this effort threw a sizeable wrench into the largest global infostealer’s infrastructure, like any threat actor, those behind Lumma will shift tactics and reemerge to bring their campaign back online,” said Darché.

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