Render Networks has announced the launch of ClearSight, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered evolution of its business intelligence layer built on its Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

The firm has stated that ClearSight will support better decision-making at every stage of infrastructure deployment, giving customers the clarity to act faster and the confidence to evolve toward AI-driven operations.

The Render Networks platform is said to be designed to deliver real-time visibility into projects, streamline construction workflows from design through to completion, and create a scalable model for efficiency and predictability. It is also attributed with “uniquely” combining advanced automation with field-first execution, transforming design data into fully scoped, construction-ready plans.

Powered by the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, ClearSight is designed to upgrade Render Networks’ business intelligence capabilities and deliver the next phase of AI-driven broadband deployment insights. It is built to deliver “continuous visibility, predictive insights and performance accountability” across every phase of broadband deployment.

By turning connected field and geospatial data into focused intelligence, Render claims ClearSight bridges the gap between field execution and strategic decision-making. The firm stated that the net result is businesses gain clarity into portfolio progress and delivery confidence, project managers can track quality and contractor performance with ease, and finance teams gain precise insight into labour and materials required and used – all in one shared environment designed to drive faster, more informed, data-backed decisions.

Render said that its integration with Databricks marks a pivotal step in evolving how data and AI are visualsed and applied to decision-making as networks and supporting infrastructure are built. By powering ClearSight with the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Render said that it is equipping broadband operators and builders with the continuous insights needed to move from insight to action, and from reactive management to proactive, predictive operations.

The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and Databricks’ flagship AI product Agent Bricks are said to be built to democratise access to data and AI, making it easier for organisations to harness the power of their data for analytics, AI apps and agents. Built on an open source foundation, the platform is enabled organisations to drive innovation to increase revenue, lower costs and reduce risk.

“With ClearSight, we’re embedding advanced data and AI capabilities that will redefine how the entire broadband value chain anticipates risks, forecasts outcomes and uncovers opportunities across large-scale infrastructure environments,” said Render Networks CEO Stephen Rose. “ClearSight supports great decision-making at every stage of infrastructure deployment and gives our customers the clarity to act faster and the confidence to evolve toward AI-driven operations.”

Adam Beavis, vice-president and country manager of Databricks ANZ, added: “We’re seeing an unprecedented demand from enterprises that want to leverage AI to derive real-time insights. With ClearSight, Render is making it easier than ever for their customers, regardless of their function, to harness insights to make meaningful decisions using capabilities like Databricks AI/BI and Agent Bricks. These innovations pave the way to build multi-agent AI systems to deliver proactive recommendations and smarter decision-making for their customers in the near future.”

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Samsung is preparing for more competition in the foldable smartphone niche as Apple is expected to launch its first-generation foldable iPhone as soon as next year. Rumored to be the iPhone Fold, the handset is expected to be a part of the iPhone 18 series, according to most reports. Another report offered a contradictory take recently, claiming that Apple might have to delay the foldable iPhone. Korean news site DealSite notes that Samsung wants to stay prepared for either option by launching the Galaxy Z Fold 8 with a new hinge that might help prevent creasing. Samsung will reportedly use laser drilling technology to create micro-structures in the metal plate covering the hinge instead of the conventional chemical etching processes.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of this manufacturing procedure in connection with foldable phones that do not crease as easily after repeated folding and unfolding. Earlier this year, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the iPhone Fold would feature a more expensive hinge. The metal plate sitting between the hinge and the OLED display would feature micro-structures made via laser drilling to improve the screen’s ability to handle stress and reduce the appearance of a crease. Kuo noted at the time that Samsung Display uses chemical etching, but Apple had stricter demands for the foldable iPhone. Laser drilling is more expensive, the analyst added.

More upgrades for the Galaxy Z Fold 8

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DealSite echoes reports that said Apple is willing to pay a premium to ensure the foldable iPhone doesn’t have a crease. That’s a design compromise foldable phone buyers have had to deal with since the early days. The news report mentions recent rumors that claimed both the foldable iPhone and the foldable iPad may see delays due to Apple’s “perfectionism.” However, DealSite also says that the iPhone Fold production is proceeding smoothly for a 2026 launch, citing an unnamed industry insider. An iPhone delay is the best-case scenario for Samsung, as it would allow the company more time to improve its already-dominant position in the foldable niche. But Samsung won’t wait for Apple to release an iPhone Fold before significantly improving its own foldables.

The crease-less display wouldn’t be the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s only upgrade. The report says Samsung will upgrade the battery to 5,000 mAh — a notable upgrade from the current 4,400 mAh battery used in the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Also, the report says the Z Fold 8 might bring back S Pen support. There may also be other improvements to compete against Apple. Samsung usually unveils its new foldables during the summer. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Flip 8 should be launched next July, regardless of Apple’s schedule for the foldable iPhone. Assuming no delays, Apple is expected to launch the iPhone Fold in September 2026 alongside the second-generation iPhone Air, the iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max.

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Britain’s Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) – a non-profit dedicated to analysing and categorising cyber incidents in the UK – has declared the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) cyber attack a Category 3 Systemic Event on its “hurricane” scale and believes the overall financial cost to the economy adds up to about £1.9bn so far.

The cyber attack – linked to the loosely affiliated Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters hacking collective – shut down JLR’s assembly lines, with ripple effects spreading quickly across the UK’s automotive supply chain and harming more than 5,000 other organisations so far.

The CMC said its estimate, which sits within a modelled range of £1.6 to £2.1bn but may yet run higher, reflected the substantial disruption to JLR’s own capabilities and downstream organisations.

It cautioned that the estimate was still sensitive to multiple assumptions, with some key factors in this including whether or not JLR’s operational technology (OT) infrastructure was affected, and exactly when the organisation is able to fully restore its production lines – based on the time it took to reboot JLR production after the first Covid-19 lockdown, it estimates that this may not be until January 2026.

It described the JLR cyber attack as the single most economically damaging cyber event to ever hit the UK.

“That should make us all pause and think, and then – as the National Cyber Security Centre [NCSC] said so forcefully last week – it’s time to act. Every organisation needs to identify the networks that matter to them, and how to protect them better, and then plan for how they’d cope if the network gets disrupted,” said CMC technical committee chair and former NCSC lead Ciaran Martin.

CMC chief executive Will Mayes added: “We tend to think of systemic cyber risk as something that spreads through shared IT infrastructure: the cloud, a common software platform, or self-propagating malware. What this incident demonstrates is how a cyber attack on a single major manufacturer can cascade through thousands of businesses, disrupting suppliers, transport and local economies, and triggering billions in losses across the UK economy.

“No single organisation can manage these risks alone. Industry, insurers and government each have a role in strengthening the UK’s operational resilience. The CMC’s purpose is to create a shared, trusted evidence base that supports better decisions following major cyber events.”

The CMC’s assessment also considered some of the human impacts of the JLR attack, noting that while it had not endangered human life in the same way as cyber attacks on NHS bodies might, it had affected the job security of thousands, with knock-on consequences for mental and physical wellbeing and household resilience, as well as compound effects on existing economic, regional or social inequalities.

Phil Wright, partner at business advisory and accountancy firm Menzies, said the JLR incident demonstrated how exposed supply chains really are to disruption.

“The ripple effects stretch far beyond JLR itself. This isn’t just about delayed orders. Warehousing, logistics and even communication tools are paralysed, showing how fragile integrated supply chains become when a single system goes down,” he said.

“Integrated supply chains demand that all suppliers, regardless of size, need to critically evaluate the adequacy of their IT security infrastructure. The cost of more advanced infrastructure may be prohibitive for smaller players further down the chain, but their lack of resilience can mean that an incident proportional to their scale could be terminal.”

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Apple has become the third big tech company to hit $4 trillion market value, following Nvidia and Microsoft. As reported by Reuters, Apple’s stock went up 0.2% to $269.2 during early trading, making the company hit an all-time high — surpassing the $4 trillion mark. While Apple’s stock struggled at the beginning of the year due to the Trump administration’s tariffs and a lack of AI advancements, Apple was able to navigate through that by diversifying its supply chain, making local agreements for U.S. manufacturing, and enjoying increased demand for the iPhone 17 models.

In addition to that, the company reported its strongest quarterly results in years during the April-June period with double-digit growth, thanks to the new M4 Macs, iPhone 16 sales, and an ever-growing services business. With the company’s forecast looking better than expected, it’s possible that Apple’s market value continues to enjoy momentum and grow even more.

Apple still needs to crack its AI strategy

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Apple became a $4 trillion company three years after it hit the $3 trillion mark. While it isn’t the first to hit the goal, it’s impressive that the company managed to hit it despite lagging on the AI front. As pointed out by Reuters, Apple’s shares have been climbing since the September launch of the iPhone 17. More interestingly, Apple has a strong demand for these models, even though it decided not to heavily invest in its Apple Intelligence platform this year.

After the Siri fiasco and the company’s announcement that it would delay an all-new Siri experience to next year, it seems Apple has enough leverage to figure out its AI strategy, as the rest of its business is doing better than ever. That said, even with the company losing key AI employees to Meta, the market still believes in Apple’s business, as the company continues to ready more devices for the upcoming future, such as its AR glasses, an iPhone Fold, and a redesigned MacBook Pro for late 2026.

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The UAE is undergoing a shift in its digital infrastructure landscape, with a wave of data centre and cloud investments reshaping the nation into a regional hub for artificial intelligence (AI) and digital transformation.

This momentum is not only redefining the UAE’s technological capabilities but also reinforcing its strategic vision of becoming a global nexus for digital innovation and data sovereignty.

According to a recent report by Research and Markets, the UAE’s datacentre market was valued at approximately $1.26bn in 2024 and is projected to surpass $3.3bn by 2030. This growth is underpinned by a robust pipeline of operational and upcoming facilities, with combined capacities reaching several hundred megawatts.

The investment surge is being driven by a confluence of factors – the UAE government’s digital transformation agenda; the rapid adoption of AI technologies across sectors; and a regulatory environment that encourages innovation and foreign investment. Sovereign wealth funds, regional developers, and global hyperscalers are all doubling down on the UAE’s digital future.

Executives from leading UAE and international firms told the Emirates News Agency (WAM) that the country’s cloud infrastructure is enabling true data sovereignty, allowing organisations to manage and operate their data and AI solutions securely within national borders.

Fahad Al Hassawi, CEO of Du, highlighted the telecom operator’s commitment to bolstering national digital infrastructure: “We continue to invest heavily in datacentres and 5G networks to support the digital economy and reinforce data sovereignty,” he told WAM.

Du’s capital investments in digital infrastructure reached AED 545m in 2025, up from AED 442m in 2024, with capital intensity rising to 14%.

Global tech giants bet big on the UAE

The UAE’s appeal as a cloud and AI hub is not lost on international players. Eric Wan, vice president of Alibaba Cloud International, praised the country’s open economic and regulatory environment, calling it “ideal for attracting major investments.” Alibaba Cloud recently launched its second datacentre in Dubai, part of a broader strategy to anchor its Middle East operations in the UAE.

Ahmad Shakoura, group vice president for emerging markets at Cloudera, emphasised the foundational role of cloud infrastructure in enabling AI. He told WAM that AI cannot thrive without advanced data infrastructure, highlighting that hybrid cloud environments are now among the UAE’s most strategic enablers for scalable, secure, and high-performance AI adoption.

Local champions are equally ambitious. Khazna Data Centers, the UAE’s largest datacentre provider, recently announced plans to add over 1GW of hyperscale capacity by 2030. This includes more than 400MW of new capacity in international markets such as Saudi Arabia and Italy, alongside major domestic expansions in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Ajman.

“The region’s growth in AI, and specifically in the UAE, comes from the leadership’s commitment to leapfrogging into the future and building intelligence locally to fuel economic development,” said Tinboat Arslanouk, chief business officer – international at Khazna in a recent interview with ComputerWeekly.

As the Middle East’s digital economy accelerates, the UAE is emerging not just as a participant but as a leader. “The Middle East datacentre market is booming due to aggressive investments, advantageous legislation, and strategic ambition,” Arslanouk added. “This region is quickly becoming a crucial component of the global digital backbone.”

Regional IT leaders have also welcomed the growth of the Middle East market. Umesh Moolchandani, CIO at engineering firm Bin Dasmal Group said, “A hybrid, multi-cloud architecture that combines private, locally managed datacentres with hyperscale capabilities is our top priority. For sensitive, mission-critical workloads, this guarantees optimal latency, enhanced data sovereignty, and predictable prices.”

With a blend of visionary leadership, cutting-edge infrastructure, and a welcoming business climate, the UAE is not only future-proofing its economy, it’s hoping to set the pace for digital transformation across the region and beyond.

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Kyndryl’s second annual Readiness report has found that geopolitical pressures have become more important in IT decision-making compared with 12 months ago.

According to the poll of 3,700 senior leaders across 21 countries, including the UK, 83% of the people surveyed agree that emerging data sovereignty and repatriation regulations are influencing IT decision-making, while 82% agree that their IT decision-making is being influenced by rising geopolitical instability and tensions.

Kyndryl said that geopolitical pressures are forcing a data pivot. While reporting clear benefits from cloud adoption, organisations are now reevaluating where and how their data is stored, processed, accessed and secured, amid an increasingly fragmented regulatory landscape.

Three-quarters (75%) agree their organisation is increasingly concerned about the geopolitical risks associated with storing and managing data in global cloud environments. In fact, 86% agree the country of origin and regulatory alignment of cloud providers are becoming increasingly important factors in their cloud evaluation process. Businesses are also balancing legacy infrastructure challenges, with 70% of CEOs saying they reached their cloud setup by accident rather than design.

Looking at the data for the UK, Kyndryl reported that 80% of UK leaders are concerned about the geopolitical risks of storing and managing data globally, which is higher than the global average of 75%. This has led 68% of UK respondents to change their cloud strategies.

Overall, almost a third (65%) of the people surveyed agree that their CEO and chief financial officer are not aligned with the long-term value of technology investments. Nearly three-quarters (74%) say the pressure to demonstrate short-term return on investment undermines longer-term innovation goals.

The survey found that 63% of the organisations polled say they experienced more costs than expected from moving to the cloud. Kyndryl’s survey also reported that 62% invested heavily in cloud early on, but have since had to revert some workloads to on-premise. Over half (56%) of the organisations polled say they have inaccessible data in environments that were never properly decommissioned.

Kyndryl also reported that almost all of the companies surveyed (95%) would change the way their organisation implemented its cloud strategy if they had the chance. When asked how they would change their cloud implementation, the top priority would be more focus on security and compliance, followed by a better understanding of integration complexity.

In fact, 83% of UK businesses experienced a cyber-related outage in the past year, making cyber security and IT infrastructure upgrades the top two risk-mitigation actions (43% each). 

Looking at the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) among the organisations polled, Kyndryl reported that although over half (54%) say they are seeing positive returns on AI investments – an increase of 12 points from 2024 – 62% still have yet to advance their AI projects beyond the pilot stage.

The figures for the UK show that while 84% of UK executives polled say AI will completely transform roles and responsibilities in the next 12 months, 46% worry about having the right technical skills to get the most out of AI.

“A readiness gap exists as enterprises grapple with the promise of transformative value from AI,” said Martin Schroeter, chairman and CEO of Kyndryl. “While 90% of organisations think they have the tools and processes to scale innovation, more than half are stalled by their tech stack, and less than a third say their employees are truly ready for AI. Closing that gap is the challenge and opportunity ahead.”

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The emerging network of mutualistic technologies – including extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI) and sensors – is set to benefit a number of industries and applications, not least robotics.

The synergistic effects of these technologies have the potential to advance robotics and radically transform the possibilities of integrating robotics into economies and societies. The potential to drive new markets, increase productivity, and enable novel service applications is substantial.

The arrival of embodied AI

The advent of embodied AI marks a step towards making AI available across applications. As defined by Nvidia, embodied AI represents “the integration of artificial intelligence into physical systems, enabling them to interact with the physical world”.

Nvidia, which is at the centre of AI developments with its enabling chips, notes: “The fusion of machine learning, sensors and computer vision lets … systems perceive, reason and act in real-world environments.”

Embodied AI goes beyond robotics in the strict sense and applies to smart systems and infrastructures more generally. It extends the capabilities of AI to physical systems – such as buildings, robots and autonomous vehicles like cars, trucks and robotaxis – and by integrating machine learning and computer vision, these systems can unlock the potential of generative AI applications in physical industries.

AI models can leverage data that existing robots collect will operating. These models then inform robotic applications by bridging the gap between simulations and real-world applications. In this context, digital twins will play an important role. These will provide synthetic data that can supplement data collected in the field. This type of data is artificially created data “designed to mimic real-world data,” says IT giant IBM.

Splicing virtual and physical applications

Industrial-machinery manufacturer Siemens is looking at the benefits digital twins have to offer for integrators and users of robots and industrial equipment.

Brian McMinn, machine tool business segment manager at Siemens, explains how such virtual environments support computer-numerical-control (CNC) machines in an increasingly digitalised world: “We can dry run in a virtual world before they even start building the machine.”

Industrial-robots producer KUKA similarly leverages digital twins to support its product offer. For example, stove manufacturer HASE Kaminofenbau uses digital twins and KUKA welding robots in its operations.

Florian Fischer, head of production development at HASE, outlines the advantages: “We wanted to build an ultra-modern, flexible robotic system that will also be able to process future models that don’t even exist yet, without placing constraints on our designers or bringing production to a standstill.”

Toppan offers its own digital-twin solution TransBots to address the changes digitalisation will effect across all spheres of life. The global printing and packaging company applies a very wide view on the future use of digital twins, stating: “As our society is going to be more and more digitised in the future, we will need to implement a digital twin system where information is shared between humans, robots and services in a virtual space, thereby allowing work to be performed efficiently.”

Station Ai in Nagoya, Japan, is using a digital twin solution to establish a “robot-friendly environment” within its open-innovation-focused facility with a participating network of “more than 1,000 startups, partner companies, VCs and other support organisations, and universities”, according to the firm.

Training robots in digital twins

Digital twins can not only explore layouts and workflows that accommodate for robotic systems, but can provide training grounds for robotic systems to accelerate their use across application areas and lower cost associated with robotic applications. Digital twins can overcome hurdles that currently prevent the use of AI in some applications.

In manufacturing, companies can collect and analyse data from the factory floor to train AI-enabled robotic systems. But many manufacturers lack such data-collection abilities. Similarly, in fairly unstructured operations such as in mining, but also many manufacturing environments (including construction), the complexity of human operations can quickly outstrip the benefits of integrating AI-powered machinery or “cobots”, collaborative robots.

In most manufacturing facilities, digital twins can create synthetic data to train AI-enhanced robotic equipment. In more complex, rapidly changing surroundings, digital twins offer a pathway to facilitate the use of AI systems in the future, particularly if these twins can feed on real-time sensor data that reflect ongoing changes.

Pre-training of AI models with actual data from exiting robotic systems can create reliable and robust models to train models that improve on operations. Sensor-based digital twins that mirror real-world behaviour of systems and workforce can offer a viable alternative. But digital twins can go further and provide training grounds in environments with low data availability. Simulations within virtual representations provide an option to transfer real-world dynamics into virtual environments to then train AI, robotics, and equipment for real-world applications.

“Synthetic data, generated from digital twin simulations, can be used alongside real-world data to train multimodal physical AI models,” says Nvidia. “Synthetic data generation is the creation of text, 2D or 3D images, and videos in the visual and non-visual spectrum using computer simulations, generative AI models, or a combination of the two.”

For example, roboticists can leverage now digital twins to quickly create scalable environments that support the training and optimisation of AI models that can then find use for training robotic navigation or vision systems, to name just a few use cases. Such simulations not only accelerate training of robotic and automated systems but also allow developers to consider scenarios that can be difficult or prohibitively expensive to create in real-world environments.

Moreover, such simulated environments can inform AI and robotic systems about the effects of potential disruptions that are otherwise impossible to create. For example, the effects of events such as the Covid pandemic – which turned demand patterns upside down, put tremendous stress on supply chains, and changed the flow of people and goods globally and regionally – can only be simulated in virtual environment to test AI models.

Similarly, strategists and modellers can now consider the changes natural disasters, conflict outbreaks, or major competitive actions can have on the commercial environment at levels that cannot be reasonably replicated in any other ways. Simulations in digital twins can guide thinking at global and geopolitical levels.

AI supports XR, XR accommodates AI

On a related, forward-looking sidenote, consumers will increasingly adopt home robotics in their households. Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg also sees AI as an enabler for virtual environments. After Meta focused efforts on the creation of metaverse computing environments a few years ago, AI quickly moved to the forefront of media and investors’ attention, supplanting interest in metaverse applications.

Now, Zuckerberg considers AI an important part of these efforts as he outlined on 17 September 2025 at the Meta Connect 2025’s opening keynote, in which he presented Meta’s vision for AI and the metaverse.

The combination of AI and XR elements will find use to create content easily and to make it look more authentic to the real world. Meta Horizon Studio is Meta’s suite to “build and iterate [content] fast with generative AI and ship to a global audience on mobile and VR” in the metaverse.

Zuckerberg stated: “Soon, Meta Horizon Studio is going to include an agentic AI assistant that will stitch together…different tools and further speed up the creation process using just simple text prompts … Now you are going to be able to easily create infinite connected spaces that look way better with realistic physics and interaction.”

Familiarity with such environments will enable consumers in the future to create their very own digital twins of homes and backyards, for instance. Such twins then provide a platform to operate home robots.

Four technologies enable exponential progress

At the beginning of the internet economy in the 1990s, many companies started by initially posting catalogue-like information on websites. Over time, ordering and purchasing processes followed. By now, internal, external and partnership processes use internet connectivity as the glue that connects commercial activities and enables more and more use cases – from desktop uses to mobile applications to automatic operations.

Similarly, sensor and synthetic data, AI, robotics, digital twins and XR will diffuse over time across application areas. In time, digital twins and XR will become environments that users won’t even distinguish from real-world environments, similar to the way that internet applications now are woven into virtually every aspect of our lives.

Advanced robotics will become increasingly autonomous in industrial applications, and even consumers will learn to consider them appliances the way we see internet-connected refrigerators and cooking appliances – robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers already have carved out valuable markets.

Over time, the combination of all these technologies will meld into powerful applications, similarly to the way internet applications, mobile devices, cars and appliances now combine seamlessly.

Martin Schwirn is the author of Small data, big disruptions: How to spot signals of change and manage uncertainty (ISBN 9781632651921). He is also senior adviser for strategic foresight at Business Finland, helping startups and incumbents to find their position in tomorrow’s marketplace.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has issued an apology to its customers inconvenienced by its largest US datacentre region suffering a 14-hour outage on 20 October, in a blog detailing the precise nature of the technical difficulties its services suffered.

As previously reported by Computer Weekly, the outage originated in the public cloud giant’s US-East-1 datacentre region in North Virginia, and caused large-scale disruption to a host of companies across the world, including in the UK.

Social media and communications services such as Snapchat and Signal suffered disruption to their services, as did Amazon-owned internet entities such as its retail site, Ring doorbell and Alexa services.

Financial services provider Lloyds Bank Group, along with its Halifax and Royal Bank of Scotland subsidiaries, and the government tax collection agency HM Revenue and Customs, were also affected in the UK by the outage.

As a result, HM Treasury is now facing calls to give an account as to why – given its role as a major supplier of cloud services to the UK financial services sector – AWS has not been called into scope of its Critical Third Parties (CTP) regime before now.

The initiative gives HM Treasury powers to designate suppliers to the financial services sector as being CTP, meaning their activities can be brought into the supervisory scope of the UK’s various financial regulators.

The intention being that doing so might help better manage any potential risks to the stability and resilience of the UK financial system that might arise as a result of a third-party supplier suffering from service disruption, as happened with AWS this week.

The company has now published an extensive post-event summary document, which confirms the outage occurred in three distinct phases as a result of issues occurring within several parts of its infrastructure.

As such, the company said that just before 8am UK time on 20 October, its fully managed, serverless, NoSQL database offering Amazon DynamoDB began to experience increased application programming interface (API) error rates, which lasted for just under three hours.

Then, from around 1pm UK time on 20 October, some of the network load balancers (NLB) within its US-East-1 region started to experience increased connection errors, which persisted until around 10pm the same day. “This was caused by health check failures in the NLB fleet, which resulted in increased connection errors,” the summary document stated.

In addition to this, AWS said issues occurred when attempts were made to launch instances of its Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) virtual servers, which is an issue that persisted from around 10.30am on 20 October UK time until 6.30pm.   

“New EC2 instance launches failed and, while instance launches began to succeed from 10:37 AM PDT [6.37pm UK time], some newly launched instances experienced connectivity issues which were resolved by 1:50 PM [9.50pm UK time],” the summary document continued.

It also confirmed that other AWS services hosted within US-East-1 suffered knock-on effects as a result of the issues experienced by DynamoDB, EC2 and its network loan balancing setup.

“We are making several changes as a result of this operational event,” the company said. “As we continue to work through the details of this event across all AWS services, we will look for additional ways to avoid impact from a similar event in the future, and how to further reduce time to recovery.”

The company then concluded the summary document with an apology to any customers affected by the outage.

“While we have a strong track record of operating our services with the highest levels of availability, we know how critical our services are to our customers, their applications and end users, and their businesses,” said the summary document. “We know this event impacted many customers in significant ways. We will do everything we can to learn from this event and use it to improve our availability even further.”

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The ongoing US government shutdown in October 2025 ignited global widespread concern about cyber security vulnerabilities, especially due to the temporary lapse of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) of 2015, which slowed federal threat intelligence funding.

However, the true risk exposed by the shutdown is not the pause in government operations, but rather a clear reminder that effective cyber defence begins within organisations themselves. While many focus on the potential for “cyber chaos,” the greater danger lies in relying too heavily on government intervention for cyber security protection.

Organisations around the world must instead prioritise their own security measures, such as zero-trust identity frameworks, supply-chain fortification, and proactive threat monitoring, to stay ahead of evolving threats.

The myth of government as a cyber shield

No government, whether in Washington, London, or Brussels, can be considered a cyber security saviour. Organisations with robust internal defenses should be minimally impacted by events like the US shutdown or proposed significant cuts to civilian cyber programmes.

The issue of overreliance on government support is not unique to the US; it should be a global concern. Governments around the world, from the UK to the EU, face financial and operational constraints that can delay their ability to provide timely and adequate cyber support. Remarkably, when the Solorigate/Sunburst incident occurred at SolarWinds in 2020, the American government itself was a victim due to weak internal controls, not a lack of federal alerts.

The real threat is the mistaken belief that resolving vulnerabilities published by government sources alone will ensure safety from attacks. Cyber security must be viewed as an organisational responsibility, not a public service.

Government limitations in cyber defence

Governments can help standardise threat intelligence and regulate basic cyber security controls, but the notion that they form the backbone of global cyber security is a misconception. The US shutdown reflects challenges faced internationally. For example, in 2017, the UK’s NHS suffered a major ransomware attack due to outdated security practices and slow patching, not because of government inaction.

During the 2018-2019 US shutdown, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) operated with only 10% of its staff, yet breaches did not increase as a direct result. This is because the process of patching vulnerabilities is typically slow and lags behind updates from government threat feeds, which can overwhelm security teams.

Additionally, vulnerability scoring often lacks sufficient context, leading to misrepresentation of the true threat landscape. Relying solely on governmental threat feeds is insufficient, much like waiting for a weather report only after you are already affected.

Building an adaptive, self-reliant defence

The primary reason that even well-resourced organisations continue to experience breaches is not a lack of government support, but rather weak identity security controls and limited visibility into identity credentials. Nearly 80% of all web-based attacks stem from identity compromise, and 59% of breaches can be attributed to identity-driven threats, highlighting how the issue is often higher than reported.

While unpatched vulnerabilities can provide entry points for attackers, the underlying issue is frequently a weak identity security platform that allows credentials to remain unchecked and move freely within an organisation. This recurring pattern is evident in many security breaches. To counteract this, organisations must reinforce their defences by focusing on zero-trust identity frameworks, supply-chain fortification, and proactive threat monitoring.

Zero-trust: More than a buzzword

Zero-trust identity security is not merely a trendy concept; it represents a fundamental shift in mindset. Every user should be considered a potential threat, necessitating risk-based, adaptive identity security controls to prevent compromise.

Strengthening identity security includes auditing identity providers and accounts, removing blind spots, enforcing least-privilege access, implementing adaptive access controls, and integrating real-time behavioral analytics.

As government services lag, adaptive zero-trust identity security becomes the critical firewall against chaos, and with AI-driven attacks expected to rise by 40% by 2027, vigilance and self-reliance are increasingly vital.

For instance, one healthcare organisation used predictive analytics to thwart a ransomware attack before it could spread, demonstrating the importance of combining robust internal monitoring with external intelligence for proactive threat defense.

A new era of cyber independence

The Trump administration’s budget suggests a shift away from civilian cyber programmes, prompting the private sector to innovate and fill the gaps. This trend is likely to continue globally as governments face budgetary pressures. For cyber security professionals and organisations, this transition should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a setback.

Private firms, ISACs, and open-source intelligence sources can offer robust alternatives to government-provided options. The shutdown reveals a fundamental truth: cyber security is the responsibility of organisations themselves, not the government.

Take control today

Organisations must not allow government shutdowns or policy changes to dictate the strength of their cyber security. If government disruptions cause concern, that fear is misplaced.

Instead, focus should be placed on building a resilient security ecosystem. Investing in zero-trust security by implementing adaptive and comprehensive identity security platforms is essential.

Organisations should also strengthen supply chain security and third-party diligence through regular audits and ensure continuous monitoring of threat exposure both internally and externally. Expanding internal monitoring and integrating threat intelligence from multiple sources will further enhance security posture.

Ultimately, effective organisational cyber security is not about surviving a government shutdown, but about continuously outsmarting and outmaneuvering adversaries who never rest. By acting now, organisations can turn government pauses into strategic advantages, achieving greater self-reliance and adaptability in cyber defense.

John Paul Cunningham is chief information security officer (CISO) at Silverfort, an identity security specialist.

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The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with OpenAI to provide civil servants with access to ChatGPT Enterprise. The MoU includes the option of UK data residency for customers using the OpenAI API Platform, ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu. 

OpenAI technology is being used across the UK government to provide artificial intelligence (AI) in several tools, including the Whitehall AI assistant, Humphrey, which has been designed to ease the administrative burden on civil servants.

OpenAI is also behind the government’s Consult tool, which supports the policymaking process by automatically sorting public consultation responses, a task that typically takes officials weeks but can now be completed in minutes, while leaving important decisions to experts.

The agreement supports the MoJ’s AI action plan for justice, and will provide 2,500 employees with access to ChatGPT Enterprise. It follows a successful pilot that showed time-saving benefits across a range of routine tasks including writing support, compliance and legal work, data and research processes, and document analysis.

Given the current geopolitical climate, IT leaders in both the public and private sector are rethinking how they go about maintaining digital sovereignty. This has resulted in the adoption of geographically isolated availability zones from the hyperscale cloud providers.

However, given these businesses are predominantly US-headquartered, there is a risk that under the US Cloud Act, lawmakers have a legal route to access data held outside of the US. A bigger potential risk is if a foreign government prevents access to the services provided by a US-headquartered software provider. As a consequence, there are plans in Europe to develop sovereign AI and cloud infrastructure.

Commenting on the MoU, deputy prime minister David Lammy said: “Our partnership with OpenAI places Britain firmly in the driving seat of the global tech revolution – leading the world in innovation and using technology to deliver fairness and opportunity for every corner of the United Kingdom.”

OpenAI said the MoU agreement with the UK government includes a focus on expanding the UK’s sovereign AI capability.

Following the Stargate UK AI infrastructure partnership with Nvidia and Nscale, which was signed in September 2025 to coincide with US president Donald Trump’s state visit, OpenAI is now introducing UK data residency, which it said would give British customers and developers the option to store their data in the UK to help meet local data protection preferences or requirements. The Ministry of Justice will be the first to benefit from this offer as part of the MoU agreement.

UK-headquartered startup Nscale is one of the companies with strong links to the UK government’s AI expansion plans. Last month, it announced it had partnered with Microsoft to deliver the UK’s largest AI supercomputer at Nscale’s AI Campus in Loughton. Due to go live in 2027, the site will initially house 23,040 Nvidia GB300 graphics processing units (GPUs) for Microsoft UK’s Azure public cloud service. 

The Open AI Stargate UK initiative also uses Nscale infrastructure, which will be set to go live in Q1 2026. This has the potential to scale to 31,000 Nvidia GPUs over time. 

“The number of people using our products in the UK has increased fourfold in the past year,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. “It’s exciting to see them using AI to save time, increase productivity and get more done. Civil servants are using ChatGPT to improve public services and established firms are reimagining operations. We’re proud to continue supporting the UK and the government’s AI plan.”

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