Catch up on this month’s round-up of the latest hosting and tech news. Here’s what we’ve uncovered since our last edition.
Cloud Breaches
According to research by Thales, attacks on the cloud are on the rise, with 14% of companies experiencing a breach in the last 12 months. The main causes of these were human error and misconfiguration, with vulnerabilities responsible for 28% and a lack of multi-factor authentication responsible for 17%. The main targets, meanwhile, were, SaaS applications, 31%, cloud storage, 30%, and cloud infrastructure, 26%.
One significant worry discovered by Thales was that, despite data being so important to businesses, less than 10% of firms encrypt over 80% of their sensitive cloud data. It also discovered that more than half of companies found it more difficult to manage compliance and privacy in the cloud than in-house. Thankfully, businesses are prioritising their security, with Gartner forecasting a 24% increase in cloud security investment by 2027.
Mass CDN Attack
A cyberattack on a group of content delivery networks (CDNs) has affected nearly half a million websites and potentially tens of millions more. The initial attack was on the CDN Polyfill.io, an open-source JavaScript library that supports modern websites on older browsers; however, it has since been discovered that three other CDNs, BootCDN, Bootcss and Staticfile, have also become victims.
While concerns were initially raised when the Polyfill domain was taken over by Chinese CDN company, Funnull, in February, it wasn’t until June that threat intelligence company, Sansec, discovered the new owner was infecting websites with malicious code. Further investigations then showed that all four CDNs were attacked. With over 1.5 million web hosts linking to these CDNs, this puts millions more websites at risk, with those belonging to governments, major streaming companies and car makers found to be linked to them.
Kids Robotics Award
Students at Berkeley Green University Technical College, a 14 to 18 specialist technical school in Gloucestershire, have been awarded the prestigious Innovation Prize in the First Tech Challenge UK’s robotics competition, held at Cambridge University. Created by a team of Year 12 pupils, the robot was able to collect hexagonal shapes, balance on a bar and launch a paper aeroplane. The 6-month project to build the robot also involved pupils learning project management, budgeting and coding skills.
Beating off competition from over 40 other schools, the judges commended the Berkley Green team’s inventive approach, especially their one-of-a-kind pixel gripper. First Tech Challenge UK aims to encourage STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) education and careers among students aged 11 to 18 in an effort to ensure that the technical sector has the skills it needs to maintain a sustainable workforce.
AI Off The Menu
One human job that AI will probably not be taking over in the near future is taking restaurant orders at drive-throughs. Viral videos of laughable mistakes made by McDonald’s AI-powered ordering system in the US have forced the company to abandon the technology. The IBM-developed system uses voice recognition to process orders but seems to have problems interpreting what some customers say. Videos on social media platforms like TikTok show the system mistakenly creating orders for hundreds of dollars of chicken nuggets and even adding bacon to ice cream.
As a result of these mishaps, the technology will be removed from over 100 US restaurants by the end of July. It’s not good news for IBM either, with McDonald’s deciding to end global collaboration with IBM on Automated Order Taking (AOT) after this year. While IBM remains optimistic about its technology, McDonald’s is set to look at alternative voice-ordering solutions.
Google Emissions Grow
One of the downsides of the demand for AI is the impact it has on the environment. The latest figures show that between 2019 and 2023, Google’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 48%, much of this due to the vast amount of energy data centres need to cope with the rise in AI. This presents a major challenge for Google, which aims to have net zero emissions by 2030.
Currently, two-thirds of Google’s energy comes from carbon-free sources, however, the data centres benefitting from this are mainly located in Europe and North America. Those in the Middle East, Asia and Australia, where the renewable infrastructure is less developed, still rely on non-renewable energy sources.
Ironically, AI could also be the solution to its own sustainability issues. The increase in energy demand it creates, estimated to be between 2% to 6% globally, could be offset by AI-driven efficiency improvements.
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