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.
Council Cyberattack
Portsmouth City Council has become the latest local authority to suffer a DDoS attack, following recent attacks on Exeter, Salford, Bury, Trafford and Middlesbrough councils. The attack in Portsmouth, which has been attributed to the pro-Russian hacking group NoName057(16), caused users problems with accessing the council website but did not compromise council services or resident’s data.
The attack, which took place on 1 November, took until 3 November to fully rectify. During that time, council teams were still able to continue working and residents could access its online services through the MyPortsmouth platform, though connections were somewhat slower. Stronger anti-DDoS security has since been implemented to prevent bots from swamping the website in future.
While some of the other councils above experienced brief outages, like Portsmouth, most have now successfully restored their services. The National Cyber Security Centre has provided guidance to the local authorities affected.
£1bn Cyber Centre
The government is to invest £20 million towards Cheltenham’s £1 billion Golden Valley Development project, which seeks to establish the town as the UK’s cyber capital. Located next to GCHQ, the government’s intelligence, security and cyber agency, the development is expected to generate 12,000 jobs, provide over 1,000 homes and serve as a national centre for cyber technology and security.
The government funding, which was initially obtained through the Levelling Up Fund and confirmed in the October 30 budget, enables Cheltenham Borough Council to start the initial phase of the project. According to the council, Golden Valley will be a national asset that reinforces Cheltenham’s position in the technology and security fields. The centre is being built by developer Henry Boot, with architect firm Sheppard Robson designing buildings for the second phase of the development.
AI Drives IT Spending
According to Gartner, European IT expenditure is expected to reach £1.02 trillion by 2025, an 8.7% annual increase and the biggest growth since 2021. Globally, IT spending is anticipated to be £4.56 trillion next year. Generative AI will be a major contributor to European growth, with spending on IT services in this area expected to rise by 21%, reaching £74 billion.
Gartner’s research shows Chief Information Officers are prioritising spending on AI infrastructure in 2024, with substantial investments of around £98 billion expected in public cloud services and £37 billion in security. Additionally, there has been a significant 25% increase in data centre spending this year which has been driven by the demand for AI-optimised servers. This is projected to grow by a further 11% in 2025.
With firms having limited success in developing their own pilot AI programmes in 2024, Gartner also forecasts that 2025 will see European organisations shift from creating in-house generative AI solutions to collaborating with proven external providers.
AI Recruitment Rules
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued guidance regarding the use of AI recruitment tools given the growing concerns about privacy and fairness in the hiring process. The use of AI for candidate sourcing, CV evaluation and applicant scoring has been linked to several issues, including the potential for unfair processing of personal data and the filtering of candidates based on gender and ethnicity. Even when these details are not disclosed, some AI tools can infer them and discard candidates through built-in bias.
In a detailed report, the ICO has put forward nearly 300 recommendations, which include the need to conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) that ensure data collection practises are lawful and limited and that candidates have clear information about how their data is processed by AI systems. In response, AI developers have already started to adopt the recommendations and have begun to revise privacy policies and reduce bias during the AI’s training and testing.
MS GenAI Accelerator
Tech giants, Microsoft and Nvidia, have jointly unveiled the Microsoft GenAI Accelerator initiative. The collaborative project seeks to, “develop the UK’s brightest and best AI-focused start-ups and springboard them to future success,” by helping them improve their products, access technical assistance and engage with investors.
Running from January 22 to March 5 next year, the initiative is aimed at companies with seed funding that are looking to develop significant AI solutions in sectors such as fintech, med tech and green tech.
Startups will be offered personalised mentoring from Microsoft’s AI Black Belt team, training from Nvidia’s Deep Learning Institute and support from GitHub. They will also have the opportunity to present their products to leading investors during a Demo Day.
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