Businesses increasingly fall prey to scams, with more than 74,000 attacks reported to the FBI between 2023 and 2024. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) warns that companies face significant threats from data breaches, impersonation, and fake services.
In the US, losses from data breaches alone averaged $4.9 million per company in 2024, up to $1.4 billion. Scammers use familiar tactics, such as posing as trusted individuals and making urgent demands for payment or sensitive data.
Smaller businesses are especially at risk, often lacking dedicated IT support or robust security teams. Juggling multiple responsibilities makes them easier targets for sophisticated scam operations.
The BBB advises businesses to train staff to recognise suspicious behaviour and to enforce secure payment processes. Strengthening cybersecurity with tools like firewalls and multi-factor authentication can also reduce the attack risk.
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According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, Reliance Industries is set to grow its market value by $50 billion through large-scale investments in AI infrastructure and new energy. The conglomerate, led by Mukesh Ambani, is retooling its energy and digital units as part of a long-term transformation strategy.
Central to this growth is constructing a generative AI data centre in Jamnagar, India, which will feature 1GW of capacity powered by 1.3GW of green energy. Reliance plans to source this power from its rapidly scaling renewable ecosystem, including solar and green hydrogen.
The firm aims to integrate 10GW of solar capacity by 2026 and has launched lithium battery and green hydrogen projects on a 2,000-acre site in Gujarat. Nvidia’s Blackwell chips will power the upcoming data centres, signalling Reliance’s ambition to make India a hub for next-gen digital infrastructure.
Morgan Stanley estimates up to $60 billion in value creation from the clean energy vertical alone, as Reliance uses electricity to drive data centres, refineries, and chemical facilities. The strategy reflects a broader vision to replace traditional operations with AI-driven, sustainable systems at a global scale.
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Capgemini has announced it will acquire Indian IT firm WNS for $3.3 billion to accelerate its leadership in agentic AI. The acquisition will significantly enhance Capgemini’s business process services (BPS) by integrating advanced AI capabilities into core operations.
The boards of both companies have approved the deal, which offers WNS shareholders a 28% premium over the 90-day average share price. Completion is expected by the end of 2025, pending regulatory approvals.
The company sees strong potential in embedding AI into enterprise operations, with BPS becoming a key showcase. The integration will strengthen Capgemini’s US presence and unlock cross-selling opportunities across the combined client networks.
Both firms emphasised a shared vision of intelligent operations powered by agentic AI, aiming to help clients shift from automation to AI-driven autonomy. Capgemini’s existing partnerships with tech giants like Microsoft, Google and NVIDIA will support this vision.
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Among respondents, 32% reported having been targeted by cyberattacks. Large firms in Japan were more likely to be affected at 41.9%, compared to 30.3% for small and medium-sized businesses and just 28.1% for small firms.
Interestingly, while larger firms showed a higher lifetime rate, cyber incidents over the past month were more common among smaller enterprises. Around 6.9% of SMEs and 7.9% of small firms were affected, compared to the overall rate of 6.7%.
Teikoku Databank warned of a sharp increase in risk for small businesses, which often lack the robust cybersecurity infrastructure of larger corporations.
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In Virginia’s Data Centre Alley, Visa operates a high-security fraud command centre to protect $15 trillion in annual transactions — nearly 15% of the global economy. With cybercrime growing more sophisticated, the company has spent $12 billion in five years to bolster its AI-powered defences.
‘From lone hackers to criminal syndicates generating hundreds of millions, fraud today is highly structured,’ said Michael Jabbara, Visa’s global head of fraud solutions. Some groups now operate like corporations, with risk managers and customer support.
Much of today’s fraud preys on emotions. Scammers trick people into making payments by posing as romantic interests or sellers. Victims are often lured into schemes run by trafficked workers in scam centres in Myanmar.
Once card details are stolen, criminals test them across websites using recurring micro-charges. These fly under the radar for months, draining money slowly but steadily. Some operations mimic tech firms, offering fraud-as-a-service tools on the dark web.
‘You can buy a full toolkit — the software, instructions, bot access and even a mule network,’ Jabbara said. Brute-force payment attacks are now industrial in scale, enabled by the same cloud infrastructure that powers startups.
Visa’s defence includes round-the-clock global monitoring centres in Virginia, London and Singapore. Inside its Cyber Fusion Centre, teams handle millions of threats daily, mostly stopped automatically. But it’s an arms race — one that never sleeps.
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TON coin dropped 6% after the United Arab Emirates dismissed claims about a new visa scheme. The authorities denied that staking $100,000 worth of TON for three years could qualify applicants for a 10-year golden visa.
The cryptocurrency briefly surged 10% after The Open Network announced the visa pathway, only to retreat following regulatory clarification.
Several UAE authorities jointly denied that golden visas are granted based on digital asset holdings. They emphasised that investments in cryptocurrencies fall under specific regulations and do not influence visa eligibility.
Investors were urged to rely on official sources to avoid misinformation.
Introduced in 2019, the UAE’s golden visa offers long-term residency to skilled professionals, investors with public investments exceeding 2 million dirhams ($544,000), and recognised tech entrepreneurs.
The programme enables foreign nationals to live, work, and study in the UAE without a national sponsor.
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After a formal filing by the Independent Publishers Alliance, Google has faced an antitrust complaint in the European Union over its AI Overviews feature.
The group alleges that Google has been using web content without proper consent to power its AI-generated summaries, causing considerable harm to online publishers.
The complaint claims that publishers have lost traffic, readers and advertising revenue due to these summaries. It also argues that opting out of AI Overviews is not a real choice unless publishers are prepared to vanish entirely from Google’s search results.
AI Overviews were launched over a year ago and now appear at the top of many search queries, summarising information using AI. Although the tool has expanded rapidly, critics argue it drives users away from original publisher websites, especially news outlets.
Google has responded by stating its AI search tools allow users to ask more complex questions and help businesses and creators get discovered. The tech giant also insisted that web traffic patterns are influenced by many factors and warned against conclusions based on limited data.
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The EU has confirmed it will enforce its originally scheduled AI Act, despite growing calls from American and European tech firms to delay the rollout.
Major companies, including Alphabet, Meta, ASML and Mistral, have urged the European Commission to push back the timeline by several years, citing concerns over compliance costs.
Rejecting the pressure, a Commission spokesperson clarified there would be no pause or grace period. The legislation’s deadlines remain, with general-purpose AI rules taking effect this August and stricter requirements for high-risk systems following August 2026.
The AI Act represents the EU’s effort to regulate AI across various sectors, aiming to balance innovation and public safety. While tech giants argue that the rules are too demanding, the EU insists legal certainty is vital and the framework must move forward as planned.
The Commission intends to simplify the process later in the year, such as easing reporting demands for smaller businesses. Yet the core structure and deadlines of the AI Act will not be altered.
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The group’s draft statement highlights growing frustration with tech giants using vast amounts of unlicensed content to train AI models.
Despite making progress on digital policy, BRICS once again stalled on a long-standing ambition to reduce reliance on the US dollar.
After a decade of talks, the bloc’s cross-border payments system remains in limbo. Member nations continue to debate infrastructure, governance and how to work around non-convertible currencies and sanctions.
China is moving independently, expanding the yuan’s international use and launching domestic currency futures.
Meanwhile, the rest of the bloc struggles with legal, financial and technical hurdles, leaving the dream of a unified alternative to the dollar on hold. Even a proposed New Investment Platform remains mired in internal disagreements.
In response to rising global debt concerns, BRICS introduced a Multilateral Guarantees Initiative within the New Development Bank. It aims to improve credit access across the Global South without needing new capital, especially for countries struggling to borrow in dollar-dominated markets.
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A surge in cyberattacks is fuelled by global instability, with businesses worldwide now facing heightened risks. A new report by GlobalData warns that rising geopolitical tensions are giving state actors, terrorists, hacktivists and cybercriminals more opportunities to strike.
Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have created a volatile digital landscape. Cyberattackers are exploiting weakened defences, targeting both national infrastructure and private enterprises.
‘Those not after money are often motivated by revenge,’ the report states. The key perpetrators are disgruntled employees, unhappy customers, and ideologically driven hackers. While some attackers aim to cause reputational harm or attract attention, others seek to turn off critical systems.
Nation states, in particular, use cyberwarfare as a strategic tool against rival governments. Businesses are warned to prepare for disruption as cyber threats become more frequent and sophisticated. The report concludes that no organisation is immune in today’s digital and geopolitical uncertainty climate.
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