Privacy and data protection Archives | Page 82 of 328

UK-EU cyber dialogue strengthens policy alignment

The third UK-EU Cyber Dialogue was held in Brussels on 9 and 10 December 2025, bringing together senior officials under the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement to strengthen cooperation on cybersecurity and digital resilience.

The meeting was co-chaired by Andrew Whittaker from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Irfan Hemani from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, alongside EU representatives from the European External Action Service and the European Commission.

Officials from Europol and ENISA also participated, reinforcing operational and regulatory coordination rather than fragmented policy approaches.

Discussions covered cyber legislation, deterrence strategies, countering cybercrime, incident response and cyber capacity development, with an emphasis on maintaining strong security standards while reducing unnecessary compliance burdens on industry.

Both sides confirmed that the next UK-EU Cyber Dialogue will take place in London in 2026.

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Credit reporting breach exposes 5.6 millions consumers through third party API

US credit reporting company 700Credit has confirmed a data breach affecting more than 5.6 million individuals after attackers exploited a compromised third-party API used to exchange consumer data with external integration partners.

An incident that originated from a supply chain failure after one partner was breached earlier in 2025 and failed to notify 700Credit.

The attackers launched a sustained, high-volume data extraction campaign starting on October 25, 2025, which operated for more than two weeks before access was shut down.

Around 20 percent of consumer records were accessed, exposing names, home addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, while internal systems, payment platforms and login credentials were not compromised.

Despite the absence of financial system access, the exposed personal data significantly increases the risk of identity theft and sophisticated phishing attacks impersonating credit reporting services.

The breach has been reported to the Federal Trade Commission and the FBI, with regulators coordinating responses through industry bodies representing affected dealerships.

Individuals impacted by the incident are currently being notified and offered two years of free credit monitoring, complimentary credit reports and access to a dedicated support line.

Authorities have urged recipients to act promptly by monitoring their credit activity and taking protective measures to minimise the risk of fraud.

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No sensitive data compromised in SoundCloud incident

SoundCloud has confirmed a recent security incident that temporarily affected platform availability and involved the limited exposure of user data. The company detected unauthorised activity on an ancillary service dashboard and acted immediately to contain the situation.

Third-party cybersecurity experts were engaged to investigate and support the response. The incident resulted in two brief denial-of-service attacks, temporarily disrupting web access.

Approximately 20% of users were affected; however, no sensitive data, such as passwords or financial details, were compromised. Only email addresses and publicly visible profile information were involved.

In response, SoundCloud has strengthened its systems, enhancing monitoring, reviewing identity and access controls, and auditing related systems. Some configuration updates have led to temporary VPN connectivity issues, which the company is working to resolve.

SoundCloud emphasises that user privacy remains a top priority and encourages vigilance against phishing. The platform will continue to provide updates and take steps to minimise the risk of future incidents.

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Zoom launches AI Companion 3.0 with expanded features

Zoom has unveiled AI Companion 3.0, its latest AI assistant, which extends functionality beyond meetings with a new web interface, workflow tools, and agentic search. Select features are now accessible to free Zoom Workplace Basic users, while full access is available via a paid add-on.

Free users can generate meeting summaries, action item lists, and insights, albeit with usage limitations.

The updated AI Companion introduces agentic retrieval, enabling searches across meeting summaries, transcripts, and connected services, such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, with Gmail and Outlook support planned.

Users can automatically generate follow-up tasks and draft emails using a post-meeting template, while the Daily Reflection Report summarises tasks and updates to help prioritise work.

A new agentic writing mode allows drafting, editing, and refining business documents in a canvas-style interface, and AI-created content can be exported in multiple formats, including Markdown, PDF, Word, and Zoom Docs.

Additional tools include AI-based brainstorming and, for Custom AI Companion users, a deep research mode consolidating insights from multiple meetings and documents.

Basic plan users get limited access for up to three meetings per month, including automated summaries, in-meeting queries, and AI-generated notes. Up to 20 prompts are included via the side panel and web interface, while broader access requires a subscription priced at Rs 1,080 per month.

The new web interface also offers built-in prompts to guide users in exploring the assistant’s capabilities.

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Study warns that LLMs are vulnerable to minimal tampering

Researchers from Anthropic, the UK AI Security Institute and the Alan Turing Institute have shown that only a few hundred crafted samples can poison LLM models. The tests revealed that around 250 malicious entries could embed a backdoor that triggers gibberish responses when a specific phrase appears.

Models ranging from 600 million to 13 billion parameters (such as Pythia) were affected, highlighting the scale-independent nature of the weakness. A planted phrase such as ‘sudo’ caused output collapse, raising concerns about targeted disruption and the ease of manipulating widely trained systems.

Security specialists note that denial-of-service effects are worrying, yet deceptive outputs pose far greater risk. Prior studies already demonstrated that medical and safety-critical models can be destabilised by tiny quantities of misleading data, heightening the urgency for robust dataset controls.

Researchers warn that open ecosystems and scraped corpora make silent data poisoning increasingly feasible. Developers are urged to adopt stronger provenance checks and continuous auditing, as reliance on LLMs continues to expand for AI purposes across technical and everyday applications.

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Google boosts Translate with Gemini upgrades

Google is rolling out a major Translate upgrade powered by Gemini to improve text and speech translation. The update enhances contextual understanding so idioms, tone and intent are interpreted more naturally.

A beta feature for live headphone translation enables real-time speech-to-speech output. Gemini processes audio directly, preserving cadence and emphasis to improve conversations and lectures. Android users in the US, Mexico and India gain early access, with wider availability planned for 2026.

Translate is also gaining expanded language-learning tools for speaking practice and progress tracking. Additional language pairs, including English to German and Portuguese, broaden support for learners worldwide.

Google aims to reduce friction in global communication by focusing on meaning rather than literal phrasing. Engineers expect user feedback to shape the AI live translation beta across platforms.

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CES 2026 to feature LG’s new AI-driven in-car platform

LG Electronics will unveil a new AI Cabin Platform at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, positioning the system as a next step beyond today’s software-defined vehicles and toward what the company calls AI-defined mobility.

The platform is designed to run on automotive high-performance computing systems and is powered by Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Cockpit Elite. LG says it applies generative AI models directly to in-vehicle infotainment, enabling more context-aware and personalised driving experiences.

Unlike cloud-dependent systems, all AI processing occurs on-device within the vehicle. LG says this approach enables real-time responses while improving reliability, privacy, and data security by avoiding communication with external servers.

Using data from internal and external cameras, the system can assess driving conditions and driver awareness to provide proactive alerts. LG also demonstrated adaptive infotainment features, including AI-generated visuals and music suggestions that respond to weather, time, and driving context.

LG will showcase the AI Cabin Platform at a private CES event, alongside a preview of its AI-defined vehicle concept. The company says the platform builds on its expanding partnership with Qualcomm Technologies and on its earlier work integrating infotainment and driver-assistance systems.

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Conduit revolutionises neuro-language research with 10,000-hour dataset

A San Francisco start-up, named Conduit, has spent six months building what it claims is the largest neural language dataset ever assembled, capturing around 10,000 hours of non-invasive brain recordings from thousands of participants.

The project aims to train thought-to-text AI systems that interpret semantic intent from brain activity moments before speech or typing occurs.

Participants take part in extended conversational sessions instead of rigid laboratory tasks, interacting freely with large language models through speech or simplified keyboards.

Engineers found that natural dialogue produced higher quality data, allowing tighter alignment between neural signals, audio and text while increasing overall language output per session.

Conduit developed its own sensing hardware after finding no commercial system capable of supporting large-scale multimodal recording.

Custom headsets combine multiple neural sensing techniques within dense training rigs, while future inference devices will be simplified once model behaviour becomes clearer.

Power systems and data pipelines were repeatedly redesigned to balance signal clarity with scalability, leading to improved generalisation across users and environments.

As data volume increased, operational costs fell through automation and real time quality control, allowing continuous collection across long daily schedules.

With data gathering largely complete, the focus has shifted toward model training, raising new questions about the future of neural interfaces, AI-mediated communication and cognitive privacy.

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BBVA deepens AI partnership with OpenAI

OpenAI and BBVA have agreed on a multi-year strategic collaboration designed to embed artificial intelligence across the global banking group.

An initiative that will expand the use of ChatGPT Enterprise to all 120,000 BBVA employees, marking one of the largest enterprise deployments of generative AI in the financial sector.

The programme focuses on transforming customer interactions, internal workflows and decision making.

BBVA plans to co-develop AI-driven solutions with OpenAI to support bankers, streamline risk analysis and redesign processes such as software development and productivity support, instead of relying on fragmented digital tools.

The rollout follows earlier deployments that demonstrated strong engagement and measurable efficiency gains, with employees saving hours each week on routine tasks.

ChatGPT Enterprise will be implemented with enterprise grade security and privacy safeguards, ensuring compliance within a highly regulated environment.

Beyond internal operations, BBVA is accelerating its shift toward AI native banking by expanding customer facing services powered by OpenAI models.

The collaboration reflects a broader move among major financial institutions to integrate AI at the core of products, operations and personalised banking experiences.

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AI reshapes cybercrime investigations in India

Maharashtra police are expanding the use of an AI-powered investigation platform developed with Microsoft to tackle the rapid growth of cybercrime.

MahaCrimeOS AI, already in use across Nagpur district, will now be deployed to more than 1,100 police stations statewide, significantly accelerating case handling and investigation workflows.

The system acts as an investigation copilot, automating complaint intake, evidence extraction and legal documentation across multiple languages.

Officers can analyse transaction trails, request data from banks and telecom providers and follow standardised investigation pathways, instead of relying on slow manual processes.

Built using Microsoft Foundry and Az u re OpenAI Service, MahaCrimeOS AI integrates policing protocols, criminal law references and open-source intelligence.

Investigators report major efficiency gains, handling several cases monthly where only one was previously possible, while maintaining procedural accuracy and accountability.

The initiative highlights how responsible AI deployment can strengthen public institutions.

By reducing administrative burden and improving investigative capacity, the platform allows officers to focus on victim support and crime resolution, marking a broader shift toward AI-assisted governance in India.

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