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At press time the 27-member EU bloc was still haggling over how to regulate AI, an illustration of the challenge facing governments around the world as they weigh the advantages of the technology against the need to set guardrails. Much is riding on the EU AI Act, which could become the blueprint for other governments as countries seek to provide an alternative to the U.S.’ s light-touch approach and China’s interim rules.

Against this backdrop a handful of tech giants jockeying to dominate the sector announced their latest power plays: Google launched a new set of generative artificial intelligence models that will run directly on mobile phones; Elon Musk said he is raising $1 billion in funding for xAI, an AI company he is launching to rival OpenAI, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google; and Meta and IBM launched a coalition of more than 50 artificial intelligence companies and research institutions that are pushing a so-called open model of AI, hoping to gain traction in the fast-growing market.

It was a typical week for cyber attacks around the globe.

A small western Pennsylvania municipal water utility was just one of multiple organizations breached in the United States by an Iranian-backed hacktivist collective. The group, known as Cyber Av3ngers, targeted a specific industrial device - a programmable logic controller -because it is Israeli-made. Other industries that use the same equipment — Vision Series programmable logic controllers made by Israel’s Unitronics — including energy, food and beverage manufacturing and healthcare, have been warned that they are also potentially vulnerable.

In Israel, cyber attacks that use distributed denial of service (DDoS) operations; wiper malware; and the exploitation of other vulnerabilities that facilitate the spread of disinformation were used by Hamas and its supporters as weapons of war. So were deep fake videos that risk unleashing more violence and confusion.

Meanwhile, European cyber police arrested the ringleader of a ransomware gang operating in Ukraine accused of successfully extorting “several hundred million euros” in ransom from victims in 71 countries; the boss of Australia’s largest ports operator confirmed data from current and former DP World employees was stolen during a November cyber attack that shut down its operations around the country in November, temporarily disrupting global trade; and the UK foreign minister Leo Docherty told the House of Commons that Russia’s Federal Security Service had used a "range of cyber espionage activities" to target MPs, peers, civil servants, journalists and NGOs, through a sustained campaign to “meddle in British politics.”

The next five years will bring another set of unprecedented cybersecurity challenges, says a new report from The World Economic Forum, prepared with Accenture, entitled Cybersecurity Futures 2030. Read on to get the key takeaways from the report.

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QuantumDiamonds is developing atom-sized quantum sensors that make use of quantum effects to push the boundaries of what can be measured. The technology promises to be a game changer in sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing, medical diagnostics, and battery development.
The German startup, a spin-out of the Technical University of Munich, beat 59 other teams to win first prize at the university’s annual Demo Day on December 5.
QuantumDiamonds produces its core technology with defects in synthetic diamonds known as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. These defects are then manipulated to detect and measure physical quantities with precision. Think of it as a kind of next generation microscope.
“Our mission is making the invisible visible,” “says CEO Kevin Berghoff, a former McKinsey consultant who teamed up with quantum scientists to commercialize the technology. “Things are getting smaller in every domain. If we don’t have the right tools, we will need to stop making things smaller and more efficient, so I see the company as an enabler of progress.”
The company is currently testing with four of the world’s top 10 semiconductor manufacturers.

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Number of people who had their information exposed when a hacker gained access to DNA test-kit 23andMe because of password reuse. The 23andMe computer network wasn’t breached and wasn’t the source of these compromised credentials, a company spokesman said in a statement this week. The passwords used to break into these accounts had most likely been stolen from other websites. Because they were reused, they also worked on 23andMe, security experts say. The type of attack is known as credential stuffing. Other major businesses who have fallen victim to this cyber crime trend include Netflix, Nintendo, Zoom and PayPal, noted The Wall Street Journal.