As cyberthreats advance, so too must workforce cyber defences to avoid making what are often preventable and costly mistakes.

Cybersecurity measures in the workplace never grind to a halt, in that employees and employers must always strive to ensure that their skills and systems are as advanced, if not more so, than those wielded by people with malicious intent.

A lot of cybersecurity is arguably common sense – don’t click suspicious links, don’t share sensitive information and so on – but it doesn’t hurt to have a refresher course now and then to keep it all fresh in the mind. To that point, here are some of the most helpful tips to follow if you want to improve or maintain your company’s cybersecurity efforts. 

Silo your systems

This one is specifically for anyone who works from home. It goes without saying that we feel comfortable in our own properties and have tried and tested ways of doing things. But there is such a thing as being too comfortable and employees may forget that their systems should never overlap with the organisations.

If you are using company software, keep all activity tied to the workplace. That is to say, don’t download anything not approved by the organisation, or anything you are using in a personal capacity. 

Furthermore, if you move around and work between locations – for example at home, a cafe, a work hub – do your due diligence first and ensure that the network you are using is secure. This can be easier said than done, as using public Wi-Fi in general can be risky. With that in mind, shared office spaces and hubs tend to be a more secure option. If you are using what could be a potentially non-secure network in a public place, always use a VPN as an added layer of protection. 

Get AI ready 

Advancements in technology unfortunately bring risk. AI has unlimited potential and it is certainly the way forward for a lot of organisations looking to advance, scale and grow, but as we have seen recently, it also presents significant risk, as threat actors can use it to launch highly sophisticated scams. The companies and employees that are serious about avoiding and navigating threats are the ones that will adopt AI upskilling as a core aspect of the organisation – not just as a once a year box-ticking exercise.   

Useful skills to consider include an understanding of AI and ML models, data science for cyber defence, AI-specific threats and broad digital literacy. You can’t defend against a threat that you don’t understand and if your organisation has knowledge gaps, then you are automatically in a weak position. So make sure everyone on a system understands the ins and outs of how it works and how to keep it secure. 

Simple simply isn’t good enough

We have all picked a password because it was simple and easy to remember, making our own lives simpler and easier, in theory. But when you choose an obvious password, or take shortcuts online, it can expose you to malicious people who can easily bypass the protections you put in place. 

That doesn’t mean that every password has to be 80 characters long, or so obscure that you yourself can’t recall it without physically writing it down. But it should be something with a diverse set of characters, that someone else couldn’t guess. For example, avoid using easily obtained information like the names of pets, loved ones, birthdays or other significant dates. Implementing multifactor authentication adds another critical layer and biometric verification tools, such as fingerprint or facial recognition software, can also be useful. 

Stay current

It is important to note that all of the above is effectively useless if you are operating off of a system that is old or is not updated frequently. In the same way that innovators are constantly coming up with new ways to enhance a system, bad actors are also constantly coming up with ways to break and exploit weaknesses in systems. If you don’t regularly update your devices then you are basically holding a door open for threat actors and welcoming them in. 

If your approved system or device is due an update or if there is a trustworthy patch to be applied, don’t put it on the long finger. The longer you leave an update the more vulnerable you leave yourself, your co-workers and the organisation. So, don’t leave it on the to-do list for too long. 

When it comes down to it, cybersecurity measures are arguably the most important policies in place at a company. When they are breached or weakened, either accidentally, or on purpose, there is no one in an organisation that won’t feel the impact. Externally, it also places the consumers and partners of a business at risk. Especially financially, or if that business deals with complex or sensitive information.  

So we all have to do our bit to ensure practical, robust and consistent cybersecurity engagement.

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X-energy’s stock popped today in its debut on the Nasdaq, opening at $30.11 before closing at $29.20, up 27% over its initial public offering of $23 per share.

Investors can’t get enough nuclear power, apparently. Even the initial share price had been revised upward from the $16 to $19 target floated by the company during its investor roadshow. At close, the company was valued at $11.5 billion.

Just five years ago, such interest in a nuclear startup would have come as a surprise to many. 

Back then, the nuclear industry was haunted by delayed projects and massive cost overruns at recently completed reactors. Two power plants were completed in Georgia — one in the late 2010s and another in the early 2020s. In total, they cost around $30 billion to build.

Nuclear startups in the early 2020s were in their infancy, and at least one frontrunner had run into significant regulatory problems, sparking fears that the industry hadn’t been able to put its past behind it.

Now, investors appear optimistic that X-energy and its peers have figured out a way around the challenges.

Much of the momentum can be traced to the AI-driven data center boom. GPUs need tremendous amounts of electricity, and while solar, wind, batteries, and natural gas have been filling the need today, tech companies have been hoping to diversify. Nuclear power is one of the many options they’ve been exploring, hoping that the compact form factor will be an ideal fit for their sprawling data centers.

Nuclear power has long had more potential to power the U.S. grid than it has been able to deliver. Today, about 18% of electricity in the country comes from nuclear power. But reactor costs have risen in recent decades. Nuclear power might be one of the most reliable sources of electricity in the U.S., but it’s also one of the most expensive.

X-energy’s 80-megawatt reactor design is an order of magnitude smaller than many existing nuclear power plants. The company is betting that modularity can help bring costs down, and data center operators are hoping that a single campus can be powered by a fleet of reactors, providing the sort of redundancy and stability they prize. Amazon has said it will buy up to 5 gigawatts’ worth of capacity from X-energy over the next decade or so, but chemical maker Dow will receive the startup’s first power plant. 

Construction is underway at X-energy’s fuel facility, and while the company has yet to start construction of a power plant, investors appear bullish that the company will be able to break nuclear power free from its decades-long malaise. 

The HP DeskJet 2855e is a compact all-in-one inkjet printer designed for light home use. It provides printing, scanning, and copying functions. The printer stands out because of its simple setup process, which users praise when they use the HP Smart app together with wireless connectivity features.

Now, this is a budget inkjet – it’s currently $50 at Amazon.com and in the UK, the virtually identical DeskJet 2820e is £40 at Amazon.co.uk.

Canadian AI start-up Cohere has agreed to acquire Germany’s Aleph Alpha in a transatlantic deal aimed at giving governments and regulated industries an alternative to US tech giants.

The combined entity will be anchored in Germany and Canada, pooling engineering talent and compute resources across the two G7 nations. It will target customers in the public sector, finance, defence, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications and healthcare.

As part of the deal, Germany’s Schwarz Group, the retail giant behind Lidl and Kaufland, is leading a €500m structured financing commitment into Cohere’s upcoming Series E round. Schwarz’s sovereign cloud service Stackit will act as the technical backbone of the venture.

The market opportunity is sizeable. McKinsey projects AI services will surpass $1trn annually, with sovereign AI needs accounting for close to $600bn of that total.

“Organisations globally are demanding uncompromising control over their AI stack,” said Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere. He said the partnership would give enterprises and governments “the absolute certainty that their data remains their own”.

Ilhan Scheer, co-CEO of Aleph Alpha, said the combined company would give European institutions “access to powerful, yet controllable AI they can truly own”, and serve as a “real counterweight” for organisations that refuse to outsource AI control to a single provider or jurisdiction.

A transatlantic challenger

Forrester’s vice-president and principal analyst Thomas Husson said the deal creates “a unique transatlantic player designed to challenge the dominance of US giants”.

“While it is technically an acquisition by the Canadian firm, the real power is likely to be shared,” Husson said. “Cohere will provide cutting-edge engineering and global product and commercial leadership, while German players (and especially the Schwarz Group) provide the essential capital and political backing.”

He described the structure as “hybrid and unusual” and said it was aimed at “capturing the sovereign AI market to offer a secure alternative for governments of highly regulated industries to avoid reliance on US cloud laws”.

Husson said the tie-up will put pressure on French AI company Mistral in particular. “This will directly challenge Mistral AI who will now face a new rival combining North American agility with European regulatory trust,” he said.

However, Husson warned that success is not guaranteed. “Ultimately, the deal’s success depends on whether this dual-headed leadership can remain unified while competing against the massive budgets of giants like Microsoft, Google or OpenAI.”

The transaction is subject to approval by Aleph Alpha shareholders and competition regulators.

In August last year, Cohere raised $500m at a $6.8bn valuation and hired the former Meta vice-president for AI research Joelle Pineau as its first chief AI officer. Pineau, a Canadian computer scientist and a professor at McGill University, led Meta’s Fundamental AI Research team.

Cohere’s oversubscribed raise was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with additional participation from existing investors including AMD Ventures, Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures.

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