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Category: Europe

Legal impact on cybersecurity in 2025: new developments and challenges in the EU

In the fast-paced world of cybersecurity, 2025 is shaping up to be a crucial year for the implementation of new regulations aimed at strengthening the European Union’s digital resilience. From the transposition of the NIS2 Directive to the entry into force of the DORA Regulation and the National 5G Network and Service Security Scheme, both…

Google claims news is worthless to its ad business after test involving 1% of search results in eight EU markets

Google has reported the results of an experiment it ran which removed news from search results for 1% of users for 2.5 months in eight* markets in Europe — claiming the results show that news is essentially worthless to Google’s ad business. The search giant conducted the test because European copyright law requires it to…

VC investment in European startups passed $52B in 2024, continuing long-term growth trend

Venture capital investment in European startups passed $52 billion last year, reflecting the market’s long-term growth trajectory and gradual stabilization after the out-sized peaks of 2021-2022 (driven largely by the COVID-19 pandemic), and the comparative slump of 2023, according to a new report. Although 2024 has seen political and regulatory turmoil, Europe’s talent pool of…

Meta AI is finally coming to the EU, but with limitations

Amid an ongoing regulatory battle with European privacy authorities, Meta announced on Thursday that its AI-powered virtual assistant, Meta AI, is finally launching in the European Union. The chatbot-like tool will be rolled out across Meta’s portfolio of social platforms, albeit with a more limited feature set compared to what it offers in its domestic…

Amid calls for sovereign EU tech stack, Evroc raises $55M to build a hyperscale cloud in Europe

A Swedish startup aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe has raised €50.6 million ($55 million) in Series A funding. Evroc, as it’s called, says it’s laying the foundations for a “secure, sovereign and sustainable hyperscale cloud to reimagine the digital future of Europe.” The announcement comes amid growing calls to create a…

ChatGPT hit with privacy complaint over defamatory hallucinations

OpenAI is facing another privacy complaint in Europe over its viral AI chatbot’s tendency to hallucinate false information — and this one might prove tricky for regulators to ignore. Privacy rights advocacy group Noyb is supporting an individual in Norway who was horrified to find ChatGPT returning made-up information that claimed he’d been convicted for…

Google search, Play Store falling foul of Digital Markets Act rules, says EU

Google Search and its Play Store app marketplace are suspected of breaching the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), per preliminary findings announced Wednesday by EU Commission enforcers of the bloc’s flagship market contestability law, who have been investigating the company for months. The DMA applies to a handful of tech giants, Alphabet (Google’s parent)…

Six additional countries identified as suspected Paragon spyware customers

Researchers have identified suspected government customers of spyware company Paragon Solutions in six more countries that hadn’t previously been publicly identified, according to a report published Wednesday. The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said it mapped the infrastructure of Paragon’s Graphite tool after a tip from a collaborator, and found a subset of suspected Paragon…

EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and connected devices

The European Union has sent Apple preliminary instructions on how it expects the iPhone maker to comply with interoperability provisions in the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), its flagship market contestability reform. According to the Commission, device manufacturers and app developers should be able to access nine iOS connectivity features that were restricted to Apple’s…

Apple loses appeal against Germany’s special abuse control for Big Tech

Being a staggeringly successful big tech company does have some downsides: Apple has lost an appeal against a special abuse control regime that Germany’s competition watchdog applied to it last year. The iPhone maker can expect to continue to face bespoke competition controls in a major European market, in addition to other similar laws (such…

China-Linked MirrorFace Deploys ANEL and AsyncRAT in New Cyber Espionage Operation

Threat hunters have shed more light on a previously disclosed malware campaign undertaken by the China-aligned MirrorFace threat actor that targeted a diplomatic organization in the European Union with a backdoor known as ANEL. The attack, detected by ESET in late August 2024, singled out a Central European diplomatic institute with lures related to Word…

News alert: Link11’s research shows DDoS attacks are more targeted — and doubled — year-over-year

Frankfurt, Germany, Mar. 17, 2025, CyberNewswire — Cyberattacks are no longer an abstract threat – they dominate risk planning for companies worldwide. The latest Link11 European Cyber Report shows an alarming trend: the number of DDoS attacks has more than … (more…) The post News alert: Link11’s research shows DDoS attacks are more targeted —…

European tech industry coalition calls for ‘radical action’ on digital sovereignty — starting with buying local

A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe’s tech industry is calling for “radical action” from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure and services to bolster the bloc’s economic prospects, resilience, and security in increasingly fraught geopolitical times. In an open letter to European Commission president, Ursula von der…

CIOs and CISOs take on NIS2: Key challenges, security opportunities

The impact of NIS2 compliance on day-to-day operations has put many IT leaders in a stressful bind. The Network and Information Security 2 directive, which expands the scope of its predecessor to cover 15 sectors, aims to provide a common level of cybersecurity across EU member states. The scope of the regulations are estimated to…

Y Combinator urges the White House to support Europe’s Digital Markets Act

Y Combinator, one of the world’s most prolific startup accelerators, sent a letter on Wednesday urging the Trump Administration to openly support Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to crack open Big Tech’s market power. The DMA designates six tech companies as “gatekeepers” to the internet — Alphabet, Amazon,…

Huawei’s lobbying lands it in a bribery scandal with EU politicians

Huawei is at the center of a fresh scandal in Europe, following reports that lobbyists representing the Chinese tech titan bribed members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to curry favor with lawmakers. After being cast out of the U.S. market over fears that its telecommunications equipment could be infiltrated by the Chinese government for nefarious…

Skich launches an alternative app store on iOS in the EU

Skich, a Tinder-like app for discovering mobile games, announced Thursday the launch of a new marketplace to put it in closer competition with alternative game stores like Aptoide and Epic Games. Skich Store, a new alternative mobile games store, will be available for iOS users in the European Union. The company plans to begin adding…

Could deeptech serve as Europe’s path to autonomy from the US?

Amidst geopolitical tensions and volatile markets, the question of Europe’s ability to weather the storms ahead, especially as President Trump seems intent on having his pound of tariffs from the continent, is looming large. But an extensive new report claims deeptech is poised to become a key pillar of Europe’s security, defense, and future autonomy,…

Project Europe, a new early-stage fund, will back people under 25 to build the next tech titan

A recurring theme in Europe’s tech world is that the region needs its own Google or Microsoft. Now comes the launch of a new fund to support this initiative. Project Europe — a new fund for founders “solving hard problems with technical solutions” — says it has initially pulled together $10 million from 128 different…

How the EU Product Liability Directive (EU PLD) is Changing Software Security | Contrast Security

Companies that sell software that can be used or downloaded by anyone in the European Union are facing a major new liability. Late last year, the European Commission finalized fundamental changes to the EU Product Liability Directive (PLD) — changes that have far-reaching ramifications. While the changes won’t apply broadly until 2026, they will likely…

Meet the new VC firm secretly backed by Volkswagen

A new venture firm called Leitmotif has been on a quiet blitz for the last 16 months, funding around 20 startups broadly focused on decarbonization. Its portfolio includes EV companies, space and battery plays, and four nuclear fusion startups. But the firm has only said its funding is from “European industrial interests.” Now, Leitmotif has…

Meet the new VC firm secretly backed by Volkswagen

A new venture firm called Leitmotif has been on a quiet blitz for the last 16 months, funding around 20 startups broadly focused on decarbonization. Its portfolio includes EV companies, space and battery plays, and four nuclear fusion startups. But the firm has only said its funding is from “European industrial interests.” Now, Leitmotif has…

Russian crypto exchange Garantex seized in international law enforcement operation

U.S. and European law enforcement agencies have seized the infrastructure of Garantex, a cryptocurrency exchange accused of laundering billions in criminal proceeds, in a sweeping international operation that signals heightened focus on illicit financial flows in cryptocurrency markets. According to Justice Department documents unsealed Friday, the Moscow-based exchange processed approximately $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions…

Mangelhafte Cybersicherheit im Gesundheitswesen

15 Prozent der Endgeräte im Gesundheitssektor haben keine oder nicht-übereinstimmende Sicherheits- und Risikokontrollen. Panya_photo – Shutterstock.com Laut dem aktuellen Horizon Report 2025 wurden im Jahr 2024 weltweit 183 Millionen Patientendaten kompromittiert. Das ist ein Anstieg von neun Prozent im Vergleich zum Vorjahr. Doch weshalb fällt es für Gesundheitseinrichtungen so schwer, sich ausreichend vor Ransomware-Angriffen zu…

EU must ‘fully’ apply its market fairness rulebook on Google, search rivals urge

The European Union is once again being urged to expand its investigation of Google under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The big aim of the EU’s flagship competition reform — which came into force last spring — was to level the digital playing field by forcing platform giants into fairer dealing with rivals and…

Misconfigured access management systems expose global enterprises to security risks

Global enterprises are facing a serious security crisis as misconfigured Access Management Systems (AMS) expose sensitive employee data and grant potential access to restricted facilities. The vulnerabilities found across healthcare, education, manufacturing, and government industries put organizations at heightened risk of data breaches, financial losses, and compliance violations. In some cases, attackers could manipulate credentials…

Cino cracks bill-splitting at the moment of payment, raises seed round

While Venmo or Splitwise are effectively ‘debt collector’ tools, which require one person to pay a full bill and then request funds from others, neither have cracked bill-splitting at the moment of payment. European startup Cino, which has come up with just such a product, has now raised €3.5m in a Seed funding round led…

No part of Amazon is ‘unaffected’ by AI, says its head of AGI

“There’s scarcely a part of the company that is unaffected by AI,” said Vishal Sharma, Amazon’s VP of Artificial General Intelligence, today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. He also dismissed the idea that open-source models might reduce compute needs and demurred over the question of whether European companies would change their GenAI strategies in…

DMARC Adoption among Europe’s Higher Education Sector

This installment of DMARC adoption initiates a series on DMARC adoption, focusing on policy levels and best practices, in the higher education sector. We’ll begin with Europe. The post DMARC Adoption among Europe’s Higher Education Sector appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Renesas teams up with Applus+ Laboratories to achieve PSA Certified Level 1 with CRA Extension for three new MCU Groups

Certification Highlights Renesas Commitment to Cybersecurity Leadership COMPANY NEWS: Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced that it has successfully obtained PSA Certified Level 1 certification with the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) compliance extension for three of its latest microcontroller Groups (MCUs). This certification, evaluated by Applus+…

Europe’s Relay pulls in $35M Series A after applying Asia’s model to delivery

Being somewhat later than Europe in adopting the idea of parcel delivery, much of Asia built its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, effectively ‘Uberising’ how deliveries worked down to the last mile. Think DoorDash but for parcels, not food. This is what the founders of Europe’s Relay realized and decided to bring to the region —…

EU’s top court ruling on Android Auto antitrust referral could put interoperability requests in the fast lane

Europe’s top court has weighed in to clarify the rules around interoperability requirements on Big Tech in a referral on a case related to Google’s Android Auto platform. Back in 2021, the tech giant was hit with an €100 million antitrust fine by Italy’s competition authority for refusing to let a third-party electric car charging…

Thoma Bravo raises €1.8B for its first European fund

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo has closed its inaugural European fund at €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion), through which it plans to take equity stakes in mid-sized software companies across the continent. Europe has no shortage of homegrown venture capital (VC) funds — the likes of Atomico and Cherry Ventures have closed early and growth-stage funds…

Chinese-Linked Attackers Exploit Check Point Flaw to Deploy ShadowPad and Ransomware

A previously unknown threat activity cluster targeted European organizations, particularly those in the healthcare sector, to deploy PlugX and its successor, ShadowPad, with the intrusions ultimately leading to deployment of a ransomware called NailaoLocker in some cases. The campaign, codenamed Green Nailao by Orange Cyberdefense CERT, involved the exploitation of a new-patched security flaw

Apple purges apps without contact info from EU app store, as DSA deadline hits

A change requiring app developers to disclose their address, phone number, and email information to consumers has gone live on the App Store within the European Union. Apple on Tuesday announced it has removed any EU apps that haven’t yet complied with the Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulation that had added a requirement in…

Open source LLMs hit Europe’s digital sovereignty roadmap

Large language models (LLMs) landed on Europe’s digital sovereignty agenda with a bang last week, as news emerged of a new program to develop a series of “truly” open source LLMs covering all European Union languages. This includes the current 24 official EU languages, as well as languages for countries currently negotiating for entry to…

Azul Achieves DORA Compliance

In December Azul announced that the integrated risk management practices for its OpenJDK solutions fully support the requirements of the European Union’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) provisions. The stability, resilience and integrity of Azul’s solution not only ensure DORA compliance but also enhance digital resilience and mitigate risks. Azul received assurance in December, but…

Europe denies dropping AI liability rules under pressure from Trump

The European Union has denied that recent moves to row back on some planned tech regulation — principally by ditching the AI Liability Directive, a 2022 draft law which had been aimed at making it easier for consumers to sue over harms caused by AI-enabled products and services — were made in response to pressure…

EU’s Disinformation Code moves closer to becoming DSA benchmark

Staying on the right side of the European Union’s online rulebook when it comes to the slippery topic of disinformation is set to get easier for platforms that commit to the bloc’s long-standing Code of Practice on Disinformation. You know, the voluntary Code that Elon Musk pulled X (formerly Twitter) out of back in 2023.…

Defense and resilience tech reached an all-time high 10% of all VC funding in Europe

The war in Ukraine served as a wakeup call for Europe, and defense tech went from a sector that most European VCs didn’t touch to one of the top investment areas within deep tech. This shift is captured in Dealroom’s latest report on Defence, Resilience, and Security (DSR) in Europe, released together with the NATO…

EU abandons ePrivacy, AI liability reforms, as bloc shifts focus to competitiveness & data access for AI

A long stalled bid to beef up European Union rules around online tracking technologies — and put penalties on a similar footing to the bloc’s data protection framework, GDPR, which allows for fines of up to 4% of annual turnover for breaches — has been withdrawn by the Commission after co-legislators failed to reach agreement…

EU looks to the private sector to help fund ‘AI Gigafactories’, eyeing the frontier AI race

The European Union is courting the private sector as it looks to step up compute capacity for training large AI models. Giving a speech at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Monday, the EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, talked up the potential of homegrown AI startups but said the region’s developers must have…

Thai authorities detain four Europeans in ransomware crackdown

In a sweeping international law enforcement operation, Thai authorities arrested four Europeans in Phuket, accusing them of orchestrating ransomware attacks affecting Swiss companies worldwide. The suspects are allegedly tied to the 8Base ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) gang, which extorted $16 million worth of Bitcoin from over 1,000 individuals. The operation, termed “Phobos Aetor,” reflected a tightly coordinated…

Fortifying cyber security: What does secure look like in 2025?

The evolving cybersecurity landscape has increased security pressures for IT leaders. With the World Economic Forum estimating, the global cost of cybercrime is projected to reach $10.5trillion annually in 2025, the situation is only escalating[1]. The rise of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the complexities introduced by flexible working have made  IT…

German court orders X to give data access to democracy researchers ahead of federal elections

Under European Union law, X is one of a handful of major social media platforms that has a duty to facilitate public interest researchers’ access to support the study of systemic risks — such as to elections and other democratic processes. But the Elon Musk-owned company formerly known as Twitter has been blocking civil society…

CIOs and CISOs grapple with DORA: Key challenges, compliance complexities

In force since January, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) has required considerable effort from CIOs and CISOs at 20 types of financial entities to achieve compliance. For many, the journey is not complete. “In the past months, financial entities targeted by DORA have been busy internally defining roles and responsibilities related to ICT security,…

EU details which systems fall within AI Act’s scope

The European Union has published guidance on what constitutes an AI system under its new AI Act. The risk-based framework for regulating applications of artificial intelligence came into force last summer — with the first compliance deadline (on banned use cases) kicking in last weekend. Determining whether a particular software system falls within the act’s…

OpenAI launches data residency in Europe

OpenAI on Thursday launched data residency in Europe, allowing European organizations to meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the AI company’s products. Data residency refers to the physical location of an organization’s data, as well as the local laws and policy requirements imposed on that data. Most tech giants and cloud providers offer European…

Shein gets more questions from EU about DSA compliance

After consumer protection scrutiny dialled up on fast-fashion giant Shein in the European Union on Wednesday, the bloc’s executive announced Thursday that it’s sent a fresh request for information (RFI) to the ecommerce platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), a pan-EU online governance framework. The Commission oversees larger platforms’ compliance with a subset of…

Cherry Ventures raises a new $500M fund for early stage and beyond, but will it be enough?

It’s sometimes said that European VC doesn’t have the firepower to compete with VCs in the U.S., which regularly raise billion-dollar+ funds these days. Perhaps further evidence of this view persists in the news that Berlin-based Cherry Ventures has closed its latest fund at $500 million, to be split between early-stage rounds and follow-on rounds…

Shein hit with consumer protection action in EU as bloc unboxes strategy to tackle low-cost ecommerce risks

Chinese ecommerce and fast fashion giant Shein is facing fresh scrutiny in the European Union in relation to consumer protection rules following the launch of a coordinated action by the bloc’s Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPCN). The action is being conducted with reference to the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Consumer Rights Directive, Unfair Contracts…

Silent Lynx Using PowerShell, Golang, and C++ Loaders in Multi-Stage Cyberattacks

A previously undocumented threat actor known as Silent Lynx has been linked to cyber attacks targeting various entities in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. “This threat group has previously targeted entities around Eastern Europe and Central Asian government think tanks involved in economic decision making and banking sector,” Seqrite Labs researcher Subhajeet Singha said in a technical…

EU puts out guidance on uses of AI that are banned under its AI Act

The first compliance deadline kicked in a couple of days ago for the European Union’s AI Act, a risk-based framework for regulating uses of artificial intelligence — banning a narrow selection of so called “unacceptable risk” use-cases of AI, such as social scoring that could lead to detrimental or unfavourable treatment; or harmful manipulation using…

Who’s Behind the Seized Forums ‘Cracked’ & ‘Nulled’?

The FBI joined authorities across Europe last week in seizing domain names for Cracked and Nulled, English-language cybercrime forums with millions of users that trafficked in stolen data, hacking tools and malware. An investigation into the history of these communities shows their apparent co-founders quite openly operate an Internet service provider and a pair of…

AI systems with ‘unacceptable risk’ are now banned in the EU

As of Sunday in the European Union, the bloc’s regulators can ban the use of AI systems they deem to pose “unacceptable risk” or harm. February 2 is the first compliance deadline for the EU’s AI Act, the comprehensive AI regulatory framework that the European Parliament finally approved last March after years of development. The…

Backdoor in Chinese-made healthcare monitoring device leaks patient data

US federal agencies have warned that a popular Chinese-made patient monitor device used in medical settings across the US and Europe has a built-in backdoor that leaks patient data to an unauthorized remote server. The backdoor, present also in a rebranded version of the device, also allows the remote server, which appears to belong to…

FBI takes down Cracked.to and Nulled.to in a global law enforcement operation

FBI has taken down Cracked.to, Nulled.to, and a few other hack sites cybercriminals use for dropping stolen credentials, software cracks, and remote desktop hacks in a coordinated law enforcement operation. In Operation Talent, several domains suspected of facilitating hacking activities have been busted with a law-enforcement “seizure” notice now showing up on their landing. “This…

DeepSeek might have a trademark problem in the U.S.

Chinese AI company DeepSeek has been accused of IP theft, faced privacy inquiries in Europe, and has been the target of an enormous cyberattack. Now, it appears the company has a new headache on its hands: a U.S. trademark conflict. On Tuesday, DeepSeek filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seeking…

Alice&Bob raises $104M, says quantum computers based on cat qubits will be ready by 2030

Quantum computing remains something of a holy grail in the world of technology: it promises a huge leap in computing power, but only if someone can figure out how to square away the fault rates that prevent any scaling of the tech. Now, one of the more promising quantum startups in Europe is announcing a…

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