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• Philips Fixables opens the door to DIY repairs with a program built around 3D printing files
• One tiny 3D printed part might mark a big shift in how repairs are done
• Don’t get too excited, only one part is available, and it’s not widely accessible yet

Philips has launched an initiative called Philips Fixables, a program that allows customers to download and 3D print replacement parts for certain products.

According to Tom's Hardware, this is an early-stage effort with a limited rollout so far, but one that signals broader changes in how tech companies may begin supporting product longevity.

The project is currently being piloted in the Czech Republic, where Philips is collaborating with Prusa Research and LePub.

A rare move toward open-source repair

At present, the program includes just one part - a 3mm comb attachment for a Philips shaver - but the company says additional components will be added over time.

To print a compatible part, customers will download the corresponding file from Printables.com, a platform widely used by hobbyists and makers.

While the best 3D printers can replicate intricate parts with impressive accuracy, successful results will depend heavily on users following Philips’s recommended print settings. The company warns that deviations, such as reducing infill to save time or filament, could result in weaker or unusable parts.

As with any new idea, it remains to be seen whether this will succeed in practice. Users may end up printing inferior parts that repeatedly fail, leading to frustration rather than effective repairs.

It’s also unclear how quickly Philips will expand the program or what types of components will be included next.

The Philips Fixables website allows customers to request specific parts. If approved, Philips says it will notify users when those parts become available for download.

However, there’s currently no public timeline for turnaround, nor are there transparent criteria for determining which parts will be accepted. That may limit the program’s usefulness in its early form.

Still, the move is noteworthy. In an era where the best 3D printers and laser engravers are often restricted by proprietary ecosystems, offering open-source repair files, even in a limited capacity, is rare.

This initiative echoes recent efforts by other companies, such as Logitech’s partnership with iFixit, which also champions repair over replacement.

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WiiM's Sound speaker follows the company's range of budget streaming devices and includes voice assistant compatibility.

• WiiM announces 3 new streaming audio products
• WiiM Sound is Hi-Res Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speaker
• WiiM Sub Pro subwoofer and Amp Ultra amp also unveiled

WiiM has just announced that it's making its first speakers. The company has previously released a range of well-received music streaming devices and amps, and had partnered with Audio Pro on WiiM-enabled versions of that company's speakers, but these are its first self-made speakers.

It's introducing a wireless speaker called the WiiM Sound, and a subwoofer called the WiiM Sub Pro – plus a new, powerful streaming amp called the WiiM Amp Ultra.

The WiiM Sound very much looks like a competitor to the Sonos Era 100, and features a similar speaker setup, packing in two tweeters and a four-inch woofer – and promising 100W total of speaker power.

This isn't much of a surprise – ever since Sonos' disastrous app launch last year, WiiM has been taking advantage of the situation and pitching itself as the heir apparent for people who want multi-room streaming and don't trust Sonos any more.

But that was hard to do when WiiM only made amps and add-ons – the simplicity of having a speaker that handles everything is key to Sonos' popularity. This could be the final step.

The WiiM Sound is a very similar size to the Sonos Era 100 at 5.7x5.7x7.5 inches (146x146x193mm), and has touch controls on top for play/pause and skipping tracks, again very much like a Sonos Era 100 or most of the best wireless speakers.

But it's got one nice design feature that Sonos doesn't have: a cool circular touchscreen on the front, which can display artwork, show what's coming up in the queue, display retro VU meters, and can control playback.

(Image credit: WiiM)

There's built-in room correction for the sound, and Hi-Res Audio streaming support up to 24-bit/192 kHz.

The WiiM app provides multi-room support, and you use it to stream audio to the Sound from over 20 different music services, including the likes of Qobuz, Amazon, Tidal and Spotify. You can also stream to it from other apps using Google Cast, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect or DLNA.

You might notice a name and feature missing from what I've said so far: Apple Music and AirPlay 2. This is basically the only major wireless speaker that doesn't have AirPlay 2 built in, and Apple Music isn't supported in the WiiM Home app.

This will be a real knock to lots of people who make use of the Apple ecosystem, and puts WiiM at a major disadvantage over Sonos for them. However, there is Bluetooth support here to stream to it from just about anything.

You've got the ability to pair two WiiM Sound speakers in a stereo configuration, or it can even work as part of a 5.1-channel speaker system wirelessly, if you use a WiiM amp's HDMI connection. I'll be interested to dig more into this in the future.

You might see WiiM refer to this as a smart speaker, but I wouldn't class it that way – it can be controlled by Alexa or Google Assistant, but it doesn't have these services built-in with mics. You'd need to use another device to trigger them, such as an Echo Dot.

The other obvious missing feature here is a line-in port – there's no mention of this in WiiM's info. One nice feature of Sonos' current speakers is that you can plug one of the best turntables right into them, and get instant multi-room support for your vinyl. But you'll need one of WiiM's other streaming add-ons for that.

However, there's another catch to getting excited about this outside of the lack of Apple support: the price, or lack thereof. We don't know what it will be until closer to its release, which is said to be in "Q3 2025" – so somewhere between July and September. I suspect that this will be more expensive than the Sonos Era 100 given the addition of the touchscreen, but we'll find out later.

Subbing in

(Image credit: WiiM)

The WiiM Sub Pro is a subwoofer with 250W of Class-D amplification, and can work wirelessly with WiiM products, or wired to anything with a sub output via RCA.

There's an eight-inch driver, and it's a fairly compact sub at 15.7x11.8x12.7 inches, but still won't be that easy to hide away.

Because it's designed to pair with basically any speakers you want, whether WiiM or not, there are detailed adjustments for crossover tuning within the WiiM app, as well as EQ options and room correction.

Once again, there's no price, but again it's lined up for a Q3 release.

Amping up

(Image credit: WiiM)

WiiM also announced a powerful yet compact new streaming amp, called the WiiM Amp Ultra. It's capable of 200W of power per channel at 4 ohms, or 100W per channel at 8 ohms. It has connections for four speakers as a result, making it nice and flexible.

When it comes to inputs, you've got all of WiiM's streaming powers, including all major music streaming services and casting options – again, with the exception of Apple's services. Hi-Res streaming is supported at up to 24-bit/192kHz, however the ESS ES9039Q2M SABRE DAC inside is capable of decoding up to 32-bit/384kHz.

There are USB and Ethernet ports for these higher-quality files, and there's an RCA input, plus an HDMI ARC port to use it for home theater sound.

There also a touchscreen on the front for nice artwork and direct playback control, plus a volume dial, as you'd expect from any self-respecting powerful amp.

And once again, there's no price yet, and the release is promised in Q3.

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After a challenge by Republican officials in North Dakota, a federal appeals panel struck down a key way of enforcing the Voting Rights Act's protections against racial discrimination in seven states.

(Image credit: Samuel Corum)

• Microsoft accused of unfair software licensing practices... again – this time in the UK
• Consumers, businesses, and the public sector are all affected
• Office and Windows licenses are central to the case

Microsoft is facing a multibillion-pound legal claim in the UK over alleged anticompetitive behavior – Redmond has been accused of unfair software licensing practices, a complaint it's all-too familiar with given recent lawsuits and investigations.

The claim accuses the company of abusing its market dominance to restrict competition between new and pre-owned software licenses, inflating prices for both.

In the case of this particular lawsuit in the UK, the focus is on Microsoft Office and Windows licenses sold since October 1, 2015, therefore spanning a period of a decade.

Microsoft is in trouble in the UK over software licensing practices

Stewarts, a UK-based law firm, is leading the litigation, representing UK consumers, businesses and public sector bodies who purchased affected licenses.

Heading the case, Kate Pollock explained (via The Register): "Microsoft's conduct has had a profound and costly impact on millions of individuals and private and public sector organizations that rely on its software for daily business operations."

"This claim seeks to hold Microsoft to account and to secure compensation for the many affected members of the class. With billions of pounds potentially at stake, this case is about ensuring fairness in the digital marketplace and ensuring even the largest tech companies play by the rules," Alex Wolfson, the proposed class representative, added.

It's not the first time Microsoft has been in the news over anticompetitive business practices. A 2020 complaint from Slack was recently resolved when the tech giant unbundled Teams from its software subscriptions. Microsoft was also in trouble in the UK last year over allegedly making it more expensive for Windows Server customers to use the software on rival cloud platforms.

CISPE, representing cloud providers across Europe, also filed a complaint in 2022, but withdrew it after reaching a settlement with the Windows maker.

TechRadar Pro has asked Microsoft for a comment on the open UK case – any update will be posted here.

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Want to pay less to ride in an autonomous car? Uber will start offering that option next year.

AI can now generate alternative text on photos, and new settings will help make content easier for people to process.

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• A new leak reveals a new MSI Claw handheld, with the model name 'MSI Claw 7 A2HM'
• It appears to be an upgrade from the original MSI Claw A1M
• Previous rumors suggested a new MSI Claw would use one of AMD's Ryzen Z2 processors

The biggest computing tech event of the year, Computex 2025, is fast approaching, which means that new handheld gaming PCs could be unveiled – and fortunately, a new leak suggests a new handheld from MSI may be one of them.

As reported by VideoCardz, a new MSI Claw has been spotted by a leaker on X (@94G8LA), based on MSI's hardware parts store. It appears to be a new variant of the original MSI Claw A1M, as it's labelled 'MSI Claw 7 A2HM', but is instead rumored to use one of AMD's Ryzen Z2 APUs or Intel's Arrow Lake processors.

This comes after speculation of MSI eventually releasing a new Claw handheld that could take advantage of Team Red's new APU lineup; while this should be taken with a grain of salt, this leak makes the previous rumors more plausible.

The purported new Claw won't be an 'AI+' handheld based on its leaked model name, so it may be safe to assume that it might not be as powerful as the Claw 8's Core Ultra 7 258V chip. However, it could likely be an upgrade from the original A1M model, which used the Core Ultra 5 155H processor (and that wasn't received well based on reviews).

Regardless, the question remains; if it does use one of AMD's Ryzen Z2 processors, will this be the Z2 Go (which we've seen on the Legion Go S), the Z2, or the Z2 Extreme? If the latter is the answer, then we could be in for a fantastic upgrade from MSI's original A1M handheld mishap.

(Image credit: Jouri Altorf) I'd absolutely love a Ryzen Z2 Extreme MSI Claw, but just not with a 7-inch screen...

The negative consensus surrounding the MSI Claw A1M is old news at this point; it was criticized due to its poor gaming performance and battery life, along with the inability to compete against other handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally.

Despite the massive improvements made with the Claw 8 AI+, MSI looks set to right its wrongs with the rumored Claw A2HM model (especially if it's using the Z2 Extreme APU) – but the only gripe I have is that it will be another 7-inch display.

It's not terrible by any means, as I've become accustomed to using my Asus ROG Ally's 7-inch screen, but it's definitely not ideal. A lot of potential screen space is already taken up by bezels, and this is why I've had the MSI Claw 8 AI+ on my wishlist, thanks to its 8-inch screen and powerful processor alongside it for great performance.

These are still just rumors, of course, but if MSI can launch an 8-inch A2HM as well, it would actually be great competition for the Claw 8 AI+ with more variety for its consumers.

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• M&S is still dealing with the fallout of the cyberattack that hit its digital services
• Online orders remain paused three weeks after the hack took place
• Customer data stolen includes contact details but no passwords or payment information

Three weeks after Marks & Spencer was hit by a cyberattack, the retailer is still working to restore full services.

Online orders remain suspended, and the company has now confirmed that some customer data was stolen during the breach. The information taken may include names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and order histories. According to the company, no account passwords or usable payment details were exposed.

The attack has had a visible impact on M&S. Its market capitalization has dropped by around £1 billion since the incident, and while in-store shopping and contactless payments have resumed, the website and app are still offline for ordering.

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Continued disruption

If you visit the site now, a message states, “As part of our proactive management of a cyber incident, we have made the decision to pause taking orders via our M&S.com websites, apps and over the phone. Our product range remains available to browse online. We are truly sorry for this inconvenience. Our stores are open to welcome customers.”

The hackers used a known cybercrime service called DragonForce, which provides tools for ransomware attacks. This group is associated with a method known as double extortion - stealing data and also encrypting it to pressure victims into paying a ransom.

M&S said it acted quickly to contain the breach, working with cybersecurity experts and notifying relevant authorities. Customers have been emailed about the incident and are being prompted to reset their passwords as a precaution.

So far, DragonForce’s darknet platform has not posted any leaked M&S data, but experts note there is still a risk of future exposure or sale.

The retailer has not confirmed how many individuals were affected, though its most recent annual report listed 9.4 million active online users.

Other UK retailers have also been targeted recently, including Co-op and Harrods. Co-op, which experienced a similar incident, is reportedly closer to resuming online operations for its suppliers.

M&S has apologized for the disruption and reassured customers that steps are being taken to secure systems. Despite this, it remains unclear when full online functionality will return.

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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international correspondents share snapshots capturing moments from their lives and work in places around the world.

The platform is being rebranded. Again.

The so-called AI Diffusion Rule was set to go into effect this week. It's now history.

There are silent assassins stalking organizations, slashing profits with a thousand little cuts. Friction, bloat, sclerotic processes, shadow IT - and now more commonly - shadow AI, outdated manual toil… There are a myriad of small indignities an organization's IT operations can fall prey to. Time, business growth, staff turnover, and the actions of teams unfamiliar with the IT environment all add to the power of these assassins.

The good news however, is the slow and patient nature of these threats. None of the risks are too complicated or costly to manage - requiring merely care in business planning, tech investments, and team work management. And that’s a mercy, since they make IT budgets rise while increasing unplanned downtime, slow the efficiency of incident management, reduce profit margins, lower customer trust, and raise the risk of a regulatory penalty.

First - take down downtime

Downtime is not a welcome guest, it’s an obvious and costly profit killer. The causes can be relatively benign, but a website outage directly costs revenue just the same as a physical site work stoppage - whether from an unfortunate mishap or a cyberattack.

Taking down these threats requires action across a few areas.

Proactive monitoring: There are monitoring tools for the networking operations center (NOC) that can detect and resolve issues before they escalate into outages that cost megabucks. The right monitoring tools and a trained IT team is the first line of spotting potential incidents and stepping in to stop them escalating.

Plan disaster recovery: A strong recovery plan gets you out of the fire quicker. Understanding your assets, infrastructure, and procedures ensures that systems can be recovered faster to return the business to profitable activity.

Cybersecurity is critical: Cyberattacks are becoming frequent and costly. Strong cybersecurity protects organizations from technical risks including data breaches and service disruption, and all the consequent effects on users and the bottom line that these entail - reducing the risk of subsequent recovery costs and regulatory penalties.

Second - knock bloat on the head

NOCs are guilty in times past of becoming bloated, reactive, and resource intensive. Stripping back all that and adopting a leaner approach to streamline operations will reduce costs and ensure that systems remain optimized for performance and resilience above all.

Organizations have found staffing a perpetual issue. Staff turnover and recruitment are a morale, culture and budget drain. A repetitive, high-pressure role without the right management and cultural support creates a vicious cycle of hire, train, lose, repeat. Consequently, organizations often overstaff to offset these challenges. This merely treats the symptoms rather than the causes of the poor working experience and doesn’t help to trim their costs.

It’s vital to look afresh at the NOC and set it up for success in this era - not the one when it was first designed.

Automate the toil: Automation can handle much of the management, all of the ticketing and system monitoring to reduce team workload. These increase efficiency and logging for compliance while making the role more pleasing to staff.

Layer AI to support incident: Modern AI solutions can help manage many first-level incidents, freeing staff from part of the resolution process and focusing their skills where needed.

Flex: Remote work and flexible scheduling are perfectly compatible with the modern NOC. It can reduce overheads and attract top talent.

Training and development add to the experience: Career development improves retention and allows staff to exercise more of their mental muscles, while improving the quality of service.

These suggestions can reduce staffing costs and poor working experiences as well as improve incident response, helping to future-proof the organization's IT operations over the long term.

Third - Shine a light on the shadowy costs of incident management

Every second involved in an ongoing incident is correlated to lost productivity, revenue, and customer satisfaction. By taking a proactive approach to incident management hidden costs can be uncovered and eliminated.

Mean time to resolution (MTTR) is a fearsome foe. But AI-driven tools can massively reduce it, minimising downtime.

Don’t defeat every foe one by one. Root cause analysis helps the team fix a repeated problem once and for all. With root cause analysis Ops can prevent recurring issues and reduce their long-term costs.

Call on allies. Incident response often involves multiple teams. With the right collaboration tools organizations improve response times and reduce friction and mistakes.

Moreover, learning from incidents, a post-incident analysis, is critical to improving processes for the next situation. Organizational improvement comes from both overcoming and also contextualizing incidents. This improves long-term planning, documentation, knowledge sharing, and processes. The ability to do this is one of the hallmarks of mature operations and signposts that Ops can overcome future incidents more readily.

A strong castle repels the enemy

When the silent assassins are disarmed the organization directly benefits. Leaner, modernized processes and functions like NOCs that strip out waste provide better value for their activity. Obviously better organizational - including digital - resilience reduces downtime, directly improving revenue and customer satisfaction.

Efficiency and resiliency are the moat and walls around that castle. Saving the time, money, and team morale that poor IT saps away requires running smarter, leaner, and with greater resilience in IT operations. Regardless of your industry, the principles of a lean and modern NOC, digital resilience, and efficient incident management all transform the bottom line. The assassins of inefficiency are a business risk that needn’t haunt the organization with the power they used to hold. Their time has passed.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• US plans to drop the Biden-era diffusion rule
• The export restrictions were affecting allies as well as countries of concern
• Trump wants to "end past conflicts and forge new partnerships" including in the Middle East

According to a new report by the South China Morning Post, the Trump administration is planning to rescind the Biden-era diffusion rule, which was introduced to restrict the spread of AI chips abroad.

The announcement came from White House AI and crypto official David Sacks, who revealed the change during the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh.

Sacks explained that Saudi Arabia is not considered to be a national security risk, calling for more open tech exports between trusted partners.

The US will open up tech exports to trusted countries

The diffusion rule was part of Biden's effort to block AI chip access to countries of concern, most notably China. China's military and AI capabilities were the primary cause for concern, with the White House previously worried that the country could use US-build semiconductors to advance its own technology.

However, Sacks explained that the rule has been affecting allies unnecessarily. Now that the US is seeking closer tech ties with Middle Eastern nations, accelerated by much lower tariffs than those imposed on China, export rules must change.

"The Trump administration has just announced that we will be rescinding what’s known as the Biden diffusion rule … it literally restricted the diffusion or proliferation of American technology all over the world," Sacks said.

Critics also argued that, with the export rules in place, countries were being forced to source tech from China due to the more favorable pricing and fewer restrictions.

"As I have shown repeatedly, I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be very profound," Trump explained in an address at the event.

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• A new rumor suggests One UI 8 could add a narration feature to the Samsung Galaxy S25 series' Now Brief feature
• Tentatively titled Listen Brief, the feature applies a text-to-speech processor to the AI-generated news and update summary
• One UI 8 is without a release date at the time of writing.

Without a doubt, one of the coolest Samsung features to launch this year is Now Brief, the AI-powered daily summary that sits at the core of the Galaxy S25 series AI-focused platform.

As SammyGuru reports, the Now Brief feature seems to be exclusive to the Galaxy S25 series for now – the wider release of One UI 7 hasn’t brought the feature to older devices

That’s likely due to its reliance on the Knox security chip, which was introduced with Samsung’s latest flagships; but while older devices might miss out on Now Brief, it seems that Galaxy S25 users could see the feature quite substantially upgraded with the next version of One UI.

A new rumor suggests that One UI 8 could bring a new feature called Listen Brief, which is pretty much what it sounds like – an audio version of the Now Brief. The feature was uncovered in a look at unreleased code by Android Authority.

Now Brief is already a pretty convenient concept, packaging rolling news, updates, weather and more into a quickly digestible feed.

But for those who want an extra shot of convenience, Listen Brief would make getting your daily dose of personalized information even easier.

The findings suggest you’ll be able to choose between Samsung's and Google’s text-to-speech processing, which means this is likely a narration of the existing Now Brief text, rather than an AI assistant reading, processing, and then explaining the contents of the brief.

The Now Brief feature currently seems to be limited to the Galaxy S25 series (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

Speaking personally, I’ve not been the keenest on AI – I have my issues with the generative side of things, and when it comes to time-saving stuff like transcription and email summaries I’ve rarely had a use for the tools on offer – but even I was impressed by Now Brief when it was revealed at this year’s first Samsung Galaxy Unpacked.

As for Listen Brief, I can see this being useful for a few types of people – first and foremost those with visual impairments or issues processing text. I’ll always welcome features that make tech more accessible to more people.

Listen Brief could also be a useful addition for commuters, parents with busy mornings, or those who just prefer listening to reading. It’s a neat potential addition to what was already a great idea.

We’re still quite a way away from seeing One UI 8, but I’m hoping that the best Samsung phones will receive their next major OS update in quicker fashion than the wobbly rollout of One UI 7. Let us know whether you’d use Listen Brief in the comments below.

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Every day, we read news of another business that has fallen foul of a cyber-attack, whether it be through phishing or nasty malware - no one is immune. Businesses are still battling against an onslaught of attacks and despite years of warnings many are failing to get to grips with good cyber hygiene. It's a huge concern as AI threats advance the spread, sophistication and believability of AI attacks, leaving businesses increasingly -and dangerously- exposed.

According to Howden’s research, half (52%) of UK businesses, representing 1.3 million private sector companies, have suffered at least one cyber attack in the past five years, equating to a whopping £44bn of lost revenue.

While cybercriminals may have their sights set on large enterprises with a treasure trove of data to shield, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are the most vulnerable to malware attacks. And this comes at a considerable cost. Analysis from Vodafone Business shows that small businesses across the UK are losing £3.4 billion a year thanks to inadequate cybersecurity measures. So, with the stakes so high, what's holding back organizations from getting their cyber hygiene in order?

Why SMBs are easy targets

For starters, an SMB’s entry point might not be as closely guarded as larger counterparts, and many don’t have robust enough security postures to mitigate malware attacks. Furthermore, when they do face a threat, many lack awareness of what a malware attack looks like or aren’t armed with the best knowledge to mitigate or remediate the issue. Limited budgets play a huge part, with many IT teams doing their best to plate-spin with limited resources.

A study, commissioned by GoTo, finds that 58% of IT decision-makers are experiencing burnout and struggling with soaring workloads amid increasing digital demands. With an ever-demanding job and without being armed with the right tools, they are not being set up for success when battling cybercriminals' seemingly endless box of tricks.

Human error entry points are the primary way criminals get the upper hand. Some small businesses may offer less training on security best practices for employees, leaving cybercriminals to exploit human errors, such as employees clicking on malicious links and using weak passwords to breach systems. Easy mistakes can have a big impact.

The average cost of a cyber breach for SMEs in the UK is estimated at £8,460. The power of AI will only make matters worse, with advancements expected to fuel sophisticated multichannel attacks. Not included in this is the cost of reputational harm and potential loss of business.

Being on the pulse of evolving attack strategies

We’re seeing new players emerge every day with sophisticated strategies. The most common threat types are phishing, social engineering attacks and malware but hackers are always looking to sharpen their tactics by leaning into new technology and exploiting new wrinkles on old threats. Ransomware as a service (RaaS) makes accessibility of these tools to small-time crooks even easier.

Across these threat types, there are specialist players. Opentext’s Nastiest Malware report found that the worst malware offender last year was ransomware group LockBit. Known for its resilience and relentless pursuit of critical targets, LockBit has successfully dodged multiple law enforcement crackdowns.

According to the FBI's Internet Crime report, LockBit was reported in 175 attacks on critical infrastructure, underscoring its staying power and adaptability. The caliber of these threats is high, and unfortunately, LockBit is on a long list of other prolific offenders.

Experts also identified the most relentless and adaptive malware trends impacting industries worldwide, with ransomware aimed at critical infrastructure coming out on top. In response, organizations were projected to increase their cybersecurity investments by 14.3% last year, reaching more than $215 billion.

It’s not just businesses turning to AI to help with efficiencies. Cybercriminals are increasingly using artificial intelligence to develop highly personalized threats and we’re seeing new tactics such as deepfake technology come into play, endangering a lot of businesses. Education and upskilling on these threats is vital.

The recipe for cybersecurity success

Prevention plays an important role in safeguarding SMBs. Although it may seem basic to some, proactive cybersecurity measures, such as regular updates, multi-factor authentication, data backups, and penetration testing, are all key parts of the puzzle.

Companies also need to ensure that they have defined security policies and procedures to avoid any leak of information. This is where employee education comes in. As the gatekeepers of information, their cybersecurity literacy and awareness of policies can determine the success of your strategy. Engaging and realistic attack simulations and scenario-based training can be used to identify those who need upskilling while simultaneously flagging any training gaps.

As IT Leaders, you need to test and adapt your strategies. Test your incident response plans and refine them as required. This should be constantly evolving just like threat strategies. Deploying the 3-2-1 backup rule (where you have three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept off-site) will help to ensure continuity if you are a target. Finally, working with a cybersecurity partner can support IT professionals to plan, and execute comprehensive safety measures.

While headlines on cyber attacks can cause alarm, there is a silver lining. The ongoing media attention on ransomware and cybersecurity raises awareness. It pushes more organizations to proactively prioritize cybersecurity investments. Not only does this commitment protect their data and people, but it also ensures they aren’t the next victim featured on the front page.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

A Los Angeles judge resentenced Lyle and Erik Menendez, who have spent over three decades behind bars for the 1989 killing of their parents. They are now eligible for parole — but it's not guaranteed.

(Image credit: Nick Ut)