Peter Bassill — latest writing on cyber security
Latest articles · page 5 of 14
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Everyone in the shop is a suspect
Sainsbury's is tripling its Facewatch facial recognition, scanning every shopper's face against a private watchlist to catch a few. It's biometric special-category data, the ICO's own guidance calls it the hardest case to justify, and 'it works' is not the same as 'it's lawful.'
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The week in cyber — 29 June to 3 July 2026
A CitrixBleed sequel exploited within a day, on-prem SharePoint on a patch clock that runs out today, the police pricing UK ransomware and asking you not to pay, and the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill heading for the Lords.
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The week in cyber — 24 to 28 June 2026
Cisco phone systems, an engineering PLM vault and the Linux kernel each turned into a route to root in the same week — against a CISA patch deadline that fell on Sunday.
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School edtech in 2026: the lay of the land
Updating the 2023 post on school accounts and edtech, three years and one AI cycle later. What schools collect now, what the regulator has done, and the new category that did not exist in 2023 — AI tutors, AI markers, AI safeguarding tools.
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Making it stick: the second-half-of-2026 roadmap
Part four: making the strategy run — tested backups, a rehearsed incident plan, metrics a board will read, and a month-by-month roadmap to be certified and rehearsed by Christmas.
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Least certain exactly where it has to decide: the Home Office age guesser
A facial age-estimation system whose error margin is widest at the one line it exists to draw is not a decision aid. Setting the immigration politics aside, it fails on accuracy and privacy alone.
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FortiBleed: your firewall, turned into a wiretap
An update on the FortiGate exploitation story. SOCRadar's dismantling of FortiBleed shows 430,000 firewalls targeted and 110 million credentials harvested — by turning the appliance's own diagnostics into a credential tap. A board read, then the technical detail.
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Prinz Eugen: the ransomware that takes your newest work first
A new Go-based encryptor takes your most recently modified files first, inverting the assumption that fast response limits the damage. One data-broker turned operator, a UK firm already on the leak site. A board-level read, then a full technical teardown.
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The week in cyber — 15 to 19 June 2026
The NCSC calls it a contest, Parliament widens the net, and the actual ways in this week were an unpatched log server and a hijacked npm account.
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Breached without being touched: the Klue attack and the case for digital sovereignty
Two security firms were caught in a data theft this week without an attacker going anywhere near their systems. The way in was a sales tool they had connected to their CRM themselves. This is the clearest argument I have for owning your stack that I have seen in a while.
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The criminals have a product team now: The Gentlemen and the industrialised EDR-killer
A ransomware crew is shipping its affiliates a polished, standardised tool whose only job is to switch off your endpoint protection before the encryptor runs. The interesting part is not the malware. It is the business model.
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Teaching Children About Online Safety — A Practical Guide for Parents
Age-appropriate rules for internet access, how to talk to children about online risks, managing social media, and what to do when something goes wrong.
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From self-assessment to assurance: Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO 27001
Part three: turning a self-assessment into assurance. What Cyber Essentials Plus actually tests on your real machines, and how to build a proportionate ISO 27001 management system that keeps the controls alive.
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The week in cyber — 8 to 12 June 2026
Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day hits UK universities, Qilin ransomware exploits Check Point VPNs, Microsoft patches a wormable kernel flaw, and two regulatory deadlines land within days of each other.
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Parental Controls on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS and Linux
Configure built-in parental controls on every major operating system — screen time limits, content filtering, app restrictions, activity reports — plus browser, gaming platform and mobile device controls.