Geek-Guy.com

Category: Europe

Build, don’t bind: Accel’s Sonali De Rycker on Europe’s AI crossroads

Sonali De Rycker, a general partner at Accel and one of Europe’s most influential venture capitalists, is bullish about the continent’s prospects in AI. But she’s wary of regulatory overreach that could hamstring its momentum. At a TechCrunch StrictlyVC evening earlier this week in London, De Rycker reflected on Europe’s place in the global AI…

TechCrunch and VivaTech Partner for the VivaTech Innovation of the Year

TechCrunch is joining forces with VivaTech, Europe’s biggest startup and tech event, to select startups for the prestigious VivaTech Innovation of the Year at VivaTech 2025. This partnership will highlight exceptional creativity, technological ingenuity, and industry-transforming potential among exhibiting startups. The VivaTech Innovation of the Year Award acknowledges and celebrates exhibiting startups at VivaTech 2025…

Proofpoint to acquire Hornetsecurity for over $1 billion

Proofpoint has entered into an agreement to acquire Hornetsecurity Group, a Germany-based provider of Microsoft 365 security services, in a deal reportedly valued at more than $1 billion. The acquisition, described as the largest in Proofpoint’s history, comes amid accelerating consolidation in the cybersecurity industry as companies seek to broaden their offerings to enterprise customers…

Alternatives to Microsoft Outlook webmail come under attack in Europe

CISOs need to ensure that web email clients and browsers are kept up to date following the discovery of cross site scripting attacks on organizations running webmail clients such as Roundcube, Horde, MDaemon, and Zimbra. The alert came today from researchers at ESET, who, after seeing attacks on government and defense organizations in Ukraine, Romania,…

Fancy Bear campaign sought emails of high-level Ukrainians and their military suppliers

Fancy Bear, the hacking group linked to Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), has been targeting the email accounts of high-ranking Ukrainian officials as well as executives at defense contractors located in other countries who sell weapons and equipment to Kyiv, according to new research from ESET. The campaign, ongoing since at least 2023, has taken…

Spain to vet power plants’ cybersecurity for ‘great blackout’ cause

The Spanish government has yet to determine the specific causes of the blackout that left the country without power for an entire day on April 28. Discovering the cause, as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced in an appearance before Congress on May 7, “will take some time,” as approximately 756 million pieces of data from hundreds of…

New EU vulnerability database will complement CVE program, not compete with it, says ENISA

From this week, the global technology industry has a new database to check for the latest software security flaws: the European Union Vulnerability Database (EUVD). Made operational by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) to fulfil the EU’s NIS2 cybersecurity Directive, EUVD joins a small but important group of global vulnerability tracking platforms headed…

Vertical Aerospace has a plan to capitalize on Europe’s defense tech moment

Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s reluctance to support NATO allies has led to a boost in funding for European defense tech. And across industries, startups are leveraging the opportunity. One such company could be UK-based startup Vertical Aerospace, which is developing eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft mainly for air taxi…

IAM 2025: Diese 10 Trends entscheiden über Ihre Sicherheitsstrategie

Die Kernaussage der EIC Conference 2025: IAM ist ein ganzheitlicher Architekturansatz und kein Toolset. Zolak – shutterstock.com Identity & Access Management (IAM) ist nicht länger eine Frage der Tool-Auswahl, sondern der Architektur. Diese Kernaussage prägte die European Identity and Cloud Conference 2025, die vom 6. bis 9. Mai in Berlin stattfand. Mit über 1.500 Teilnehmern,…

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the…

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the…

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the…

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the…

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the…

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the…

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the…

India-Pakistan conflict underscores your C-suite’s need to prepare for war

This week began with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer ordering government officials to update their contingency plans in the event of all-out war. He noted that current plans are some 20 years old and “badly out of date.” Then the next day, we witnessed the kinetic confrontation between India and Pakistan experience a major…

Uber and WeRide set their robotaxi sights on 15 more cities

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide plan to expand a commercial robotaxi partnership and bring the service to another 15 cities over the next five years. The expansion comes five months after the two companies launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi.  The companies said the expansion will include cities in Europe. Under…

Weekly Update 450

Looking back at this week’s video, it’s the AI discussion that I think about most. More specifically, the view amongst some that any usage of it is bad and every output is “slop”. I’m hearing that much more broadly lately, that AI is both “robbing” creators and producing sub-par results. The latter is certainly true…

Microsoft appoints Deputy CISO for Europe to reassure European IT leaders

Microsoft on Wednesday announced that it will be creating a new position: a Deputy CISO for Europe. Who that Deputy CISO will ultimately be is unclear. Wednesday’s statement simply said that Microsoft CISO Igor Tsyganskiy is “appointing a new Deputy CISO for Europe as part of the Microsoft Cybersecurity Governance Council,” but the phrasing made…

From tech pioneers to ‘extremists’: Belarusian founders face exile and statelessness

In 2013, Tatyana Marynich and Anastasiya Khamiankova opened the doors to Imaguru, a startup hub in Minsk, Belarus that would go on to launch some of Eastern Europe’s most prominent tech success stories. A decade later, they’ve been sentenced ‘in absentia’ to a combined 23 years in prison by Belarusian authorities. Their property has been…

YouTube support affected by European power outages, too

YouTube’s support team is experiencing an outage, too. The company says the widespread power outages in Spain and Portugal have knocked some of YouTube’s customer support team offline, including those who offer support in related European languages. The company did not share how many employees are unable to work because of the outages, or how…

StrictlyVC heads to london and Athens this May: Featuring Prime Minister of Greece and Europe’s leading tech and VC voices

It’s been a busy year for TechCrunch events — and it’s about to get even bigger. StrictlyVC, our boutique, highly exclusive event series for VCs and startups, is crossing the Atlantic this May with stops in London and Athens! We’re bringing StrictlyVC’s insider conversations to Europe. On May 8, we’ll dive into Athens’ booming tech…

GDPR Data Breach Notification Template With Examples [Download]

The GDPR is a law developed by the European Union (EU) to protect individuals’ personal data. Although it originated in the EU, several countries and organisations outside Europe have to date also adopted this regulation, which shows how detailed and well-thought-out it is. Among many of the GDPR’s guidelines, the data breach notification letter is…

Spotify’s AI playlist rolls out to Asia and more markets

Spotify announced on Thursday that it expanded the availability of its AI Playlist feature to over 40 additional markets, including countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean.  The AI-powered tool, currently in beta on Android and iOS devices, lets listeners create personalized playlists based on written prompts, such as “workout music to make my…

New data privacy act puts Indian companies on high alert

With the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 expected to become a law in the coming months, Indian companies are under pressure to overhaul their data handling practices to meet new legal obligations. “Readiness is uneven,” said Mini Gupta, cybersecurity partner at EY India. “The larger, tech-savvy firms—especially in IT/ITeS, BFSI, and telecom—are relatively…

EU fines Apple, Meta millions for breaching tech competition rules

The European Union has fined Apple €500 million (about $568 million) and Meta €200 million (about $227 million) for allegedly breaching the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, according to The Wall Street Journal. The EU has accused Apple of failing to comply with an obligation to allow app developers to inform customers of alternative ways to…

Froda secures $23M Series B for its debt financing platform for SMEs

Swedish Fintech startup Froda has secured a $22.7 million (€20 million) Series B round led by Incore Invest, also based in Sweden. The move bucks the trend of a slight slowdown in investments into fintech, plus a further confirmation of the long-term trend towards the ’embedded finance’ model.  Largely operating in northern European countries from…

StrictlyVC heads to Athens for in-depth conversations on European innovation and investment

StrictlyVC is turning up the heat in 2025 — and we’re going international! First stop: Athens, May 8. Get ready for sharp, unfiltered conversations onstage — and your chance to jump into the dialogue. This isn’t just an event; it’s a forum where every attendee has a voice with some of Europe’s most influential tech…

The state of cyberwar in Ukraine — and how CISOs can help

Earlier this month my researcher Barbara Schluetter and I had the pleasure of attending the Kyiv International Cyber Resilience Forum 2025, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Over the course of two days the various presenters from the government of Ukraine, EU organizations, neighboring European nations and other private entities outlined the current situation with respect to cybersecurity…

StrictlyVC heads to Athens for in-depth conversations on European innovation and investment

StrictlyVC is turning up the heat in 2025 — and we’re going international! First stop: Athens, May 8. Get ready for sharp, unfiltered conversations onstage — and your chance to jump into the dialogue. This isn’t just an event; it’s a forum where every attendee has a voice with some of Europe’s most influential tech…

ChatGPT search is growing quickly in Europe, OpenAI data suggests

ChatGPT search, OpenAI’s feature within ChatGPT that allows the chatbot to access and incorporate up-to-date information from the web into its responses, is growing at a fast clip in Europe. A report filed by one of OpenAI’s EU corporate divisions, OpenAI Ireland Limited, reveals ChatGPT search had roughly 41.3 million average monthly active “recipients” for…

APT29 Deploys GRAPELOADER Malware Targeting European Diplomats Through Wine-Tasting Lures

The Russian state-sponsored threat actor known as APT29 has been linked to an advanced phishing campaign that’s targeting diplomatic entities across Europe with a new variant of WINELOADER and a previously unreported malware loader codenamed GRAPELOADER. “While the improved WINELOADER variant is still a modular backdoor used in later stages, GRAPELOADER is a newly observed…

Russia-linked APT29 targets European diplomats with new malware

Cyberespionage group known as APT29 and linked to Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR), has added a new malware loader to its toolset. Used for fingerprinting, persistence and payload delivery, the new loader was observed in a recent phishing campaign against diplomatic missions in Europe. “In this current wave of attacks, the threat actors impersonate a…

Lyft to buy taxi app FREENOW for $197M to enter Europe

Ride-hailing giant Lyft said it has agreed to acquire FREENOW, a German multi-mobility app with ride-hail at its core, from BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility for about $197 million in cash.  The acquisition opens up the European market to Lyft for the first time. The company has only operated in the U.S. and Canada since it…

How not to hire a North Korean IT spy

CISOs looking for new IT hires already struggle with talent market shortages and bridging cybersecurity skills gaps. But now they face a growing challenge from an unexpected source: sanctions-busting North Korean software developers posing as potential hires. North Korea is actively infiltrating Western companies using skilled IT workers who use fake identities to pose as remote workers with foreign companies,…

Ireland’s data regulator investigates X’s use of European user data to train Grok

Ireland’s data regulator, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), said Friday that it has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the social media platform’s use of personal data collected from European users to train Grok. The DPC will investigate how X processes personal data “comprised” in publicly accessible posts by European users for the…

Lessons learned about cyber resilience from a visit to Ukraine

During a visit to the recent Kyiv International Cyber Resilience Forum 2025 in Ukraine, I encountered a recurring theme across a plethora of speakers: always be flexible and keep your options open and active. The context for these discussions was drawn from both the kinetic and cyber wars being fought in Ukraine against the invading…

How Trump’s tariffs are shaking up the cybersecurity sector

The introduction of new US tariffs has significantly rattled the US cybersecurity sector, reducing the stock market valuations of cybersecurity companies by tens of billions of dollars and sparking concerns that organizations may be forced to cut cybersecurity spending. The tariffs could also lay the groundwork for creating regionalized and weaker cybersecurity technologies globally. President…

North Korean Hackers Disguised as IT Workers Targeting UK, European Companies, Google Finds

The attackers pose as legitimate remote IT workers, looking to both generate revenue and access sensitive company data through employment. “Europe needs to wake up fast,” according to Google’s Jamie Collier.

Redwood Materials preps for expansion spree with new R&D center in San Francisco

Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in recent years — growth that has extended the lithium-ion battery recycling and materials startup’s footprint well beyond its Carson City, Nevada headquarters as it locked up deals with Toyota, Panasonic, and, GM, started construction on a South Carolina factory, and made an acquisition in Europe. And…

The Trump administration made an unprecedented security mistake – you can avoid doing the same

If you are the custodian for sensitive information, you have no doubt been watching the inexplicable mishandling of the US military attack on Yemen by the senior members of the Trump administration and perhaps hyperventilating. As a former intelligence officer, I know I was, and I haven’t touched a piece of classified material since 2011.…

Twin’s first AI agent is an invoice-retrieval agent for Qonto customers

When Twin came out of stealth in January 2024, AI agents were more of a theoretical concept than a reality. Today, the Paris-based company is releasing an automation agent in partnership with Qonto, the fintech startup that offers business bank accounts to more than 500,000 customers across Europe. If you want to automate repetitive tasks,…

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…