This Week’s Top 5 Stories in Technology
Why Legacy Systems are Amplifying Cyber Threats in Aviation
A ransomware assault on Collins Aerospace’s check-in and boarding systems – which paralysed key hubs in Heathrow, Brussels and Berlin – has not only caused major disruption across Europe and beyond, but exposed deeper systemic vulnerabilities in critical aviation infrastructure.
Experts from across the cybersecurity sector are now stressing that while the immediate crisis was unusually disruptive, the broader lessons go far beyond fixing what was broken.
Cody Barrow, CEO of EclecticIQ, frames the attack as a demonstration of the fragile dependency aviation operators have on a limited number of third-party providers.
“By targeting a single vendor, attackers were able to disrupt airports across multiple countries,” he points out, describing the event as a textbook case of supply chain risk in action.
Cody calls on aviation stakeholders and regulators to treat cyber resilience with the same intensity historically reserved for physical safety.
He adds: “That means building redundancy, running realistic contingency exercises and ensuring threat intelligence flows quickly between partners.
“We should expect incidents like this to become more frequent and the sector must treat cyber resilience with the same urgency as physical safety.”
The fallout also highlights the ageing technology landscape that underpins modern air travel, according to Matt Saunders, Field CTO at Adaptavist.
“When the entry point of a major cyber attack is still unknown, scrutiny will inevitably fall on weak spots in the everyday systems used by millions of passengers and whether their personal data has been involved,” Matt shares.
“Copycat attacks are almost guaranteed to follow, as seen this year, with JLR and M&S facing significant downtime and financial loss following social engineering cyber breaches.
“The aviation sector is particularly exposed as it leans heavily on ageing, legacy systems never designed for today’s cyber threatscape.
“They are an open target and we’ve already seen the attack start to spread across Europe.”
As investigations continue to pinpoint the attack’s entry point, his advice is a stark reminder for IT teams across industries: prioritise social engineering defences, maintain timely patches and prepare for follow-on assaults.
Can Oracle's New Co-CEOs Sustain Its AI Infrastructure Boom?
“Today, Oracle is recognised as the cloud of choice for both AI training and inferencing,” says Safra Catz, who after 11 years as Oracle’s chief executive will step aside for co-CEOs Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. “At this time of strength is the right moment to pass the CEO role to the next generation of capable executives.”
The leadership change comes as Oracle approaches a trillion-dollar market valuation, with shares gaining 85% in the past year. The enterprise software giant’s remaining performance obligations have soared to $455 billion, up 359% from a year earlier, as companies rush to adopt AI technologies. Oracle announced the appointments on 22 September 2025, with Safra Catz becoming Executive Vice Chair of the Board of Directors.
Clay Magouyrk, 39, takes charge from his role as President of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, whilst Mike Sicilia, 54, moves up from President of Oracle Industries. Clay will oversee infrastructure whilst Mike manages applications for enterprise AI workloads.
Clay joined Oracle in 2014 from Amazon Web Services as a founding engineer of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. His background includes direct experience with hyperscale cloud operations that Oracle needed as it built competing infrastructure against Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Mike entered Oracle through the acquisition of Primavera Systems and has overseen Oracle's vertical applications portfolio across healthcare, banking, communications, utilities, hospitality and retail sectors. His teams rebuilt Oracle Health following the company's $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner in 2022.
Larry Ellison, Oracle's Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, says Clay’s “years of experience leading Oracle’s large, fast-growing Cloud Infrastructure business has demonstrated his readiness for a CEO role,” noting that he “has spent the last several years modernising Oracle's Industry applications businesses – including Oracle Health – by completely rebuilding those applications using the latest AI technologies.”
LevelBlue: Rising Cyber Threats Push Manufacturers to Boost
As manufacturing organisations increasingly adopt AI and automation to optimise processes, the cyber threat landscape has grown more complex.
LevelBlue’s 2025 Spotlight Report: Cyber Resilience and Business Impact in Manufacturing highlights a critical gap between rising cyber threats and manufacturers’ preparedness, prompting a strategic focus on cyber resilience.
The report, based on a survey of 220 manufacturing executives, reveals a surge in anticipated AI-powered cyberattacks and sophisticated threat vectors this year.
Despite 44% expecting AI-driven attacks, only 32% feel equipped to defend against them.
Deepfake and synthetic identity attacks are expected by 47% of leaders, yet only 30% feel ready for them to strike.
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks – amplified by geopolitical tensions and insecure IoT devices – remain significant, with just 37% prepared for attacks of this nature.
Longstanding concerns persist around data security and privacy, cited by 55% as their top challenge.
As well as this, visibility into software supply chains remains poor, with 54% reporting very low to moderate insight and only 26% prioritising engagement with software suppliers on security credentials.
These vulnerabilities pose a serious risk of supply chain breaches that could cascade through manufacturing ecosystems.
How Will AWS and SAP Reshape European Cloud Sovereignty?
Amazon Web Services and SAP have announced plans to integrate SAP Sovereign Cloud capabilities with the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, combining SAP’s enterprise application expertise with AWS cloud infrastructure to serve customers in highly regulated industries seeking AI innovation opportunities.
Building on the companies’ existing relationship spanning more than 16 years, SAP Sovereign Cloud capabilities represent security-hardened cloud solutions from SAP, designed to align with industry standards for regulated industries and government organisations.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will launch its first region in Brandenburg, Germany by the end of 2025, with Amazon planning to invest €7.8bn (US$9.2bn) in this infrastructure. The offering targets public sector organisations and customers in highly regulated industries, providing options to meet digital sovereignty requirements including data residency, operational autonomy and resiliency demands.
“We’re delighted that SAP Sovereign Cloud capabilities will be available on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. This will give organisations more choice in how they meet their sovereignty requirements while leveraging cloud technologies,” says David Brown, Vice President of Compute and Machine Learning at AWS.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud operates separately and independently from AWS’s existing regions. The infrastructure maintains no dependencies on non-EU systems, backed by technical controls, sovereign assurances and legal protections. Customers can access the full capacity of AWS with the same security, resilience and service portfolio available in existing regions.
David continues: “SAP and AWS share a mutual vision: we want to ensure that our customers have access to sovereignty solutions, so organisations can focus on innovation and driving outcomes. We’re looking forward to our ongoing collaboration with SAP and seeing the ways that organisations across Europe will innovate with the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.”
Will Trump's Visa Fees Backfire and Affect Silicon Valley?
US President Donald Trump's imposition of a US$100,000 annual fee on H-1B visa applications has sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley.
The restrictions are threatening to fundamentally reshape how America's most valuable companies recruit their talent.
The proclamation, which took effect at midnight on 21 September, represents a dramatic reversal of the President's previous stance on the visa programme that has become essential to the tech industry's growth.
"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great programme," Trump told the New York Post in December last year.
