Blog

News and information from the Advent IM team.

Ransomware payment restrictions are coming. Your resilience plan needs to assume you can’t pay.

The UK is moving towards a tougher stance on ransomware payments, particularly for the public sector and regulated critical national infrastructure. Policy proposals have included a targeted ban for those sectors, alongside measures that increase incident reporting and introduce a notify-to-pay approach for organisations outside the ban.  This shift matters because it changes the shape […]

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Complaints Handling Under the DUA Act: A Governance Test for Modern Organisations

The Data (Use and Access) Act does more than introduce new legal obligations — it quietly raises the bar on organisational accountability. By making formal data protection complaints handling a regulatory requirement, the legislation shifts responsibility firmly back to organisations to resolve issues properly before they reach the regulator. This reflects a wider move in […]

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CCTV in schools in 2026 — security, safeguarding, and privacy can (and should) coexist

Schools have always had to think about site security: keeping pupils safe, keeping the premises secure, and keeping the day moving without turning reception into passport control. What’s changed is the threat landscape and the scrutiny. It’s no longer just “will CCTV deter vandalism?” It’s also “what happens when a camera system is offline?”, “who […]

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If DCC Is MOT Testing, Secure by Design Is Aerodynamic Engineering

Rather than viewing Defence Cyber Certification (DCC) and Secure by Design (SbD) as similar or overlapping, it’s more accurate to see them as operating at different layers of the system and supplier lifecycle. They serve different purposes, influence different behaviours, and deliver different types of assurance. Many discussions focus on what each framework requires, but […]

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Russia’s cyber attacks on Polish utilities draws NCSC alert

A series of cyber attacks against the Polich electricity grid that unfolded at the end of December 2025 have prompted a fresh warning from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), alerting British utilities to the dangers of intrusions orchestrated by Russian state threat actors. Read the full story on ComputerWeekly.com 

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Cyber Essentials v3.3: What the April 2026 Update Means for Your Organisation

The UK’s Cyber Essentials scheme is about to undergo one of its most significant evolutions in years. From 27 April 2026, all new Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus assessments will be based on the updated Cyber Essentials v3.3 Requirements for IT Infrastructure, bringing clearer definitions, stricter security expectations, and a renewed focus on cloud‑first […]

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AI Drives Doubling of Phishing Attacks in a Year

Security filters caught one phishing email every 19 seconds in 2025, more than double the rate a year previously, Cofense has revealed. AI technology is helping threat actors to increase the speed and scale of attacks, to the point where detected phishing emails last year far outstripped 2024 figures of one every 42 seconds, the […]

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