So this was an important ($$$$) company who thought that backups were something you left end-users to do? I presume they are bust or selling vegetables now.
Posts by Jim Whitaker
147 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2013
IT sent the intern to sort out the nasty VP who was too important to bother with backups
Rhysida ransomware gang: We attacked the British Library
They get kept for as long as is necessary. The method of having a "trusted" person in your organisation have sight of the relevant documents and for them then to record "conditions met" is attractive. Attractive, that is, until the relevant law enforcement bodies rock up on your doorstep and start asking difficult questions.
Control Altman delete: OpenAI fires CEO, chairman quits
It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs
Vanishing power feeds, UPS batteries, failover fails... Cloudflare explains that two-day outage
Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off
Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

Data Protection breach?
I would have thought that anyone of the trainees who felt that they had been disadvantaged by this shambles might have a case to bring under the Data Protection legislation. Mind you given how NHS management (especially clinicians in management roles) treat those who point out errors, perhaps trainees eventually with a job will judge it better to keep schtum.
UK procurement is too glacial to bring AI into defense, MPs told
Old story
Where have these people been for the last 50+ years? (I can only speak for my experience; I suspect the problem goes back much further.) I worked (as a Naval officer) in a part of the MoD Procurement outfit in 1973-ish. The headline message of this article was crystal clear even then. I suspect that part of this is inherent in the nature of the activity. On the other hand, think of those activities which have been created or driven as a result of military needs (and funding). Also bear in mind how quickly some things can move when and "Urgent Operational Requirement" arises.
95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers
BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year
If anyone finds an $80M F-35 stealth fighter, please call the Pentagon
Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history
Southern Water to drink up tech deals worth up to £358M
Silicon Valley billionaires secretly buy up land for new California city
Two teens were among those behind the Lapsus$ cyber-crime spree, jury finds

Pretty tough comments but what about the companies?
Most of the comments so far are pretty tough on the perpetrators and I get that. I too am not comfortable with a mental condition leaving someone free to re-offend. However, I think the elephant in the room is the lack of condemnation of the various companies for the incompetence shown by their IT teams. If they had not made it possible for these two to roam through their systems, then there would have been no (serious) crime committed. Pretty unimpressive.
ICANN warns UN may sideline tech community from future internet governance

"The technical community is not part of civil society and it has never been,"
Of course technicians should have an input to the governance and discussions but do we really want anyone who will say that they are not part of "civil society" to have any conclusive hold over something as important as the Internet?
So much for CAPTCHA then – bots can complete them quicker than humans
Boffins say they can turn typing sounds into text with 95% accuracy
UK's dream of fusion power by 2040s will need GPUs
Five billion phones are dead in drawers – carriers want to mine them

Batteries
I'm surprised that so little of the comments are about battery replacement. I have two redundant phones, one of which would still be in use if it was possible to simply replace the battery. Android OS still new enough to not be a security concern, works OK on 4G. The phone I had about 12 years ago had an easily replaceable battery and would still be in use if the technology had not moved on. Hence I support the EU drive to force all similar small electronic devices to have easily replaceable batteries. (Ditto common USB connections.)
Comms watchdog to probe errors that left Brits unable to make emergency calls

Re: Dry Run
Rather similar to what happened round here. The Parish had been told to collect pledges of funding (~£1k for each household) to co-fund fibre rollout. Then one day I saw a guy climbing the poles at the foot of the garden and was told that we would all be FTTP in a few weeks. No explanation, no further information, just BT planning at its best. Still it works just fine so I'm grateful for that.
Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors
Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim
Australia to phase out checks by 2030
Amazon Ring, Alexa accused of every nightmare IoT security fail you can imagine
Fahrenheit to take over Celsius
Britain's largest private pension scheme reveals scale of Capita break-in
Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM
Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia
Oracle's examplar win over SAP for Birmingham City Council is 3 years late
SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball
UK's Emergency Services Network unlikely to start operating until 2029
Defunct comms link connected to nothing at a fire station – for 15 years
Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed
No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data
It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system
Microsoft said to be thinking of sinking $10m into self-driving truck startup
NHS England Palantir contract extension could result in further legal threats
UK's Guardian newspaper breaks news of ransomware attack on itself
Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users
Watchdog warns UK health data platform could damage patients' trust
Re: "This store of confidential data is a national treasure"
Not quite. These records belong to the Secretary of State for Health (or whatever they are called today). The patient's rights are essentially to be able to see them, to seek to have errors corrected and ultimately if there is no agreement about an "error", to have a note setting out the patient view added.