Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation said on Friday that it experienced a cyberattack earlier this week.
A person with knowledge of the cyberattack told TechCrunch that efforts at Heritage were underway to remediate the cyberattack, but said that it wasn’t immediately known what, if any, data was taken.
Politico, which first reported the news of the cyberattack on Friday, cited a Heritage official as saying the organization “shut down its network to prevent any further malicious activity while we investigate the incident.”The news outlet quoted the Heritage official as saying that the cyberattack likely came from nation-state hackers, but did not provide evidence of the claim.
Founded in 1973, Heritage is based in Washington DC, and supports and lobbies on conservative issues.
Heritage was hit by a cyberattack in 2015 in which hackers stole internal emails and the personal information of its donors.
Agility Robotics on Thursday confirmed that it has laid off a “small number” of employees.
The well-funded Oregon-based firm says the job loss is part of a company-wide focus on commercialization efforts.
Ultimately, however, those efforts were placed on the back burner, as the company shifted focus to understaffed warehouses.
Two years ago this month, the company announced a $150 million Series B. Amazon notably participated in the round by way of its Industrial Innovation Fund.
Last month at Modex, Agility showcased updates to Digit’s end effectors designed specifically for automotive manufacturing workflows.
The CHIPS Act can be seen as a direct result of a number of pressing geopolitical issues.
The above, coupled with long-standing efforts to revitalize U.S. industry, spurred on economic efforts to reshore manufacturing.
While the CHIPS Act was still winding its way through Capitol Hill, Intel announced plans to open a $10 billion manufacturing facility just outside of Columbus, Ohio.
It says it expects those efforts will create 20,000 construction and 10,000 manufacturing jobs — music to the ears of an administration keenly focused on monthly jobs reports.
Notably, Intel recently pushed back the manufacturing start date of its New Albany, Ohio, plant two years to 2027, citing changes to the business environment.
AI is “not open in any sense,” the battle over encryption is far from won, and Signal’s principled (and uncompromising) approach may complicate interoperability efforts, warned the company’s president, Meredith Whittaker.
“The overall theme I’m seeing is a deep desire for accountability in tech, which we saw sort of animated mid-2010s.
That, then, has been weaponized; and I think we’re seeing surveillance wine in accountability bottles,” she said.
It’s a form of, again, parochial, magical thinking here,” said Whittaker.
But then Google published a couple of days later, like Microsoft is actually the monopoly because it has the OpenAI and sort of the Azure monopoly, right?
Over the weekend, someone posted a cache of files and documents apparently stolen from the Chinese government hacking contractor, I-Soon.
This leak gives cybersecurity researchers and rival governments an unprecedented chance to look behind the curtain of Chinese government hacking operations facilitated by private contractors.
Since then, observers of Chinese hacking operations have feverishly poured over the files.
Also, an IP address found in the I-Soon leak hosted a phishing site that the digital rights organization Citizen Lab saw used against Tibetans in a hacking campaign in 2019.
Cary highlighted the documents and chats that show how much — or how little — I-Soon employees are paid.
In this edition, I’m going to look at Brex’s latest round of layoffs, the state of fintech investing in 2023 and more!
I may be taking some time off in coming weeks but never fear, TechCrunch Fintech isn’t going away.
While interest rates were low, the company saw a bump in business and VC money was easier to come by.
The move came after reports the company burned $17 million in cash each month during the fourth quarter and that it is trying to preserve runway.
Fintech investors injected $34.6 billion in startups across 2,055 deals in 2023, a –43.8% and –32.4% YoY drop, respectively, according to PitchBook data.
The latest deployment to the “EU Data Boundary for the Microsoft Cloud”, as it brands the infrastructure, kicked off in at the start of last year.
Efforts to understand where digital information is being processed and stored, and even to co-locate data in the same country/region as customers — aka data localization — can be important considerations under EU data protection laws.
“This means the EU Data Boundary now includes pseudonymized personal data.
It says the new resources can be accessed via the EU Data Boundary Trust Center webpage.
Another enhancement of the data localization offer her blog post flags is the deployment of virtual desktop infrastructure within the EU Data Boundary.
Oklahoma took a stand against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) last month.
The state’s governor, Kevin Stitt, signed an executive order defunding DEI efforts in public colleges and universities and banning it in other state agencies.
He said the move would take “politics out of education” and encourage “equal opportunity rather than promising equal outcomes.” Affirmative action itself has been banned in the state since 2012.
But public colleges aren’t the only ones being affected; this is part of a broader backlash to DEI that has become prevalent in many industries, from technology to academia to fashion.
Supporters of DEI say these initiatives help everyone get ahead, especially marginalized communities that have been historically disenfranchised.
One reason for the increase in attention to African startups is that DFIs are looking to deploy their dry powder across the world. While European and North American DFIs are…
