he City of London Corporation has called for tech firms to support the

The City Corporation estimates that the new system could unlock economic benefits of nearly £ 5 billion over five years through reducing the financial losses of fraud and the efficiency from improved infrastructure.

In the first half of 2025 alone, fraudsters stole £ 629.3 million, a 3 % rise from 2024, according to UK Finance, with over 2 million confirmed cases.

The digital identity verification network would verify a person’ s identity once with a trusted provider and then allow them to reuse those credentials across banks and financial services institutions, creating a shared security between providers.

Dr Janet Bastiman, Chief Data Scientist at Napier AI, commented:“ The volume and sophistication of fraud attempts, through threats such as AI-deepfakes and synthetic personas, means fighting the fraud epidemic has to rely on technology to keep up. The challenge facing banks and financial institutions is as much about continuously monitoring behaviours and transactions as it is the initial onboarding, requiring explainable AI to scan for suspicious activity and fraud signals in real-time. Adding that to a shared digital verification framework can build a defence layer behind initial verification, combining shared credential access with always-on risk monitoring.”

arracuda Networks has released its 2026 Email Threats Report, revealing how AI-driven social engineering and Phishingas-a-Service are accelerating the scale and effectiveness of

Based on telemetry collected in January 2026, Barracuda Networks analysed more than 3.1 billion emails to assess emerging threats targeting organisations worldwide. The research found that one in three email messages are malicious or unwanted spam, while 48 % of malicious email activity is phishing.

“ Email is no longer just a communication channel – it’ s the front line of identity, trust and Business Continuity,” said Merium Khalid, Director of SOC Offensive Security, Office of the CTO, Barracuda.

The report underscores the growing need for integrated email security, identity protection and automated incident response as organisations face increasingly sophisticated AI-enabled threats.

The report highlights a shift in attacker tactics, with cybercriminals increasingly using URL-based delivery methods and embedding QR codes in trusted document formats to disguise malicious links. Barracuda also found that 70 % of malicious PDFs contained QR codes leading to phishing websites and 90 % of high-volume phishing campaigns used Phishing-as-a-Service kits.

Account takeover attacks continue to rise, with 34 % of companies experiencing at least one incident every month.

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