Europe is moving fast to capture the benefits of artificial intelligence, recognizing its potential to raise productivity, strengthen competitiveness, and help modernize public services. At the same time, organizations across Europe are focused on digital sovereignty and resilience: retaining control over their data and critical operations in a period of geopolitical volatility.

These priorities go together. That is why one year ago, we announced a set of European digital commitments to respond to these expectations. They focused on five areas:

1. Help build a broad AI and cloud ecosystem across Europe
2. Uphold Europe’s digital resilience even when there is geopolitical volatility
3. Continue to protect the privacy of European data
4. Help protect and defend Europe’s cybersecurity
5. Help strengthen Europe’s economic competitiveness, including for open source

Together, they reflect a simple principle: Europe should be able to use global technology at scale, under European rules, with confidence that it will remain available, secure, and under customer control.

One year on, we take stock of how we’ve put those commitments into practice.

1. Building a broad AI and cloud ecosystem across Europe

A year ago, we detailed plans to increase our European datacenter capacity by 40%, expand cloud operations across 16 European countries, and reach more than 200 datacenters on the continent by 2027. Since then, we have announced new multi-billion euro investments in Portugal, Norway, and the UK, adding to the increased investments announced in Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Poland, and Switzerland. We also launched new cloud regions in Austria, Denmark, and Belgium. Together, this growing capacity is helping European organizations access cloud and AI capabilities closer to home while supporting sustainable growth through investments such as matching 100% of our annual global electricity consumption with renewable energy.

We emphasize now, as we did when first announcing our digital commitments, that European laws apply to our business practices in Europe, just as local laws govern local practices elsewhere in the world. We remain committed not only to building digital infrastructure for Europe, but also to respecting the role that laws across Europe play in regulating our products and services.

2. Upholding Europe’s digital resilience in a volatile geopolitical environment

For many customers, digital sovereignty is now about more than where data is stored. Institutions and businesses across Europe also want to know whether they can rely on critical digital services when geopolitical pressures rise, and whether they can adopt advanced AI capabilities without losing control.

We have made our Digital Resilience Commitment legally binding in contracts with European national governments and the European Commission, including a commitment to promptly and vigorously contest in court any order by any government to suspend or cease cloud operations in Europe.

We also committed to continuity measures, including expanded partnerships with European cloud partners that can support our customers’ operational continuity in extreme scenarios. Reinforcing this approach, we launched a European resiliency partnership with Delos Cloud to safeguard business continuity in Europe in times of crisis. This work also supports closer cooperation among Europe’s sovereign cloud providers, including crisis response coordination and continuity options designed to help customers maintain operations even in the event of geopolitical disruptions.

We also expanded our strategic partnership with Capgemini to offer fully integrated, managed sovereign cloud services. In addition, we are deepening our collaboration with Accenture to help organizations design and implement sovereign cloud and AI solutions, supporting customers in highly regulated sectors as they balance innovation with control, compliance, and resilience.

To further strengthen governance and operational oversight in Europe, Microsoft’s European activities are now overseen by a board of directors composed exclusively of European nationals, reinforcing regional accountability and our commitments to cybersecurity, resilience, and compliance under European law.

3. Protecting the privacy of European data

Privacy, transparency, and customer control remain central to Europe’s expectations for cloud and AI. That’s why over the past year we have built a portfolio of sovereign cloud options, spanning public cloud, private cloud, and national partner solutions, so that customers can choose the level of control and oversight that best fits their legal, operational, and risk requirements. This portfolio spans infrastructure, productivity, and AI workloads across cloud, hybrid, or fully local deployments.

We have continued to implement our Defending Your Data Initiative, including our commitment to challenge government data requests for EU public‑sector or commercial customers where we have a lawful basis to do so.

We also completed the EU Data Boundary, enabling European customer data to be stored and processed within the EU. We have since expanded these commitments to cover AI-powered productivity services, so that the processing of customer data for tools like Copilot can also take place within Europe.

In order to further reinforce transparency and oversight, we announced Data Guardian, which ensures that all remote access by Microsoft engineers to systems that store and process customer data in Europe is approved and monitored by personnel residing in Europe and logged in a tamper-evident ledger.

Over the past year, we have strengthened our sovereign solutions through new contractual assurances, closer partnerships with European providers, and expanded customer support.

The Microsoft Sovereign Cloud has been enhanced to help customers meet Europe’s growing expectations for control, resilience, and compliance without slowing down innovation. Recent updates add new governance and operational controls, expand productivity options for regulated environments, and strengthen encryption, while making it easier to use advanced AI capabilities that are fully customer-controlled. This includes solutions where AI models can run on customer-owned infrastructure with limited connectivity or even in fully disconnected environments. Earlier this week, we added new capabilities to our private cloud offering allowing organizations to run much larger workloads locally.

Sovereign Landing Zone provides a cloud architecture that embeds governance, compliance, and sovereign controls, helping European organizations deploy cloud environments that align with European regulatory requirements, with less complexity.

External validation of this approach continues to grow. Microsoft was named a leader in Forrester’s latest assessment of sovereign cloud platforms, recognizing the strength of our public cloud, private cloud, and partner-operated approach.

To help customers put this into practice, we opened our first three European Sovereignty and Resilience Studios in Munich, Brussels, and Amsterdam, where governments and enterprises work side by side with Microsoft’s engineers, policy experts, and security teams to capture the full promise of cloud and AI. Additional studios are planned to open in Microsoft’s nine other Innovation Hubs across Europe.

4. Helping protect and defend Europe’s cybersecurity

Cyber threats don’t stop at national borders, and Europe’s security depends on strong public‑private cooperation. During the last year, we have rolled out our European Security Program (ESP), an offering available at no cost to governments across the UK, EU, EFTA, and EU accession countries. It expands threat intelligence sharing and prioritizes new partnerships and investments to help protect critical infrastructure, disrupt cybercrime, and strengthen Europe’s collective ability to respond to attacks.

This program is live across 27 countries across Europe, providing support at no cost within a clear scope through structured briefings, early warnings, and tailored information sharing relevant to each country’s environment.

We have provided cybersecurity support to NATO, Ukraine, and other European governments, including threat intelligence, election protection, and disrupting attacks targeting European governments, companies, and citizens.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when we helped move critical data and services to secure datacenters across Europe and defend against sustained cyberattacks and eventual kinetic attacks, Microsoft has continued to support the country without interruption, providing more than $600 million in free technology, security, and financial assistance.

We have also expanded collaboration by embedding investigators with Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). Together, we are translating technical threat intelligence into coordinated operational action, linking visibility into cybercriminal infrastructure with law enforcement’s ability to investigate, coordinate, and disrupt. This model underpinned recent cybercrime takedowns, including Tycoon 2FA, Lumma Stealer, and RedVDS. And, through our partnership with CyberPeace Institute, more than 300 European nonprofits are receiving cybersecurity support.

All of this work was reinforced in July with the appointment of Freddy Dezeure as Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, a European national based in Europe, who is coordinating Microsoft’s compliance with European cybersecurity regulations. Our European executive cybersecurity presence and oversight  are closely aligned with Microsoft’s broader cybersecurity governance, combining European guidelines with globally consistent security practices.

5. Strengthening Europe’s economic competitiveness, including for open source

We continue to support open ecosystems, including open source, to keep our AI and cloud platforms accessible and interoperable, and to give customers deployment options that fit their needs. There are almost 25 million European software developers active on GitHub, making more than 155 million contributions to public projects in the last year alone. Through Microsoft Foundry, customers can choose from more than 11,000 AI models, both open source and commercial, and run them in sovereign public or private clouds from cloud to the edge. This enables customers to deploy the same Microsoft Foundry model catalog within sovereignty‑aligned infrastructure.

But it is also vital that we support AI solutions that are more multilingual and attuned to cultural context. As part of our commitment to advance European commerce and culture, we launched LINGUA in September 2025 to support projects that collect high‑quality speech and text datasets for Europe’s underrepresented languages. Following an open call, we selected 12 projects spanning 16 languages and dialects across 10 countries, bringing together universities, nonprofits, a government language center, and a public broadcaster to create and digitize open datasets, preserve heritage languages, and develop new evaluation resources for multilingual AI.

We have new AI for Culture projects to digitally preserve iconic European sites and artifacts, including a digital replica of Notre Dame with the French Institut du Patrimoine and Iconem, and we are working with leading institutions to digitize historic cinematic model opera sets and enable access to metadata associated with millions of artifacts. We are also working with the Vatican Library on digitization and AI analysis of historic documents. All of this builds on preservation efforts underway since 2019 for landmarks such as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Mont Saint Michel in France, and Ancient Olympia in Greece.

Relatedly, Céline Geissmann was chosen to lead our Microsoft Open Innovation Center in Strasbourg to work at the intersection of AI, languages, culture, open data, and innovation.

Staying accountable as Europe’s digital landscape evolves

These commitments are our North Star for how we engage in Europe, grounded in European law and values, shaped by European priorities, and designed to progress over time.

As Europe’s digital and geopolitical context continues to evolve, we will keep engaging with policymakers, regulators, customers, and partners to test whether what we are delivering matches what Europe needs. Where it does not, we will adapt.

Trust cannot be claimed. It needs to be earned through our actions, day by day. We are committed to earning that trust by listening, acting, and delivering for Europe.

The post One year on: Progress on our European digital commitments  appeared first on Microsoft On the Issues.

Under the new rules, measures for 5G cybersecurity would become mandatory.

The post EU Plans Phase Out of High Risk Telecom Suppliers, in Proposals Seen as Targeting China appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Strengthening Cyber Resilience Across Northern Europe

Across Northern Europe, organizations are redefining how they work, innovate and compete. From the Netherlands’ smart logistics hubs to Finland’s AI-driven public services and the UK’s digital-first financial sector, this region is setting the global pace for responsible, data-driven transformation.

Yet behind this progress lies a growing challenge: security complexity.

According to the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), the average enterprise now manages 83 security tools from 29 vendors, leading to fragmented visibility, slower responses and rising risk exposure. In contrast, 96% of organizations that have unified their security platforms say they now view cybersecurity as a driver of business value, not a barrier to it.

That’s where the IBM and Palo Alto Networks partnership is making an impact. Together they are helping Northern European enterprises simplify, secure and accelerate their digital transformation with unified, AI-powered cybersecurity.

From Fragmented Tools to an Integrated Security Foundation

Northern Europe’s strength lies in its strong culture of trust and transparency, advanced digital infrastructure, as well as progressive regulatory frameworks. But as the EU NIS2 Directive, DORA and the AI Act come into force, achieving both compliance and cyber resilience require board-level oversight.

IBM and Palo Alto Networks are helping organizations lead this change. They combine IBM’s deep consulting and industry expertise with Palo Alto Networks market-leading security platforms and solutions, including Cortex XSIAM^®, Cortex^® Cloud™ and Prisma^® Access. This integrated approach protects innovation, enables compliance efforts, and enhances operational efficiency.

The partnership not only secures organizational estates, but empowers faster decision-making, measurable ROI and sustainable transformation.

Five Capabilities Powering Secure Transformation

Organizations want to strengthen cyber resilience without slowing innovation. IBM and Palo Alto Networks help them do just that, through five connected capabilities that turn complex challenges into measurable outcomes.

1. Unified Security Platform: Simplify and See More

The Challenge: Too many tools, too little visibility.
The Reality: Most enterprises run more than 80 security tools from nearly 30 vendors.

By consolidating with IBM’s unified security approach and the Palo Alto Networks platforms, organizations are cutting total product costs by up to 19.4% and gaining a single, trusted view of their security posture.

The Outcome: Streamlined operations, faster decision-making and improved compliance enablement for frameworks like NIS2, all while reducing the energy footprint of sprawling infrastructure.

2. Cloud Security: Innovate Without the Risk

The Challenge: Cloud transformation introduces new risks and blind spots.
The Reality: 82% of breaches now involve cloud data, and nearly 40% span multiple environments.

IBM and Palo Alto Networks secure the journey from code to cloud to SOC, embedding security early in design and automating protection across environments. IBM’s AI deployment accelerators slash rollout time, while Cortex Cloud™ provides continuous visibility and compliance enablement.

The Outcome: Faster innovation with cloud operations that are secure by design, from day one.

3. Security for AI: Build Trust in Every Algorithm

The Challenge: Rapid AI adoption without consistent oversight.
The Reality: 82% of executives say trustworthy AI is critical to success, yet few have the controls in place.

IBM and Palo Alto Networks help organizations govern and protect their use of AI, securing data pipelines, scanning models and preventing adversarial attacks.

The Outcome: Confident AI adoption aligned to the EU AI Act requirements, where innovation can move forward without compromising data integrity or customer trust.

4. Security Service Edge (SSE): Connect People Securely, Anywhere

The Challenge: Hybrid work models demand reliable secure access everywhere.
The Reality: Human risk, not technology alone, is now the dominant factor in breaches, with 95% of data breaches involving human error, such as insider missteps, credential misuse and careless actions, underscoring how remote and hybrid workers’ behaviors significantly expand exposure.

With Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access and IBM’s consulting expertise, enterprises across Europe are simplifying secure connectivity through a unified zero trust framework.

The Outcome: Simpler, more efficient policy management and stronger protection across hybrid environments, where risk exposure is reduced, visibility is enhanced, and a seamless user experience is delivered.

5. SOC Transformation: Detect Earlier, Respond Faster

The Challenge: SOC teams are overwhelmed, missing as many as two thirds of daily alerts due to alert fatigue and limited resources.
The Reality: Over half of organizations report they can’t hire or retain enough skilled analysts, leaving gaps in coverage and consistency.

By combining IBM’s Autonomous Threat Operations Machine (ATOM) with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSIAM, organizations can streamline and automate core SOC workflows, reducing response times by more than half and enabling analysts to focus on the most critical incidents.

The Outcome: Faster detection, shorter resolution times and a more proactive, resilient security posture. AI-driven automation not only boosts accuracy but can also shorten breach lifecycles by more than 100 days, helping teams defend smarter.

Built for Northern Europe’s Next Decade of Growth

As Northern Europe is a leader in digital innovation, the stakes for cybersecurity have never been higher. Trust, transparency and compliance are not simply checkboxes, but are competitive advantages.

IBM and Palo Alto Networks are helping organizations across the region turn that reality into action. By uniting AI-powered automation, cloud-native security and deep industry expertise, they’re enabling enterprises to move faster, reduce complexity and strengthen resilience. This is achieved while enabling alignment with the region’s evolving frameworks, such as NIS2, DORA and the EU AI Act.

To stay ahead, security can no longer be a fragmented layer sitting outside transformation; it must be the foundation that powers it. With IBM and Palo Alto Networks, organizations gain a unified security platform built for the next decade of digital progress – one that protects every connection, every line of code and every moment of innovation.

Resilient. Compliant. Unified.

That’s the future of cybersecurity in Northern Europe.

Learn how IBM and Palo Alto Networks can help your organization simplify complexity and strengthen resilience.

The post Unified AI-Powered Security appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Russian state has tolerated parallel probiv market for its convenience but now Ukrainian spies are exploiting it

Russia is scrambling to rein in the country’s sprawling illicit market for leaked personal data, a shadowy ecosystem long exploited by investigative journalists, police and criminal groups.

For more than a decade, Russia’s so-called probiv market – a term derived from the verb “to pierce” or “to punch into a search bar” – has operated as a parallel information economy built on a network of corrupt officials, traffic police, bank employees and low-level security staff willing to sell access to restricted government or corporate databases.

CSRI finds China and Russia may be coordinating ‘grey zone’ tactics against vulnerable western infrastructure

China and Russia are stepping up sabotage operations targeting undersea cables and the UK is unprepared to meet the mounting threat, according to new analysis.

A report by the China Strategic Risks Institute (CSRI) analysed 12 incidents in which national authorities had investigated alleged undersea cable sabotage between January 2021 and April 2025. Of the 10 cases in which a suspect vessel was identified, eight were directly linked to China or Russia through flag-state registration or company ownership.

Citizen Lab says it found ‘digital fingerprints’ of military-grade spyware that Italy has admitted using against activists

The hacking mystery roiling the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government is deepening after researchers said they had found new evidence that two more journalists were targeted using the same military-grade spyware that Italy has admitted to using against activists.

A parliamentary committee overseeing intelligence confirmed earlier this month that Italy had used mercenary spyware made by Israel-based Paragon Solutions against two Italian activists.

Arrest warrants issued for ringleaders after investigation by police in Europe and North America

European and North American cybercrime investigators say they have dismantled the heart of a malware operation directed by Russian criminals after a global operation involving British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and US police.

International arrest warrants have been issued for 20 suspects, most of them living in Russia, by European investigators while indictments were unsealed in the US against 16 individuals.