Cyberbit Shifts Global Headquarters to the United States

Cyberbit Shifts Global Headquarters to the United States
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Cyberbit Shifts Global Headquarters to the United States

Cyberbit Shifts Global Headquarters to the United States

Cyberbit Inc., a leading provider of cybersecurity skill development platforms, is pleased to announce the relocation of its global headquarters to Newburyport, MA. Additionally, Cyberbit has launched Cyberbit Federal Inc., a new subsidiary dedicated to enhancing engagement with government agencies, Reuters reported.

This milestone is strengthened by the appointment of key US based executives and innovators in the cybersecurity field. In November 2023, Cyberbit announced the appointment of Caleb Barlow as CEO. Mr. Barlow, formerly the Vice President of Threat Intelligence at IBM Security and creator of the IBM Cyber Range, brings extensive experience and a proven track record of collaborating with US government agencies. Joining him in key leadership roles are several former colleagues, all part of the IBM team that established the world’s first commercial cyber range.

"While at IBM, we were successful in pioneering the cyber-range product concept. However, technology has significantly evolved over the past decade. Building a cyber range today goes beyond building an impressive room with big screens; it is fundamentally about creating engaging content and scenarios that mirror the diverse commercial products, cloud environments and attack paths that cyber professionals encounter every day,” said Mr. Barlow. “With our new headquarters, we believe we are well-positioned to deliver the most comprehensive cyber-range content to a fast-growing customer base across North America.”

“We are excited about Cyberbit’s new US headquarters and the exceptional leadership team that Caleb has assembled,” said Darren Battistoni, Managing Director of Charlesbank Capital Partners and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Cyberbit. “As a company headquartered in the US, Cyberbit has tremendous potential to expand opportunities within the federal government and to capitalize on the growing demand for its products and services in the region.”

About Cyberbit Inc.:

Cyberbit is the company bridging the global cybersecurity workforce gap.

Just like excelling in a sport, elite cyber operators must face off against dynamic opponents and unforeseen scenarios to be field-ready. Similarly, Cyberbit revolutionizes cybersecurity skill development, replacing traditional courses, on-the-job learning and tabletop exercises with a hyper-realistic playing field that prepares cyber operators and executives for real-world incidents. The Cyberbit platform spins up massive cyber ranges and interactive cyber crisis simulations within minutes, mirroring the attacks, networks, and security tools that cyber professionals and executives experience day to day, including market leading SIEMs, firewalls, WAFs and EDRs.

By putting teams through hyper-realistic scenarios, cybersecurity leaders can rapidly assess and mitigate skill gaps, building top-performing teams.

Cyberbit delivers over 1 million hours of exercises annually to industry, government, and higher education institutions and is headquartered in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

About Charlesbank:

Based in Boston and New York, Charlesbank Capital Partners is a middle-market private investment firm with more than $17 billion of capital raised since inception. Charlesbank focuses on management-led buyouts, growth capital financings, opportunistic credit, and technology investments. The firm seeks to invest in companies with sustainable competitive advantage and excellent prospects for growth.



Meta Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion for Deceiving Users About Privacy on Facebook

The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris on June 14, 2023 (AP)
The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris on June 14, 2023 (AP)
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Meta Ordered to Pay New Mexico $25 Billion for Deceiving Users About Privacy on Facebook

The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris on June 14, 2023 (AP)
The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris on June 14, 2023 (AP)

A judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for deceiving users about privacy on Facebook, marking the biggest fine ever against the tech giant.

Facebook’s deception was intentional and executives consistently misled users about how the platform worked, state District Court Judge Francis J Mathew wrote in his ruling, according to AP.

“Facebook promised users that they (the users) controlled their data. This was false,” he said.
Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws for making misleading public statements about how it handled users’ personal data.

The case was brought after political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook data to generate targeted political ads during the 2016 election season.

The award will serve as a warning to tech companies that New Mexico will hold them accountable, state Attorney General Raul Torrez said at a news conference.

“This judgment should be a signal, an unambiguous message, to Silicon Valley,” he said.

Meta said the ruling and Torrez’s office’s approach to enforcement “makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico.”

“At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online. We are confident we will prevail on appeal,” CJ Mahoney, the company’s chief legal officer, said in a statement.

The Menlo Park, California, company has a market value of $1.8 trillion and brought in more than $200 billion in revenue last year. Company shares traded 2% higher after Wednesday’s announcement, and it was scheduled to report its quarterly earnings later in the day.

In August, Meta reached a settlement with 48 states and territories — except New Mexico and Florida — to pay $18 billion and add stronger child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms.

The settlement ended a trial over teen social media addiction and resolved a pivotal case years in the making that sought to hold the tech giant accountable for the role its platforms played in undermining children’s mental health. The effort targeted features designed to grab young people’s attention.

New Mexico did not join the multistate settlement, choosing to go after the company on its own.

The director of a nonprofit that supports stronger policies toward corporations said $25 billion is “a drop in the bucket for Meta,” but demonstrates people want accountability.

“Right now, they are rolling out Muse, an AI assistant encouraging people to trust it with everything from their bank accounts to their medical information,” added Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project. “Which is why we need more enforcers with courage and laws with actual teeth to rein them in.”

At the trial, attorneys for the state cited a 2010 Washington Post op-ed in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the company didn’t sell user data.


Cyber Agency Warns Websites May Go Dark as PHP Prepares Critical Fix

A hand is seen on a laptop with binary codes displayed in front of the EU flag in this illustration taken, August 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
A hand is seen on a laptop with binary codes displayed in front of the EU flag in this illustration taken, August 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Cyber Agency Warns Websites May Go Dark as PHP Prepares Critical Fix

A hand is seen on a laptop with binary codes displayed in front of the EU flag in this illustration taken, August 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
A hand is seen on a laptop with binary codes displayed in front of the EU flag in this illustration taken, August 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

The developers of the widely used PHP programming language said on Wednesday they would release patches for two critical vulnerabilities, as EU cybersecurity officials warned organizations unable to apply the fixes should take affected websites offline.

PHP is used across large parts of the internet, and speculation has circulated over the past day that websites running the software could be exposed to serious cyber intrusions, said Reuters.

"PHP is everywhere. It quietly powers ‌WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and ‌Magento sites, shared hosting platforms, control panels, and an awful ‌lot ⁠of software that ⁠doesn't even advertise that it runs PHP under the hood," cybersecurity company Huntress said in a blog post.

In a security update, PHP said both vulnerabilities were rated 9.2 on the CVSS v4.0 severity scale and urged users to "upgrade as soon as the release is available".

It said a patch for both vulnerabilities was scheduled for 1400 GMT on Wednesday.

Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Web and cloud security firm Cloudflare, said that attacks were emerging and ⁠Cloudflare was updating its firewall rules as a stopgap measure.

"We are ‌seeing early attacks emerging and are updating mitigations as ‌new vectors show up. This is a STOPGAP only. Patch as soon as PHP releases the ‌update," he said on X.

The European Union Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-EU) said on ‌Tuesday in an advisory that the 9.2 rating indicated a risk of unauthenticated remote code execution, a type of flaw that can allow attackers to run malicious code on vulnerable systems without logging in.

CERT-EU urged organizations to prepare for the immediate patching of affected assets and said those unable ‌to do so should consider taking affected sites offline.

The Australian Cyber Security Center (ACSC) issued similar guidance, urging organizations to identify PHP ⁠systems in their environments, ⁠prepare to apply patches and monitor applications for signs of malicious activity.

"ACSC is currently not aware of active exploitation related to these vulnerabilities," the agency said.

Web hosting provider GoDaddy said the flaws could allow attackers to execute code on affected servers over the internet, potentially leading to data theft, website defacement or full system compromise.

Wordfence, a security plugin that protects WordPress websites, said all WordPress sites run on a PHP-installed server. It warned that automatic updates would not apply the fix and advised site owners to find out who is responsible for updating PHP on their sites.

PHP's security team said details of the vulnerabilities, affected versions and the fixed releases would be published when patches are issued.

CERT-EU and the ACSC said all PHP versions from PHP 5 onward could be affected, although PHP has not disclosed which versions are vulnerable.


Micron and Taiwan Union Sign Deal, Withdraw from Mediation

The newly opened Micron Advanced Assembly and Test Taiwan 2 (AATT2) facility in Taichung, Taiwan, October 15, 2026. REUTERS/Ann Wang
The newly opened Micron Advanced Assembly and Test Taiwan 2 (AATT2) facility in Taichung, Taiwan, October 15, 2026. REUTERS/Ann Wang
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Micron and Taiwan Union Sign Deal, Withdraw from Mediation

The newly opened Micron Advanced Assembly and Test Taiwan 2 (AATT2) facility in Taichung, Taiwan, October 15, 2026. REUTERS/Ann Wang
The newly opened Micron Advanced Assembly and Test Taiwan 2 (AATT2) facility in Taichung, Taiwan, October 15, 2026. REUTERS/Ann Wang

Micron Memory Taiwan and a union representing workers at its Taichung operations said on Wednesday they had signed a labor-management agreement covering multiple issues, prompting both sides to withdraw from mediation scheduled for October 22.

The joint statement did not disclose the terms of the agreement, saying the company and the union would separately communicate details to ⁠affected employees in ⁠the coming days.

Idaho-based Micron, the world's third-largest memory chipmaker, employs about 15,000 people in Taiwan, a key manufacturing base where it produces DRAM and high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI servers.

Any disruption ⁠to Micron's Taiwan operations could affect already strained global memory chip supplies. The AI boom has boosted memory chipmakers including Micron, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, while also sharpening worker demands for a greater share of profits.

The agreement with the Taichung union, which represents workers at Micron's largest Taiwan operation, comes a day before a separate ⁠union ⁠representing workers in Taoyuan is due to hold a one-day warning strike over bonuses and profit-sharing.

The Taoyuan union did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on whether it still planned to proceed with Thursday's strike, which had been scheduled to coincide with the mediation talks.