Hammer Weekly Update, week ending 14 December 2025

Week ending 14 December 2025 put attention on security, enterprise components, cloud and AI in UK and EMEA. We’ve boiled it down to the few stories with practical impact - and concrete steps partners can take this week.

Honeypots can help defenders, or damn them if implemented badly

The Register (Security) reports: Honeypots can help defenders, or damn them if implemented badly. PLUS: Crims could burn your AI budgets thanks to weak defaults; CISA's top 25 vulns for 2025; And more Infosec In Brief The UK's National Cyber Security Centre … [1]

Controls must stand up to real phishing and ransomware drills, not just policy-recovery points and identity boundaries are the failure points. Hammer can bundle Microsoft 365 backup and a managed SOC handover into a repeatable rollout plan with timelines.

Run a restore test from an immutable backup set and record RTO.
Map MFA and conditional access coverage for high-risk apps.
Stage a 30-minute phishing drill and time the run-book.

Microsoft promises more bug payouts, with or without a bounty program

The Register (Security) reports: Microsoft promises more bug payouts, with or without a bounty program. Critical vulnerabilities found in third-party applications eligible for award under 'in scope by default' move Microsoft is overhauling its bug bounty program t… [2]

Endurance, lead times and spares planning still drive total cost during refresh windows. Hammer can secure SSDs, drives and memory against refresh windows and keep swap stock on the shelf.

Validate SSD endurance (DWPD/TBW) against write patterns.
Pre-stage spare drives/memory for the next change window.

AWS DataSync increases scalability and performance for on-premises file transfers

AWS What’s New reports: AWS DataSync increases scalability and performance for on-premises file transfers. AWS DataSync Enhanced mode now supports data transfers between on-premises file servers and Amazon S3 … [3]

Guardrails around identity, network and spend need to ship with the platform-landing zones and budgets should be codified, not manual. Hammer can package a baseline landing zone with budget alerts and ownership mapping so teams can deploy it the same way every time.

Codify a landing zone (identity, network, logging) and deploy to all accounts.
Enable budget alerts/anomaly detection and assign owners.
Right-size or schedule off non-prod instances before month-end.

UK watchdog urged to probe GDPR failures in Home Office eVisa rollout

The Register (Security) reports: UK watchdog urged to probe GDPR failures in Home Office eVisa rollout. Rights groups say digital-only record is leaking data and courting trouble Civil society groups are urging the UK's data watchdog to investigate whether the Hom… [4]

Expect pressure on rack density, GPU power budgets and memory bandwidth; design choices affect UPS/PDU loading and cooling headroom.

Model peak rack draw; confirm UPS/PDU headroom for target density.
Benchmark NVMe throughput against expected inference concurrency.
Lock delivery dates for AI servers to align with cooling changes.

Half of exposed React servers remain unpatched amid active exploitation

The Register (Security) reports: Half of exposed React servers remain unpatched amid active exploitation. Wiz says React2Shell attacks accelerating, ranging from cryptominers to state-linked crews Half of the internet-facing systems vulnerable to a fast-moving React… [5]

Controls must stand up to real phishing and ransomware drills, not just policy-recovery points and identity boundaries are the failure points.

Run a restore test from an immutable backup set and record RTO.
Map MFA and conditional access coverage for high-risk apps.
Stage a 30-minute phishing drill and time the run-book.

How we picked these stories: we scanned UK/EMEA enterprise feeds and vendor advisories, filtered for architecture/procurement significance, and kept only items with clear next steps.