Looking to help modernise and future-proof campus networks across a range of use cases and industries, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) and Nokia have strengthened their strategic partnership to deliver an end-to-end portfolio of network services designed to support the digital transformation of critical industries such as transportation, smart cities, energy and utilities, healthcare, and hospitality.

The joint networking services have been deployed by Ikos Resorts in Greece, Pantai Jerudong Hospital in Brunei and Wembley Park in the UK in deployments designed to help establish campus-wide fibre-based LAN networks capable of delivering multi-gigabit data speeds to customers.

Nokia and ALE say the wins mark a significant milestone in the five-year partnership, and add to a long list of successful deployments at some of the world’s most demanding projects, such as Grand Paris Express, Montreal Railways and Okada Manila Resort. 

By integrating their respective networking portfolios, the two companies say that they are “uniquely positioned” to meet the evolving demands of complex environments such as hospitality segments where resorts like Ikos are using their combined offering to connect hundreds of bedrooms across their luxury all-inclusive sites. With Nokia and ALE, Ikos was able to run its guest services, CCTV, voice, Wi-Fi and building safety sensors through a single, high-availability network architecture.

The fibre infrastructure also helped to save space and reduce the number of network layers. Boasting a legacy in delivering optical fibre services and being a trusted integrator in enterprise communications, Nokia and ALE have deployed their joint offering into more than 100 enterprises globally.

At the heart of the infrastructures is Nokia’s Optical LAN, which is designed to provide enterprises and campuses with a high-capacity fibre-based network capable of supporting the growing bandwidth needs for all in-campus devices and applications.

The optical LAN includes network performance with 10 gigabit speeds; “significantly” reduced power consumption, making operations more sustainable and cost-effective; and a light infrastructure in which the network can be simplified with minimal hardware requirements, reducing complexity and enhancing reliability. It is also attributed with lower total cost of ownership through efficient design and reduced maintenance, maximising return on investment.

Integrated into ALE’s network offering for enterprise in-building and campus connectivity, the technology is said to offer significant advantages, including lower energy consumption and total cost of ownership. ALE’s LAN and Wi-Fi also see use in providing an automated service that is claimed to be able to onboard devices efficiently while securing the network thanks to asset discovery and classification, virtual segmentation and continuous monitoring. Features include Layer 2 services, HPOE and optional redundant uplinks. 

“By combining ALE’s agile enterprise networking solutions with Nokia’s carrier-grade infrastructure, we offer a comprehensive portfolio that addresses the unique needs of critical industries,” said Sandrine El Khodry, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s executive vice-president of global sales and marketing. “Our partnership is built on trust, innovation and a shared commitment to customer success.”

Matthieu Bourguignon, senior vice-president and head of Europe at Nokia, added: “Our collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise allows us to deliver end-to-end, mission-critical solutions that go beyond traditional boundaries. We are proud of the joint successes we’ve achieved and look forward to enabling even more transformative projects together.”

US lawmakers have removed provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026 that would have ensured military members’ right to repair their own equipment.

The final language of the NDAA was shared by the House Armed Services Committee on Sunday, after weeks of delays pushed the annual funding bill to the end of the year. Among a host of other language changes made as part of reconciling different versions of the legislation drafted by the Senate and the House of Representatives, two provisions focused on the right to repair—Section 836 of the Senate bill and Section 863 of the House bill—have both been removed. Also gone is Section 1832 of the House version of the bill, which repair advocates worried could have implemented a “data-as-a-service” relationship with defense contractors that would have forced the military to pay for subscription repair services.

As reported by WIRED in late November, defense contractor lobbying efforts seem to have worked to convince lawmakers who led the conference process, including Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama who is chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and ranking member Adam Smith of Washington, to pull the repair provisions, which enjoyed bipartisan support and was championed by the Trump administration, from the act.

The move is a blow to the broader right-to-repair movement, which advocates for policies that make it easier for device users, owners, or third parties to work on and repair devices without needing to get—or pay for—manufacturer approval. But while ensuring repair rights for service members did not make the final cut, neither did the competing effort to make the military dependent on repair-as-a-service subscription plans.

“For decades, the Pentagon has relied on a broken acquisition system that is routinely defended by career bureaucrats and corporate interests,” wrote senators Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, and Tim Sheehy, a Republican of Montana, in a joint statement shared with WIRED. Both support right-to-repair efforts and were behind the language in the Senate version of the NDAA. “Military right to repair reforms are supported by the Trump White House, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and our brave service members. The only ones against this common-sense reform are those taking advantage of a broken status quo at the expense of our warfighters and taxpayers,” they say.

The last year has seen some of the costliest cyber attacks on UK businesses to date. Attacks on Marks &Spencer cost the supermarket chain hundreds of millions in lost profits and led to empty shelves. The Jaguar Land Rover attack sent shockwaves throughout its supply chain, which ultimately dragged down UK GDP in the third quarter.

While the perpetrators of cyber crime often operate across international borders, and beyond the reach of law enforcement, the M&S attack has resulted in several arrests in the UK, under the Computer Misuse Act [CMA] of 1990. With a new Cyber Security and Resilience Act on the way, it might seem UK authorities will soon have greater powers to force organisations to build better defences.

But while the UK government continues to pursue cyber criminals, it also needs to be much clearer about the crucial role of cyber security researchers and ethical hackers in defending against them.

Last week, UK security minister Dan Jarvis told a conference that the government was looking at changes to the CMA to introduce a “statutory defence” for cyber security experts who spot and share vulnerabilities.

It would mean that, as long they meet “certain safeguards”, researchers would be protected from prosecution.

To understand why this is so significant it’s worth recalling the background to the CMA. In the mid-1980s, IT journalist Steve Gold and fellow hacker Robert Schifreen were accused of accessing the Duke of Edinburgh’s BT Prestel email account.

They were prosecuted and convicted under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act, but this was overturned on appeal, because that act didn’t specifically cover computer crimes.

This led to the CMA which set prison sentences for gaining unauthorised access to computer material.

The date is significant. At that time, most computer systems were tightly-controlled and effectively inaccessible to the majority of the population.

Very few people had a (BT-approved) modem at the time. The web had been developed just a year before. The dot com boom was years in the future, the term cyber war had yet to be coined, and the prospect of industrial level cyber crime barely considered.

The legislators who crafted the CMA can be forgiven for not anticipating the transformation of today’s digital environment, from mobile to cloud to AI. So, it’s perhaps understandable that the act didn’t anticipate the emergence of cyber security researchers, who would look for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations and share that information with the organisations concerned.

Less understandable is why this hasn’t been addressed since. As cyber crime transformed from a small niche into a worldwide epidemic over the last two decades, white hat hackers have been key to exposing and mitigating the methods and technologies cyber criminals have exploited. This has necessarily meant thinking and acting like a hacker.

Yet the CMA, and similar legislation in other countries, have proven to be a blunt instrument when it comes to deterring cyber crime.

It’s fair to point out that the number of prosecutions under the CMA and similar laws has been fairly low. But that is more because of the asymmetric nature of cyber crime: Most threats are coming from individuals beyond the reach of the UK and its allies, who are unlikely to be deterred by the CMA.

This imbalance has only become more stark as vulnerabilities and flaws have been exploited indiscriminately and at internet scale not just by criminals but by nation states willing to compromise critical national infrastructure, foreign businesses and consumers for strategic gains.

It has left researchers, and their potential clients, in a legal grey area. It has, on occasion, led to prosecutions of legitimate good guys.

Meanwhile, that ongoing threat of prosecution has an effect on another group of individuals – the next generation we need to encourage to join the industry. We are already suffering a chronic skills crisis, and the prospect of a criminal record hardly represents a golden hello.

None of this is new. The Criminal Law Reform Network highlighted in 2020 how “the CMA 1990 requires significant reform to make it fit for the 21st century.”  and recommended the addition of required harms. The Home Office began a review of the act in 2021, which concluded in 2023, and did consider the question of a defence for researchers. the addition of required harms.

When the Cyber security and Resiliency Act becomes law in the UK, many more organisations will be obliged to report breaches, and be under more pressure to manage their security posture, including vulnerabilities.

They’re not going to be able to do that without the help of ethical hackers and cyber security researchers, who should be able to operate without fear of prosecution. It’s certainly do-able. Portugal has just announced built in defences for researchers in its implementation of NIS2.

Jarvis’ statement is welcome. But now we need action. We can’t wait another five years for the government to act to give cyber researchers and ethical hackers the cover they need. And we definitely can’t wait another 35.

Ed Parsons is chief operating officer at bug bounty, vulnerability disclosure and penetration testing services provider Intigriti, and a former vice president and cyber professional member association ISC2. A career risk and cyber expert, Parsons is a is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a UK Chartered Cyber Security Professional.