Last week, the news was filled with sovereign cloud in Europe, a Fidelity stablecoin backed by the dollar, AI agents' success in capture the flag competitions and the EU toning down sustainability reporting requirements.

Europe Sees Surge in Sovereign Cloud Solutions at the Expense of US Hyperscalers

The surge in sovereign cloud solutions in Europe and beyond, spurred in part by the growth of sensitive data and AI workloads, threaten–or at least complicate–the dominance of US-based hyperscalers. While Google Cloud, AWS, Azure and the like continue to rule the global market, demand is growing rapidly for homegrown cloud providers and self-hosted open-source platforms that allow organizations to retain jurisdictional control over their data. Digital sovereignty started gaining closer attention in 2018 with the enactment of the US CLOUD Act. The controversial law mandates that US-based tech companies—which include all the world’s biggest hyperscalers—to hand over electronic data at the request of law enforcement, regardless of where it physically resides. However, this is in direct conflict with the EU’s GDPR law intended to protect privacy for European citizens. The demand for sovereign cloud solutions has only grown since, largely because of the proliferation of data in the AI era. With organizations in highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare now operationalizing AI, the need to retain jurisdictional control and data residency is greater than ever. On top of that, geopolitical uncertainty is further reshaping how technology is deployed across Europe. 

Internet Domain Registration System Weak Link in Security, Not Properly Addressed

The Secret Service believes that organizations aren’t giving the appropriately addressing a significant weakness that hackers could use to bring down systems—the internet domain registration system, with the problem lying in the way the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) operates. Speaking at the 2026 Identity, Authentication and the Road Ahead Policy Forum in Washington, DC, agency official Matt Noyes said that the system as well as business email compromise scams are the two attack vectors that just aren’t getting the attention they’re due. “It is staggering to me that we live in a world where domain registrars and registrars will do bulk registration of various spellings of a major institution’s brand name to create URLs to then use in phishing campaigns or in fraudulent advertising,” Noyes said.

AI Agents Find Nine Out of 10 Flags in CTF Contests Detailed by Study

Human defenders, take heed. AI agents are amping their performance in capture-the-flag contests—results from a new study from Irregular and Wiz the agents won nine of 10 competitions, which were patterned after incidents that have occurred in real life, including authentication bypass and server-side request forgery. In the study, large language models (LLMs) Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5, OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro were provided with access to standard security testing tools. In one part of the study, the large language models (LLMs) were given a In one case the LLMs were directed to uncover a vulnerability in a website, and in another they were told to search the whole attack surface to find 10 flags. The only challenge failed by all three was one around exposed secrets in public GitHub reports.

Fidelity Stablecoin on the Horizon

Fidelity Investments plans to issue its own stablecoin, backed by the dollar, through Ethereum, as the GENIUS Act takes root. The move comes as no surprise since the company’s CEO, Abigail Johnson, has made it clear she’s a fan of investors putting their money into crypto and stablecoins through Fidelity Digital Assets. And more financial institutions are expected to follow suit. "When a firm with Fidelity's distribution decides to mint and redeem dollars on a public chain, the market is telling you where treasury, settlement and capital markets' plumbing is heading,” Borderless CEO Kevin Lehtiniitty was cited as saying by American Banker.

 EU Scales Back Sustainability Disclosure Rules, Widening Opportunity for Fintech

The EU’s late 2025 deal with lawmakers is intended to simplify and sharply reduce corporate sustainability reporting obligations, freeing over 80 percent of companies from the current green deal disclosure rules, as the bloc tackles slow economic growth and rising geopolitical pressure, ostensibly creating a more favorable business environment. However, critics—including investors and NGOs—warn that the rollback will make low-carbon leaders harder to identify, potentially reducing incentives for organizations to adopt greener policies. Mandatory disclosures will now shrink to a smaller set comprising the largest organizations: For CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), the threshold has been set to firms with over 1,000 employees and a turnover of €450 million, while the threshold for CS3D (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive) compliance has been set to 5,000 or more employees and €1.5 billion annual turnover. Moreover, compliance has been pushed to 2029, while climate transition-plan obligations have been removed entirely.