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Businesses have been working hard to shift their culture internally to ensure they’re taking the threat of cyber breaches and outage incidents seriously.

Andrew Brookes | Image Source | Getty Images

New European Union regulations requiring businesses to bolster their cyber defenses is off to a slow start as many member states have failed to adopt the rules in time to meet a key enforcement deadline, according to research monitoring the progress of the directive.

The EU’s NIS 2 cybersecurity directive sets a high benchmark for companies over their internal cybersecurity systems and practices. It imposes tougher requirements around risk management, transparency obligations and business continuity planning, in the event of a cyber breach.

On Thursday, the new directive officially became enforceable by member states. That means firms have to now ensure their operations are up to scratch with the rules. However, most EU member states have yet to implement NIS 2 in their own respective national laws, meaning that enforcement is likely to be spotty.

Two countries — Portugal and Bulgaria — haven’t begun the transposition process for NIS 2, where directives are incorporated into the national laws of EU member states, according to a tracker tool from internet research organization DNS Research Federation. The governments of Portugal and Bulgaria were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC Wednesday.

“The implementation status varies significantly across the bloc,” Tim Wright, partner and technology lawyer at Fladgate, told CNBC via email.

What is NIS 2?

NIS 2 — or the Network and Information Security Directive 2 — is an EU directive that aims to increase the security of IT systems and networks across the bloc. First proposed in 2020, the law serves as an update to an earlier directive simply called NIS.

NIS 2 expands the scope of its predecessor to address more recent cybersecurity challenges and threats, as criminals have found new ways to hack companies and compromise their sensitive data.

The directive applies to organizations that operate within the EU and provide essential services to consumers, including banks, energy suppliers, health care institutions, internet providers, transport firms, and waste processors.

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Businesses will have a “duty of care” to report and share information on cyber vulnerabilities and hacks with other companies under the new regulation — even if it means owning up to being a victim of a cyber breach.

If a business falls victim to a cyber breach, they’ll have 24 hours to submit an early warning notification to authorities — a stricter timeline than the 72-hour window firms have to notify authorities about a data breach under the General Data Protection Regulation, a separate data privacy law in the EU.

Firms will also have to vet their technology vendors one by one for cyber threats and vulnerabilities.

Will it be effective?

Fladgate’s Wright said that effectiveness of NIS 2 as a regulation will largely depend on consistent implementation and enforcement across EU member states.

“Bad actors may target countries lagging in their NIS2 transposition or look for weaknesses in supply chains, targeting smaller, less-secure vendors and suppliers to gain access to larger, better-protected organisations,” he told CNBC.

Businesses have been working to get their internal processes, controls and broader culture around cybersecurity into shape for years ahead of the Thursday deadline.

Chris Gow, enterprise tech firm Cisco’s EU public policy lead, said that the spotty nature of NIS 2’s implementation has also been “exacerbated by local adaptation of the law.”

This, in turn, is “creating discrepancies that can prove difficult to navigate, especially for smaller organisations with limited resources,” Gow told CNBC in emailed comments.

State-backed cyber attacks are on the rise this year: DXC Technology

He recommended that, rather than being “overwhelmed” by discrepancies in local adaptations of NIS 2, organizations should “identify a common core of security controls and processes that stand them in good stead to both meet and demonstrate compliance at scale.”

What if a company fails to comply?

For “essential” entities like transport, finance and water companies, failure to comply with NIS 2 can lead to fines of up to 10 million euros ($10.9 million) or 2% of global annual revenues — whichever ends up higher.

Meanwhile, “important” businesses — such as food companies, chemicals firms, and waste management services — are looking at fines of up to 7 million euros or 1.4% of their global annual revenues for breaches.

Firms can also face possible suspensions of service if they fail to comply with NIS 2, as well as closer supervision.

“NIS 2 makes it clear – large fines, possible suspension of service and monitoring of compliance are being used as levers to encourage organisations responsible for critical services to pay attention to cybersecurity threats and their response to those,” Carl Leonard, EMEA cybersecurity strategist at Proofpoint, told CNBC.

“A baseline has been set in terms of risk-management and mitigation measures including incident handling, staff training, leadership accountability and many others,” Leonard added.

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Stanley Druckenmiller says he’s ‘licking my wounds’ from selling Nvidia too soon

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Stanley Druckenmiller says he's 'licking my wounds' from selling Nvidia too soon

Stanley Druckenmiller at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha on Sept. 28, 2022.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller said on Wednesday that his decision to sell out of Nvidia this year was a “big mistake.”

“I’ve made so many mistakes in my investment career — one of them was I sold all my Nvidia probably somewhere between $800 and $950,” Druckenmiller said in an interview on Bloomberg. “I own none and I owned none the last 400 points.”

Druckenmiller’s comments do not reflect Nvidia’s 10-for-1 stock split, which went into effect in June. The stock closed Wednesday at $135.72. On a split-adjusted basis, his sales would have taken place at between $80 and $95.

Nvidia has been the primary beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom, selling its graphics processing units, or GPUs, to top cloud companies and the biggest developers of large language models. The stock soared 239% last year and is up another 174% in 2024, closing at a fresh record on Monday.

Earlier this year, Druckenmiller revealed on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he cut his Duquesne Family Office’s position in Nvidia in late March, saying “we’ve had a hell of a run.”

Taking the split into account, Duquesne owned about 6.18 million shares at the start of the year, 1.76 million at the end of the first quarter and 214,000 when the second quarter closed. In the third quarter of last year, Nvidia was his top holding. At the time, he owned 8.75 million shares worth around $400 million.

If he held onto that entire stake, it would currently be worth about $1.19 billion. Duquesne has not released its third-quarter holdings yet.

“It tripled in a year, and I thought the valuation was rich,” Druckenmiller told Bloomberg. “Nvidia is a wonderful company and were the price to come down, we’d get involved again. But right now, I’m licking my wounds from a bad sale.”

Nvidia is expected to release quarterly results in November, but most of its top customers, including Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, will report financials later this month.

Druckenmiller told CNBC in May that Nvidia was “a little overhyped now, but underhyped long term.” He added that he was introduced to Nvidia in 2022, when “I didn’t even know how to spell it.”

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Amazon announces first Kindle ever with color screen, retailing for $279

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Amazon announces first Kindle ever with color screen, retailing for 9

Kindle Colorsoft 2024

Amazon

Amazon on Wednesday announced a new Kindle e-reader, and for the first time ever it has a color display.

The retailing giant introduced the Kindle in 2007, and every device since then has had a black-and-white screen. The new Kindle has a display that’s designed to ensure colors don’t appear washed out or pixelated, even when users zoom in on images.

The $279 device, which Amazon is calling the Kindle Colorsoft, has “weeks of battery life,” the company said. It can be preordered now and ships on Oct. 30.

Amazon also unveiled a refreshed $399 Kindle Scribe with new note-taking features, an updated $159 Kindle Paperwhite and a 12th generation Kindle, which costs $109. At a press event in New York on Tuesday, Amazon’s devices chief, Panos Panay, called the updates the “largest single refresh that the Kindle lineup has ever had.”

Kindle Lineup 2024

Amazon

The Kindle Scribe, which Amazon introduced in 2022, comes with a pen that allows users to take notes, make to-do lists and write directly on the pages of the book they’re reading. With the new note-taking feature, called Active Canvas, users can take notes directly on an e-book’s pages and the text will automatically shift to flow around it. They’ll also be able to take notes in the margins of the book and hide them for later.

The Kindle Scribe includes another new feature that uses generative artificial intelligence to summarize pages of notes into a concise list. Amazon said the feature uses Bedrock, a software tool that lets users access large language models from Amazon and other companies like Anthropic and Stability AI. The device is available for preorder now and ships Dec. 4.

The new Kindle Paperwhite is faster than previous models, and also features a larger, 7-inch display, up from 6.8 inches on the prior version. Amazon says the 12th generation Kindle is its most “compact” e-reader ever, with a brighter display. Both devices are available starting Wednesday.

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Amazon ramps up AI chip race

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ASML just gave us a first glimpse into how U.S. chip export curbs will dent its China sales

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ASML just gave us a first glimpse into how U.S. chip export curbs will dent its China sales

An ASML icon is being displayed on a circuit board, alongside the flags of the USA and China, in this photo illustration taken in Brussels, Belgium, on January 4, 2024.

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

ASML on Tuesday offered the first glimpse into how U.S. restrictions on exports of its advanced chip manufacturing tools to China will impact its sales in the Asian country.

The Netherlands-based chip equipment maker said in its earnings report Tuesday, which was released a day early due to a “technical error,” that it expects net sales for 2025 to come in between 30 billion euros and 35 billion euros ($32.7 billion and $38.1 billion). This is at the lower half of the range ASML had guided previously.

ASML is a critical part of the global chip supply chain. The firm’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines are used by many of the world’s largest chipmakers — from Nvidia to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing — to produce advanced chips.

While third-quarter net sales at the firm reached 7.5 billion euros — beating expectations — net bookings came in at 2.6 billion euros ($2.83 billion), the company said. That was well below a 5.6 billion euro consensus estimate from LSEG.

ASML shares plunged as much as 16% on Tuesday in response, causing the firm to shed over $50 billion in market capitalization in a single day, according to CNBC calculations using LSEG data.

Beyond the disappointment on bookings — which analysts said was due to weakness in a select number of customers, including Intel and Samsung — AMSL also gave an indication of how geopolitical tensions are putting pressure on its 2025 outlook.

Roger Dassen, ASML’s chief financial officer, said Tuesday that he expects the company’s China business to show a “more normalized percentage in our order book and also in our business.”

UBS analysts said the change in ASML’s 2025 guidance was mainly related to delays with the development of new logic fabrication facilities from Intel and Samsung, adding that the new guidance implies sales to China would fall 25% to 30% in 2025.

How important is China to ASML?

ASML’s China-based customers have been stockpiling the firm’s less advanced machines to get ahead of U.S. export restrictions on the Dutch firm and to continue being able to access its critical technology, which enables them to manufacturer chips for the electronics industry.

ASML has never sold its most advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV machines to Chinese customers due to previous restrictions.

Instead, chip firms in the country have opted to order ASML’s deep ultra violet lithography, or DUV machines. DUV machines are ASML’s second-tier lithography systems that are critical to make the circuitry of chips.

Last year ASML sourced 29% of its sales from China. It now expects that contribution from China to drop to around 20% of its total revenue in 2025.

Sales to China grew dramatically in the first three quarters of 2024 as customers scrambled to buy ASML’s DUV machines in bulk head of U.S. and Dutch export restrictions.

In the company’s second-quarter 2024 earnings presentation, ASML said that it sourced as much as 49% of its sales from China.

In September, the Netherlands expanded export restrictions on advanced chip manufacturing equipment by bringing licensing requirements of ASML’s machines under its purview and thereby taking over from the U.S. on controlling what machines ASML is able to export to other countries.

The move meant that the Dutch government would be able to effectively block ASML from maintaining the DUV machines it has sold to China so far.

“China is a very important market for China,” Chris Miller, assistant professor of international history at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and author of the book “Chip War,” told CNBC in emailed comments. “Most of this revenue is from older-generation chipmaking tools.”

Ironically, restrictions on exports of DUV machines to China “have probably helped ASML on net, because China has accelerated purchases of older generation DUV tools as a result,” Miller added.

Now, ASML is expecting a drop-off in sales to China as a result of U.S. trade restrictions. The firm expects China to return to taking up a smaller share of its overall global sales in 2025, CFO Dassen said in a transcript of a video interview Tuesday.

“We do see China trending towards more historically normal percentages in our business,” Dassen said. “So we expect China to come in at around 20% of our total revenue for next year. Which would also be in line with its representation in our backlog.” 

Analysts at Bank of America said the firm faces a “sharp decline in China revenues.” They added that ASML’s forecast of China accounting for around 20% of its revenue in 2025, implies a 48% revenue decline year-over-year — more severe than the 3% they had anticipated.

Abishur Prakash, founder of Toronto-based advisory firm The Geopolitical Business, said that demand from China for ASML’s machines is likely to drop significantly as the firm is “severely restricted by export controls.”

“Like Intel, for whom China is the largest market, ASML is deeply reliant on China,” Prakash told CNBC via email. “For ASML, it is watching what is taking place with China as a potential restriction on business.”

“As the chip world is cut from China, ASML could see demand for its equipment drop — from China and elsewhere,” Prakash added.

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