By Elliot Weld ( February 28, 2025, 3:06 PM EST) — The owner of a Raleigh, North Carolina-based electronics resale company pled guilty on Friday in federal court to scheming to send American military technology to China without the proper license…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

KeePass is a free and open source password manager geared toward power users and tech enthusiasts. In this article, we walk you through how to set up and use KeePass. We also answer some frequently asked questions about KeePass and its feature set. 1. Downloading and installing KeePass Unlike other popular password managers, KeePass is a completely free password manager. This means that you won’t have to worry about losing out on features for choosing to download the free version or picking one paid subscription over another. In our hands-on review, KeePass received a score of 3.2 out of 5 stars. Check out our full KeePass review. To download KeePass, I went on their official website and navigated to the Downloads section. I’m using my personal Windows laptop so I chose to click on the KeePass Installer for Windows.   KeePass download page. Image: KeePass 1 NordPass Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Micro (0-49 Employees), Small (50-249 Employees), Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees) Micro, Small, Medium, Large, Enterprise Features Activity Log, Business Admin Panel for user management, Company-wide settings, and more 2 Dashlane Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Micro (0-49 Employees), Small (50-249 Employees), Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees) Micro, Small, Medium, Large, Enterprise Features Automated Provisioning 3 ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Any Company Size Any Company Size Features Access Management, Compliance Management, Credential Management, and more If you’re using a different operating system, simply look for the appropriate download link under KeePass’ Contributed/Unofficial KeePass Ports list. After it finished downloading, I ran the setup installer and went through the necessary install steps. Once installed, I launched the app and was redirected to a blank KeePass dashboard. KeePass upon initial setup. Image: Luis Millares As we noted in our full KeePass review, KeePass doesn’t have much in terms of an initial guide on how to use their software. Fortunately, I’ll show you how to set everything up in this article. 2. Setting up a KeePass database Once I got to this blank dashboard, I went over to the menu bar and hovered over File and clicked New. New file. Image: Luis Millares This will prompt KeePass to start creating a New Database. A KeePass database is your password vault. It’s the file that will store your passwords and other information securely. After clicking New, KeePass asked me if I wanted to proceed in creating a new database and I clicked OK. From there, I chose where I wanted to have my new database file saved and its. Afterwards, KeePass prompted me to provide a master password for my database.The master password is important because it serves as your main key to access your KeePass databases. In theory, this is the only password you will need to manually create and remember, as KeePass has a built-in password generator that can create random and secure passwords. Creating a master password. Image: Luis Millares Clicking on “Show expert options” brings up KeePass’ two options for multi-factor authentication (MFA): key file and linking to a Windows user account. Choosing key file lets you set a file to save — on your computer, a USB flash drive, or another device — to act as an additional requirement in tandem with your master password to access your database. KeePass MFA options. Image: Luis Millares Meanwhile, linking to a Windows user account lets you access your KeePass database only if you’re logged into a specific Windows user account. For this demonstration, I chose to only have a master password. After setting a password, I re-typed my chosen name for the new database. New database in KeePass. Image: Luis Millares SEE: Penetration Testing and Scanning Policy (TechRepublic Premium) 3. Saving a new entry with KeePass Now that we’ve got a database to work with, it’s time to save our first password entry. As we saw, KeePass includes two sample entries when you create your first database. You can play around with these to get a feel for how it works. To save a new entry, you can either click the new entry button on the menu bar, right click on any space within the dashboard, and click Add Entry or use the shortcut Ctrl + I. Add Entry button on the menu bar. Image: Luis Millares In this case, I used the new entry button. From there, KeePass showed me the add entry menu and I filled in the fields for the Goodreads account I wanted to create. New Goodreads login. Image: Luis Millares By default, KeePass will generate a 20-character password but you can choose the length. You can also set it to have either numbers, upper or lower case letters, and special symbols. After I finished filling out the fields, I checked the generated password, pressed OK, and my KeePass login was saved. Saved logins in KeePass. Image: Luis Millares To access my new Goodreads credentials, I had the option to go to the newly saved login, right click it, and copy the saved username or password. More cloud security coverage KeePass frequently asked questions (FAQs) Is KeePass actually free? Yes, KeePass is completely free. This is one of its main selling points as it doesn’t have any paid or premium version. Instead, you get all its password management features for free. Does KeePass have a mobile app? While KeePass doesn’t have an official mobile application per se, it has a number of mobile ports that were created by its community members. As of publication, KeePass had six Android ports and five iOS ports listed on their official website. What are KeePass plugins? These are downloadable add-ons created by KeePass users that extend the functionality and features of the base client. They can range from having more multifactor authentication options, the ability to change the appearance

By Jon Hill ( March 4, 2025, 12:48 PM EST) — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday abandoned its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and other major banks over digital payment fraud on Zelle, the latest Biden-era enforcement action to be dropped by the agency’s Trump-appointed interim leadership…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

The commercial availability of quantum computers that can compromise traditional asymmetric cryptography is still five to 10 years away. But security and risk (S&R) professionals must assess and prepare for the impact of quantum security now. While the encryption market has a history of vendors publishing incredible claims like “unbreakable encryption,” the hype and interest around quantum is real because hackers are already using the “harvest now, decrypt later” approach. This new report examines the governance, strategy, architecture, and impact of quantum security over the short-, medium-, and long-term horizons. Quantum Security Should Be The Security Foundation Of Your Environment Quantum security and cryptoagility — the ability to replace and upgrade cryptographic algorithms in infrastructure, commercial, and in-house-built applications — will improve the security of any information exchange, improve digital signatures, and mitigate the risk of “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks. We see quantum security as consisting of several technologies, including post-quantum or quantum-computing-resistant key exchange, digital signatures, key generation and management, cryptographic algorithm discovery and inventory, certificate management, cryptographic algorithm change management (cryptoagility), and quantum key distribution. With quantum security, organizations can expect to: Build a future foundation for security. Quantum security will force an overhaul of systems across an organization’s: 1) on-premises and cloud computing; 2) storage and network infrastructure; 3) commercial off-the-shelf software; 4) commercial software-as-a-service offerings; and 5) software built in-house. Organizations will need to upgrade their entire security stack to ensure cryptoagility for the future to protect their data. See quantum security requirements accelerate security investment. Three key externalities — third-party partner management and business requirements, regulatory requirements, and cyber insurance requirements — will drive new investments in security technologies and services. Quantum security will impact all three, putting additional pressure on organizations to act, demonstrate proof of cryptoagility, and use pluggable and easily manageable cryptographic algorithms across infrastructures and point products. Find increasing clarity and guidance from standards bodies and governments. Organizations, technology vendors, and industry groups have been waiting for quantum security standards. NIST released the first three finalized post-quantum encryption standards in August 2024. This kicked off a flurry of announcements from Amazon, Google, and IBM highlighting their ongoing contributions to standards and working groups, current implementations of quantum security in products and services, and migration activities. Governments around the world have also issued guidance on migration to post-quantum cryptography, with some specifying requirements and migration timelines. Quantum security will impact all areas of security including certificate and key management, data encryption and digital signatures, transport layer security and secure comms, and authentication. This demands that orgs have a plan for building in cryptoagility and build a security architecture that can securely operate in a post-quantum world, even if quantum computing is still several years away. Our report examines how quantum security will deliver ROI over the short, medium, and long term, identifies the key factors influencing each timeline, and provides guidance on how to increase security posture today while preparing for tomorrow. Such opportunities don’t come along often, so S&R pros need to begin a plan for cryptoagility now. If you are looking to better understand the implications of quantum security on your security architecture, please read our report and schedule an inquiry or guidance session with us. source

“The top challenge with agentic frameworks is that each vendor takes a fundamentally different approach to agent architecture, state management, and communication protocols. As vendors push their own frameworks and agents, enterprises will face adoption challenges, including a significant rise in technical debt and maintenance overhead,” Liddle says. “I don’t see a single framework emerging to unify all agents, making this complexity an ongoing reality.” Meanwhile, enterprise vendors who are rolling out agentic AI services as part of their flagship offerings make their pitch for a platform-based approach to managing agents. “Managing agentic AI at scale is a multidimensional challenge. To break it down, it is a governance, operational, ethical, and integration challenge all at once,” says Chris Bedi, chief customer officer and enterprise AI advisor at ServiceNow. “To manage agentic AI, one needs a platform that can unite AI agents, data, and workflows, with a single data model, which brings AI to every corner of the enterprise and addresses all these challenges.” source

The vast majority of Americans were raised in a religion. Fully 86% say that as children, they identified with Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam or another religion. Just 13% of U.S. adults say that as children, they did not identify with any religion. The Religious Landscape Study (RLS) shows, furthermore, that 68% of U.S. adults say they grew up attending religious services at least once or twice a month, including 56% who say they went at least once a week. Seven-in-ten U.S. adults say they received at least some formal religious education as children, attending either a private religious school or other religious education programs such as Sunday school or CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine). This includes 35% of Americans who received a lot of formal religious education (seven or more years attending either type). In addition, 45% of Americans say religion was very important to their family when they were children. The survey shows a clear relationship between people’s religious upbringing and how religious they are now. People raised in highly religious families are more likely to be religious themselves as adults. For example, among adults who say religion was very important to their family when they were children, 55% say religion is very important in their own lives today. Far fewer people who grew up in families in which religion was less important say it is very important in their own lives today. Still, growing up in a religious home is no guarantee that a person will view religion as very important as an adult. Among adults who say they were raised in homes where religion was very important to their family, 24% say religion is somewhat important to them today, and an additional 20% say it is not too important or not at all important. Age plays a role in how people answer these questions. The younger they are, the less likely U.S. adults are to say they were raised in religious homes. And the “stickiness” of a religious upbringing may be declining: In general, younger U.S. adults who were raised in highly religious homes are less religious today than older U.S. adults who were raised in highly religious homes. Read more in this chapter about: While this chapter includes data on U.S. adults’ religious affiliation and attendance at religious services as children – and on the importance of religion to them while they were growing up – you can read more about U.S. adults’ current levels of religious affiliation in Chapter 1, about current levels of religious attendance in Chapter 8, and about religion’s current importance to adults in Chapter 7. Childhood religious identity The vast majority of U.S. adults – 86% – say they were raised in a religion. This includes 80% who were raised as Christians and an additional 6% who were raised in other, non-Christian religions. Overall, 46% of U.S. adults say they were raised as Protestants, and 30% say they were raised as Catholics. Smaller shares were raised as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as Mormons (2%); Orthodox Christians (1%); and Jehovah’s Witnesses (1%). Among the survey’s respondents, 2% say they were raised Jewish by religion, 1% say they were raised Muslim, 1% were raised Buddhist, and 1% grew up Hindu. In addition, 1% of U.S. adults say they were raised as atheists, 1% were raised as agnostics, and 11% say they were raised in no particular religion. Religious service attendance during childhood A majority of U.S. adults (56%) say they went to religious services weekly or more often as children, and an additional 11% say they grew up going to religious services once or twice a month. Looking just at people raised as Christians, 78% say they grew up going to church at least monthly, including 63% who say they went at least weekly. People raised in religions other than Christianity report having attended religious services at lower rates as children. Among people who say they were raised religiously unaffiliated, 17% say they grew up going to religious services at least monthly. Importance of religion during childhood Overall, 45% of U.S. adults say that religion was very important to their family when they were growing up. Looking just at people who were raised as Christians, half say religion was very important to their family when they were children, including 49% of those raised Protestant and 51% of those raised Catholic. Among U.S. adults raised in non-Christian religions, the shares who say religion was very important to their family when they were children range from 27% among those raised Buddhist to 66% among those raised Muslim. Most adults who were raised without a religious affiliation say religion was not too or not at all important to their family when they were growing up (69%), while 15% say religion was very important to their family. Far fewer Americans say religion was very important to them personally when they were children than say it was very important to their family while they were growing up. This pattern is seen among people raised in a wide variety of religious traditions. Childhood religious education Most Americans (69%) say they received at least some formal religious education as children. This includes 62% of U.S. adults who say that as children, they attended Sunday school, CCD or some other kind of religious education for one to three years (20%), four to six years (13%), or seven or more years (28%). Fewer people (24%) say they attended a private religious school as a child for at least one to three years. We combined these two questions (about attendance at Sunday school or other religious education programs, and attendance at private religious schools) to construct a scale measuring levels of religious education. According to the scale, 35% of U.S. adults received a lot of religious education, meaning they attended either a private religious school or an extracurricular religious program for seven or more years. An additional 18% received a fair amount of religious

Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella at Microsoft Inspire 2023. A widespread Microsoft outage on March 1 left tens of thousands of users unable to access key services, including Outlook, Teams, and Office 365, for more than three hours. Microsoft has not provided full details on the root cause but attributed the disruption to a “problematic code change.” Timeline of the Microsoft outage According to Downdetector, reports of issues began rising on March 1 around 3:30 p.m. ET. More than 37,000 complaints were logged for Outlook, 24,000 for Office 365, and 150 for Teams. The majority of reports originated in U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, though social media posts indicated the outage had a global reach. Frustrated users turned to social media, with many initially fearing they had been hacked. “I thought I was getting my outlook hacked, turns out the entire Microsoft platform is getting hacked. Thank God it’s not personal,” one user posted on X. Microsoft acknowledged the issue in a post on March 1at 4:34 p.m. ET via its Microsoft 365 Status account, stating: “We’re investigating an issue in which users may be unable to access Outlook features and services.” SEE: Microsoft Patches Two Actively Exploited Zero-Day Flaws However, the outage affected more than just Outlook; Office 365 applications such as Word, Excel, Teams, and Exchange were also impacted. In a follow-up X post, Microsoft confirmed that “various Microsoft 365 services” were down and that engineers were analyzing telemetry and customer-provided logs. At about 5:00 p.m. ET on March 1, Microsoft confirmed it had identified a potential cause of impact, and almost an hour later reported that services were recovering. The company confirmed at 7:02 p.m. ET that service had been restored after “reversion of the problematic code change” and to “refer to MO1020913 in the admin center for detailed information.” Users express frustration as businesses face potential losses Despite the fix, some users continued to report issues. At 1:46 a.m. ET on March 3, the “Status Is Down” X account reported ongoing Outlook and Office 365 disruptions. One affected customer posted on X on March 3 that Microsoft “should be ashamed of themselves” and that the continued problems are “potentially costing businesses millions of dollars.” The company’s service status page shows all services as operational at the time of writing. Microsoft has yet to release a detailed report on the latest outages. TechRepublic has contacted Microsoft about the cause of the initial outage and for additional information about any ongoing issues; there has been no reply at the time of writing. What’s hot at TechRepublic Other outages that disrupted business operations Microsoft is, unfortunately, no stranger to outages. In November 2024, Microsoft Teams experienced technical delays for over 24 hours, and since then there have been issues with Copilot, Multi-Factor Authentication, SharePoint, and OneDrive. In July 2024, a distributed-denial-of-service attack caused global issues with Azure cloud service. However, none of these come anywhere close to the scale of the CrowdStrike incident that same month, which disabled about 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide and caused huge disruption to emergency services, airports, law enforcement, and other critical organisations. Slack’s recent outage Microsoft 365 services were also not the only ones facing problems this week. On Feb. 26, Slack experienced a significant outage, disrupting services like messaging and workflows for thousands of users worldwide. This was caused by maintenance action in a database system which led to an “overload of heavy traffic.” source

Image: Samsung Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy A-series lineup is set to bring generative AI features to more affordable smartphones, following the trend established by its flagship S-series. The new Galaxy A56 5G, Galaxy A36 5G, and Galaxy A26 5G offer AI-powered photo editing, writing assistance, and Google’s Circle to Search — features once exclusive to premium models. Samsung shared this news as part of its Mobile World Congress 2025 announcements. “The new Galaxy A series marks an important step in our mission of AI for all, by opening Galaxy’s incredible mobile AI experiences to even more people around the world,” said TM Roh, president and head of mobile eXperience business at Samsung Electronics. The Galaxy A36 5G starts at $399.99 and will be available March 26, while the Galaxy A26 5G starts at $299.99 and will be available March 28. The Galaxy A56 5G starts at $499.99, and will be available at an unspecified date in 2025. Generative AI delivered in partnership with Google Samsung calls the A-series variant of its generative AI “Awesome Intelligence.” It’s exclusive to the Galaxy A56 5G, Galaxy A36 5G, and Galaxy A26 5G, and it brings pretty standard generative AI tools. Many of the same features are included on the mainline S25s. The features include: Google’s Circle to Search: Quickly looks up information by circling text, images, or objects on screen, while also identifying phone numbers, emails, and URLs and providing shortcuts for quick actions. Object Eraser: Remove unwanted elements from photos. Custom AI filters: Create image effects by applying styles from other photos. Writing assist: Suggesting improvements in grammar, tone, and clarity. SEE: Have an old smartphone sitting in a drawer? There are plenty of ways to recycle it. Mobility must-reads One UI 7 and enterprise features The Galaxy A series will debut Samsung’s One UI 7, introducing a redesigned Notifications and Quick Settings panel alongside integrated generative AI productivity tools. It also enables Knox Vault, Samsung’s security subsystem designed to store sensitive enterprise data separately from general device storage. A special enterprise edition Galaxy A56 5G will come with seven years of security and One UI updates, a three-year warranty, a two-year product lifecycle guarantee, and a one-year Knox Suite Enterprise Plan license. Larger, brighter displays and long battery life All models in the 2025 Galaxy A lineup will feature 6.7-inch displays, with the Galaxy A56 5G and Galaxy A36 5G offering brightness levels of up to 1200 nits — optimized for enhanced viewing in movies and games. Samsung claims the battery can last up to 29 hours of video playback. Under the hood, the Galaxy A56 5G runs on Samsung’s Exynos 1580 chipset, while the Galaxy A36 5G is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 Mobile Platform. Storage options range from 6GB + 128GB to 12GB + 256GB depending on the model. With flagship-tier AI features, brighter displays, and extended battery life, Samsung’s midrange Galaxy A series aims to make generative AI more accessible while retaining affordability. Read MWC 2025 news about Lenovo on our sister site eWeek. source

I’ve enjoyed watching GraphQL’s evolution during my time as a Forrester analyst. While I can’t say it is a super popular topic in my client calls, I have seen a noticeable uptick in interest. This has happened while objections to GraphQL adoption are being alleviated: monolithic graphs, poor developer experience, and performance issues. Let’s review how each of these barriers is being addressed. Monolithic GraphQL Becomes Federated The original GraphQL implementation was one giant, monolithic graph for the enterprise. This couples everything to everything, creating an operational problem wherein an outage anywhere in the enterprise could ripple through the graph. The enterprise team supporting GraphQL operations lacks visibility into and ownership of those services surrounding it, as Netflix famously wrote about in two blogs. Apollo Federation first addressed this a few years ago. It allows GraphQL to be split into subgraphs, each owned and operated by different domain IT teams. Unfortunately for buyers, Apollo switched this from an open-source license to proprietary, preventing competitors from using it. There are attempts in progress to create an open standard to federation. Wundergraph responded with a federated product under the Apache 2.0 license. ChilliCream and others developed GraphQL-Fusion under the MIT license. A subcommittee of the GraphQL Working Group is also developing Composite Schemas, a federation specification for the GraphQL Foundation. Hasura has yet another option. GraphQL’s Developer Experience Is Improving The GraphQL developer experience (DX) has been very far behind that of REST API development, but there have been steady improvements. Federation, of course, improves DX by giving application development teams more autonomy from other teams building on the graph. Writing a new schema by hand is very error prone; now there are linters to automate enforcement quality standards, error checks, and backward compatibility checks from vendors such as Apollo and Inigo. In the past, connecting to a new data source often meant writing custom code in a GraphQL server. Apollo recently made GraphQL Connectors generally available, a way to build resolvers through declarative configuration. This not only makes it easier to connect to service endpoints, but I also expect this approach will make it easier for future AI to generate fully connected GraphQL implementations. From Performance Concerns To Performance Gains GraphQL has always had opportunities to improve performance by consolidating several REST data fetches into one query fetch. But performance concerns also arise from the fact that you’re adding yet another layer between the client and the back ends. Nonetheless, the GraphQL ecosystem has been making headway with performance. Apollo has recently converted its router from JavaScript to Rust, improving performance like C++ while maintaining memory safety. The GraphQL Connectors described above also boost performance by eliminating the need for a GraphQL server supporting those connections. Since federation runs different parts of the graph on different servers, it also provides more opportunities for parallel processing and optimized query planning. The worst performance risk, though, is recursive or redundant queries that can DOS a database. Although this problem remains, there is better tooling today to protect from it. More API management vendors support GraphQL-specific policies to limit query depth. Startup Inigo specializes in GraphQL security policies, including query depth and rate limiting to protect back-end infrastructure. It also offers advanced observability of runtime queries to diagnose the root cause of problematic ones. Apollo provides a query planner to introspect how queries will execute and a means to declaratively present unique subset views of a graph to different users. Fine-grained caching is also available from vendors. I spoke with one user who believed screen rendering went from 5 seconds to 1 or 2 seconds when employing solid schema design and caching in GraphQL. Another company found up to a 95% reduction in latency by migrating to the Rust-based router in the travel industry, where latency could mean the loss of millions of dollars in revenue. Pick The Right Use Case GraphQL mainly supports front-end developers, replacing the back-end-for-front-end pattern, but not much beyond that. This leads to caution about going overboard. The wisdom of exposing it to third parties remains to be seen. That recursive query risk is easier to deal with when the client is one of your employees. When it’s a customer, for example, you have much less leeway to tell them to stop making that query. I have talked to vendors who made client-facing GraphQL and regretted it for that reason. Shopify provides another caution. It recently pushed customers off REST and onto GraphQL. User reaction has not been all positive. Some of this was self-imposed by Shopify: incomplete documentation and not migrating all data from REST to GraphQL. But negativity was mostly due to GraphQL itself, notably using it for write operations. The problem with write operations is that — unlike reads — they often must execute in a specific order. GraphQL does not have a way of knowing that order. A single REST API can hide this orchestration from clients using iPaaS. GraphQL pushes that complexity onto clients. For example, one Shopify user wanted to upload a product image with alt text and position information, attached to multiple product variants. This had been one REST call. With GraphQL, it now takes six calls: Stage the upload, upload the image, send media info to link to that image, etc. GraphQL is like every other tech: It’s not a silver bullet, and it has tradeoffs. As its tooling matures and becomes viable for more and more organizations, enterprises must never lose sight of the bigger picture: GraphQL is here to stay, and adoption will grow in the coming years, but it will never fully replace REST. AI: A New Horizon For GraphQL? I look forward to seeing how this continues evolving. AI creates an interesting potential. For AI to leverage APIs as tools, it needs to know the relationship that one API has with another. GraphQL’s schema provides context of how entities from different endpoints relate to each other. The growth of agentic AI may provide a tailwind for

Gene-edited pig livers, synthetic embryos, and 3D-printed tissue implants… the world of organ transplantation is becoming increasingly bizarre as scientists explore high-tech ways to keep people alive.  These experiments are birthing new business opportunities. One company cashing in is University of Oxford spinout OrganOx, which this week secured $142mn in funding to fuel its expansion in the US as it mulls a potential IPO.     OrganOx’s Metra machine pumps oxygenated blood and nutrients through the liver, mimicking natural conditions during a transplant. This helps the organ stay healthier for up to 12 hours longer than traditional methods — giving doctors more time to find a suitable recipient and improving transplant success rates. To date, the technology has been used in more than 5,000 transplant operations.  OrganOx isn’t the only player disrupting organ preservation, which has relied on one technique — static cold storage — for decades.  TNW Conference – Groups get the best fun and the best deals Bring your team and multiply your efficiency to cover more grounds and collect new leads. Across the pond, Paragonix Technologies has developed an organ transportation device that preserves organs by cooling them and then pumping a special preservation solution through them. This helps to keep the organ cells alive and reduces damage during transport or storage, ensuring the organ stays viable for transplant. The tech caught the eye of Swedish medical-equipment giant Getinge, which acquired Paragonix for $477mn last year.  Meanwhile, US biotech scaleup eGenesis, founded in 2015, has raised $456mn to advance xenotransplantation — using CRISPR gene-editing techniques to develop human-compatible organs derived from pigs. Yes, you read that correctly: pig organs for human transplants.  Last year, surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania successfully attached one of eGenesis’ genetically-altered pig livers to a brain-dead person. The organ functioned normally for 72 hours. The team used OrganOx’s machine to carry out the transplant. The endeavor aims to address the chronic shortage of donor organs from humans, potentially saving countless lives.   In December 2024, there were over 104,000 people in the US waiting for an organ donor. Every day, 17 people die waiting.  Craig Marshall, CEO of OrganOx, said that the company is preparing to launch clinical trials for new devices designed to assist kidney transplants, as well as advance its work in genetically-engineered pig livers.  Other companies are taking organ transplantation into the realm of science fiction — and raising some ethical questions in the process. Renewal Bio, a startup from Israel, is using cutting-edge stem-cell science to create synthetic human embryos. The company wants to use the embryos — grown in an artificial womb — as a source for harvesting cells and tissues for medical applications, such as organ transplants.  While Renewal Bio insists that these entities are not intended to develop into human beings, the potential for creating embryos that resemble people raises ethical questions about the limits of scientific experimentation. source