Pet Planet, based in Livingston (West Lothian, Scotland), launched in July 1999 and over the past 27 years has become “a trusted destination for everything pets need”.

The Pet Planet website reads: “We pride ourselves on offering a wide variety of high quality products and building lasting relationships with our customers.

“We’re here to make sure your pets have everything they need to live their happiest, healthiest lives!”

Pet Planet enters administration

After nearly 27 years, Pet Planet is now at risk of closing after collapsing into administration, according to Companies House and The Gazette.

James Stephen and Kiri Holland have been appointed administrators.

What happens when a company goes into administration?

When a company enters administration, it means that it is unable to pay expenses, debts, or other liabilities, according to SquareUp.com.

Companies House adds: “When a company goes into administration, they have entered a legal process (under the Insolvency Act 1986) with the aim of achieving one of the statutory objectives of an administration. This may be to rescue a viable business that is insolvent due to cashflow problems.

“An appointment of an administrator (a licensed insolvency practitioner) will be made by directors, a creditor or the court to fulfil the administration process.”

A statutory moratorium is put in place once a company enters administration, giving it “breathing space” to allow for financial restructuring plans to be drawn up free from creditor enforcement actions.

A company can continue to trade while in administration, but daily management and control are handed over to the administrators.

Companies House continues: “Within 8 weeks it is the administrators’ role to formulate administration proposals.

“Creditors are then asked to vote by a decision procedure to approve the administrators’ proposals.

“If the administration involves a sale of all or part of the company’s business, the proceeds (after the costs of the procedure) will be distributed to creditors in a statutory order of priority.”

Administration will end automatically after 12 months unless the administrator asks the court or creditors for an extension.

Through administration, a company can be:

• Rescued and passed back to the directors
• Enter liquidation
• Be dissolved

Other UK companies that have closed or entered administration/liquidation in 2026 (so far)

It has been a rough start to 2026 for the UK high street, with several other retailers entering administration and others announcing widespread store closures.

Major high street retailers, including River Island, Primark, and Poundland, have already been forced to close stores in 2026, while Revolution and BrewDog shut the doors to 21 and 38 pubs, respectively.

Several other retailers have fallen into administration, including:

Meanwhile, four UK travel companies have closed in 2026:

EcoJet Airlines, billed as “the world’s first Electric Airline”, also entered liquidation after just three years, resulting in the cancellation of all planned flights.

What has a nose, wings and runs off of hydrogen? Ecojet 😎 pic.twitter.com/y8QGiBdFe2

— ecotricity (@ecotricity) July 17, 2023

UK delivery company Yodel is set to be phased out over the coming months after being acquired by InPost.

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It’s also been reported that Morrisons is looking to sell some of its in-store pharmacies as it continues to cut costs.

It’s not been all bad news for the UK high street, with several major brands announcing new store openings for 2026, including Aldi, M&S, and Superdrug.

Have you shopped online at Pet Planet before? Let us know in the poll above or in the comments below.

Cybersecurity leaders aren’t struggling with visibility as much as they are with prioritisation.

With cloud-native apps, identity, SaaS, OT, and more, the attack surface today is much broader than the one traditional programs were designed to address. The consequence is all too familiar: thousands of alerts, disjointed insights, and still, no clear answer to what should be an obvious question: what matters most to the business today?

This is where exposure management and AI-driven exposure assessment enter the picture, with the operational model being Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM).

Why CTEM matters

What problem is CTEM solving?

Traditional security tools are very good at identifying vulnerabilities, but not as good at identifying those vulnerabilities that are actually exploitable and have a significant impact. This issue has become more pronounced as the environment becomes more distributed and interconnected.

CTEM provides a new approach that is continuous and risk-based. It changes the paradigm from detection to exposure. Rather than relying on regular scans and scores that do not change over time, it’s all about the process of discovery, analysis, validation, and action.

At a high level, the benefits of CTEM are:

• The ability to focus on what is actually reachable and exploitable
• A way to focus on business risk rather than technical severity
• Having continuous risk assessments as environments change

The fundamental shift is from “what is vulnerable?” to “what could actually be used against us?”

The five stages of a CTEM program

How do you operationalise exposure management?

CTEM is more of a lifecycle than a tool. Like any good lifecycle, it is iterative.

It begins with scoping. Here, businesses identify what matters most. What are critical assets? What are key business services? What are systems with financial or regulatory implications? Without scoping, prioritisation is soon noise.

Discovery is next, and it is far more complicated than it is made out to be. Environments are in motion. Assets are spinning up and down. Identities are changing. And new risks are emerging every day. Maintaining an inventory of what is in IT, in the cloud, and beyond is foundational.

Once exposures have been defined, prioritisation is the key challenge. This is where context is important. Prioritisation that is effective takes into account:

• Exploit availability and attacker activity
• Asset criticality and business function
• Network exposure and identity access paths

This is where companies go beyond general severity ratings and into something much more actionable.

The fourth stage is validation. This is where realism is introduced. It answers whether this exposure is actually exploitable. This is done by examining attack paths and simulating attacks.

Lastly, there is mobilisation. This is where action is taken. It is where there is integration with workflows, assigning action items, and tracking progress in a measurable way.

Building unified exposure visibility across the attack surface

Why is visibility still such a challenge?

Most organisations have made significant investments in various tools, and the problem is that the visibility is fragmented. Cloud security, identity security, endpoint security, and network security are usually implemented in parallel and generate their own data and priorities.

The problem is that risks don’t exist in silos. Risks are the result of interactions.

Exposure visibility gives the ability to bring these domains together.

• How are the vulnerabilities related between the environments
• How does the identity and access provide unintended pathways
• How does the combination of the weaknesses create real attack opportunities

For example, the configuration of the workload in the cloud could be considered low risk. However, when the permissions are excessive and the workload is exposed, the risk is more obvious.

The connections between the risks are not always obvious unless the cross-domain exposure is considered.

Continuous discovery across a dynamic attack surface

Why isn’t periodic scanning enough anymore?

Because the environment doesn’t sit still.

The nature of cloud-based workloads is ephemeral. Applications are constantly being updated. User roles and permissions are in constant flux. In this environment, periodic assessment is plagued by blind spots, where snapshots are obsolete almost as soon as they’re taken.

Continuous discovery solves this problem by providing real-time visibility into your environment. This is because we recognise that your attack surface is constantly changing, and your risk assessment must follow.

This is particularly critical in:

• Cloud-native environments
• Hybrid infrastructures
• Businesses that are adopting risk-based cloud security models

With no continuous insight, entities are making decisions based on incomplete data.

Prioritising cyber risk with business context

How do you decide what to fix first?

It is in this area that security software often falls short, as the sheer number of vulnerabilities far outweighs the number of ways to address them.

It is in this area that organisations are increasingly turning to AI to help address the problem. It is able to do so by correlating data from different domains, to:

• Identify potential paths of attack
• Uncover vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited
• Correlate technical risks to business risks

This is where the real value of such an approach comes in – not only is it more efficient, but it is also more understandable.

From vulnerability scans to continuous, contextualised exposure insight

What is the role of traditional vulnerability management today?

Vulnerability scanning is still a fundamental technique. Tools like Nessus are very good at finding known weaknesses, misconfigurations, and patch problems.

Scanning, however, is no longer sufficient on its own.

A scanner, by itself, will tell you what you have. It won’t tell you:

• Is the vulnerability reachable?
• How does it get exploited?
• What are the business implications?

As part of a CTEM-based approach, vulnerability information becomes part of a larger model of exposure. It’s augmented, validated against “real world” scenarios, and weighted by relevance.

This is the evolution from simple data collection to decision support.

Integrating CTEM with existing security workflows

How do you make CTEM actionable?

Insight is useless if action is not taken. This is the biggest pitfall in the implementation of cybersecurity initiatives.

The operationalisation of CTEM is the integration of CTEM into existing workflows. This includes:

• Integrating CTEM findings into existing IT and DevOps ticketing systems
• Aligning remediation activities with business priorities and ownership
• Measuring the effectiveness of remediation activities over time

Additionally, there is a need to change the way we communicate CTEM findings. This is so that the findings are communicated in a way that the business can understand.

The most successful organisations in the implementation of CTEM are those that treat the process as a shared responsibility.

The bigger shift: from reactive security to exposure reduction

Exposure management and AI-driven exposure assessment are a result of a larger shift in the world of Cybersecurity. They represent a shift from:

• Alerts to insights
• Volume to context
• Technical severity to business risk
• Periodic review to continuous assessment

This goes beyond a change in tools, to altering how we think about cyber risk.

Prioritisation will be the key differentiator

The attack surface will carry on expanding, and complexity will continue to rise. Therefore, in this environment, the ability to prioritise is going to be the key differentiator.

As organisations continue to mature their CTEM programs, they are no longer just trying to find problems. They are trying to gain a better understanding of their risk and be more proactive.

The key to success is not how many problems are discovered, but how well the risk is reduced.

Henley-based Courtiers Investment Services’ latest accounts reveal that it has set aside £12,003,171 for the “payment of redress to clients”.

This means setting right, compensating or remedying detriment experienced by a consumer due to a “business failure or negligence”.

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This comes after a skilled persons review – an independent investigation – was commissioned at the firm.

Its results statement for the year ending March 2025 said: “The company has undertaken extensive work to identify the clients affected and to calculate the amount payable and a further Skilled Persons review was commissioned to agree the value of the redress.

“The total group provision representing the estimated amount of redress payable at 31 March 2025 amounts to £13,106,203, including interest but net of recoverable VAT.

Hart Street in Henley (Image: Ballards)

“Of this sum £12,004,171 is attributable to this company and has been incorporated within these financial statements.”

Based in Hart Street, Henley, City Wire has reported that this represents a significant increase from the £3 million the group had allocated the previous year.

This comes after Courtiers Investment Services voluntarily agreed to a Financial Conduct Authority order to stop taking on new business.

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This agreement happened in 2024 with the firm saying it had done so while it consolidated its acquisitions which included Dorset adviser Snowdon Financial in 2019.

The business did not respond to a request for comment, and it remains unclear when the restrictions will be removed.

In its statement the directors of the firm stated that they consider the financial position of the firm “healthy”.