Microsoft Says New Windows Recall Bypass Isn't a Vulnerability
Microsoft defended its Windows 11 Recall utility after researcher Alexander Hagenah released a tool that can extract decrypted screenshots and metadata by injecting a DLL into the AIXHost.exe process. The bypass works from a standard logged‑in user account and does not compromise the VBS enclave or the AES‑256‑GCM encryption that protects the database. Microsoft maintains the behavior is consistent with Recall’s documented design and therefore not a vulnerability. The dispute highlights a gap between enclave security and the unprotected host process.
Bendigo Bank Rebuffs Pressure to Reveal Staff Impact of Outsourcing
Australian lender Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has signed long‑term outsourcing contracts with Infosys (seven years) and Genpact (six years) to shift IT and process‑optimisation work offshore. The Finance Sector Union argues the deals could affect up to 1,000 staff across...
Citigroup Says AI Helps Speed Account Openings and Systems Upgrades
Citigroup is leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate account opening and modernize legacy systems, cutting document review time to 15 minutes. Head of technology Tim Ryan says AI automates data migration, coding and testing, helping retire outdated software. The bank is...
Rest Super Simplifies Staff Access to IT, HR and Information
Rest Super, Australia’s fast‑growing superannuation fund, has rolled out ServiceNow as a unified front‑door portal for IT, HR and information services. The platform supports a workforce that has expanded from about 200 staff five years ago to roughly 1,100 employees...
Why AI, Sovereignty and Visibility Are Redefining Cyber Strategy: Infotrust
Infotrust executives warn that data sovereignty, AI governance, and visibility are reshaping cyber strategy as geopolitical tensions and rapid AI adoption intensify risk. They highlight the rise of "shadow AI"—unsanctioned AI tools used by employees—while noting that vulnerability exploitation windows...
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Don’t Wait for 2027 – Make Your Smart Product Security Visible Now
Australia is introducing a national security label for smart devices, slated for a 2027 launch, with an industry pilot beginning in October 2026. The label will provide a clear, comparable security credential at the point of sale, shifting security from...
Cambodian Parliament Passes Landmark Cybercrime Law
Cambodia's parliament approved its first cybercrime law targeting scam centres that have defrauded international victims of billions. The legislation prescribes prison terms of two to ten years and fines up to $250,000 for large‑scale operations. It also criminalises money‑laundering, data...
AI-Assisted Fraud Makes Big Debut in FBI's Cybercrime Stats
The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Centre report introduced AI‑assisted fraud as a distinct category, documenting $893 million in losses. Overall cybercrime losses topped $20 billion, a 26 percent rise from 2024, with investment scams leading at $8.6 billion. AI‑generated content fueled business‑email‑compromise, voice‑cloning,...
ATO Adds In-App Call Verification to Stop Scams
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has introduced a new in‑app “verify call” feature that lets taxpayers confirm whether a phone call claiming to be from the ATO is authentic within 30 seconds. The tool, available on iOS and Android, pushes...
CBA Onboards Customers with NFC Scans of ePassports
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has launched a fully operational onboarding system that reads ePassport NFC chips to verify new customers. Since its January rollout, more than 2,700 users have completed the process, which can be finished in as little...
WaterNSW to Move on Generative AI
WaterNSW is embedding generative AI to accelerate its digital agenda, focusing on application design and customer engagement. The authority will pilot Pega GenAI Blueprint, a low‑code tool that can shrink months‑long prototyping cycles to weeks. It is also testing Pega’s Knowledge Buddy virtual...
WA Local Gov Entity Lost $350,000 in Phishing Attack
A Western Australian council lost approximately US$231,000 after a phishing attack altered a supplier’s bank details in its finance system. The incident is one of 14 case studies in the WA Office of the Auditor General’s 2025 Local Government Information...
Telstra Overruled in Mobile Coverage Claims Stoush
Australia’s regulator ACMA confirmed its draft standard that classifies signal strengths below –115 dBm as ‘no coverage’, forcing carriers to label maps with four tiers: good, moderate, usable and no coverage. The rule means Telstra could have up to one million...
APRA Pulls Data Submission System After Security Pentest
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) decommissioned its legacy Direct To APRA (D2A) data‑submission system after a routine penetration test on March 19 uncovered unnamed vulnerabilities. The regulator took the system offline on March 20 and urged all banks, insurers and superannuation funds to...
New ACMA Rules to Make Telcos More Accountable for Outages
Australian regulator ACMA will enforce new network‑outage transparency rules from 30 June 2026, requiring telcos to publish a historic register of major unplanned disruptions resolved after 31 March 2026. Providers must disclose twenty specific data points, including outage type, duration, geographic breakdown and affected...
Councils Push for Federal Shared Security Centre Funding
Australian local councils are lobbying the federal government for shared security operations centres (SOCs) to bolster cyber defences. Ahead of the ALGA national assembly, identical motions call for $10 million AUD (about $6.6 million USD) to fund SOC infrastructure, 24/7 monitoring, SIEM...
NAB Is Co-Designing a SIEM with Databricks
National Australia Bank (NAB) has joined four other design partners to co‑design Lakewatch, a new security information and event management (SIEM) platform built on Databricks. The solution, currently in private preview, leverages the bank’s existing Databricks‑on‑AWS data lake, Ada, to...
Telstra to Add Flink to Its Event Streaming Capabilities
Telstra announced it will integrate the Apache Flink stream‑processing engine with its existing Kafka‑based event streaming platform, launching the project in the coming months. The pairing, delivered through Confluent’s managed services, aims to boost real‑time analytics across Telstra’s network observability...
LEO Satellite Operators Could Be Beyond Australian Data Laws
Australia’s Cyber Security Centre, together with international partners, warned that commercial low‑Earth‑orbit (LEO) satellite operators can deliver connectivity to Australian users without a local footprint, leaving data outside the reach of domestic privacy laws. The advisory highlights that LEO constellations...
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ITnews Executive Retreats: Navigating Leadership in the Age of Data and AI
The iTnews Executive Retreat returns on 28‑29 May 2026 at Château Élan in the Hunter Valley, shifting its focus from security to data and artificial intelligence. Building on the success of its inaugural security edition, the retreat gathers senior technology, data and AI...
Macquarie University Appoints Interim AI Chief
Macquarie University has named Richard Watts‑Seale, the technical lead of its AI transformation program, as interim head of AI after Phil Laufenberg departed for a pro‑vice‑chancellorship at La Trobe University. The university assures that its AI initiatives, including the in‑house generative...
Orica Builds a Conversational AI Assistant for HR
Orica has launched a conversational AI assistant that sits atop its fragmented HR technology stack, using ServiceNow's MoveWorks overlay and Now Assist. The tool integrates SAP SuccessFactors, Dayforce, SharePoint and other systems, delivering natural‑language, multilingual support through Microsoft Teams. A proof‑of‑concept...
Gov Proposes Disclosure Delay for Most Serious Cyberattacks
Australia is consulting on new rules that would allow a temporary, roughly 30‑day delay in publicly disclosing serious cyber‑attacks on critical‑infrastructure operators, including ASX‑listed firms. The proposal aims to give entities time to mitigate threats without compromising national security or...
ACMA to Tap CTO-as-a-Service to Help Architect Core Modernisation
The Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) is launching a CTO‑as‑a‑service contract to provide on‑demand technology leadership for its core modernisation programme. The arrangement, slated to close in March 2026, will supplement internal capabilities and report to chief information and...
Australia's Critical Infrastructure Security Laws "Toothless"
An independent review has labelled Australia’s Security of Critical Infrastructure (SoCI) Act “toothless,” arguing that its penalties are treated as a routine cost rather than a deterrent. The review urges a shift from paperwork‑centric compliance to a penalty‑based risk‑management regime...
Phillip Britt Exits Aussie Broadband Board
Phillip Britt, co‑founder of Aussie Broadband, resigned from the board after nearly 18 years, ending his formal influence over the challenger telco. His departure coincides with the launch of Rural Fibre Co, a $10 million (≈US$6.6 million) regional fibre venture that is...
Rodd & Gunn Eyes Headless Ecommerce
Australian luxury retailer Rodd & Gunn is evaluating a headless ecommerce strategy to accelerate its global digital rollout. The company, now operating stores in 13 countries and a new restaurant line, currently launches sites in about three months using a...
ATO to Upgrade Its IBM Mainframe Again in Quiet $104.8m Deal
The Australian Taxation Office has signed a $104.8 million AUD (~$69 million USD) amendment to its IBM mainframe modernization program, raising the total contract to $192.5 million AUD (~$127 million USD). The deal extends the program by three years to mid‑2031 and adds an...
Yarra Valley Water Betting on AI to Predict Asset Failures
Yarra Valley Water is piloting a generative‑AI system to predict failures across its water‑supply network, focusing on a subset of roughly 5,000 critical sensors out of millions. The proof‑of‑concept, led by cloud and DevOps chief Murali Manohar Shunmugaraja, could be...
Gov to Explore "Future Connectivity Between Identity Exchanges"
The Australian government is commissioning a detailed mapping of its Digital ID System (AGDIS) to evaluate how it can interconnect with private‑sector identity exchanges. The effort follows a closed procurement that will produce diagrams, risk assessments, and technical options ahead...
NAB Readies to Scale AI-Based Customer Interaction
National Australia Bank (NAB) is preparing to scale its AI‑driven "customer brain," a platform that now incorporates 3,500 adaptive models and is used by 90 percent of its divisions. The system can generate more than 400 next‑best actions for each client,...
Triple Zero Guardian to Ponder Minimum Mobile Network Performance Rules
The Australian government will launch a comprehensive review of the triple zero (000) emergency‑calling framework, asking the designated custodian to consider minimum mobile network performance standards. The move follows two major Optus outages, one of which caused emergency‑call failures linked...
CBA Builds Two AI Agents to Boost Cyber Defences
Commonwealth Bank of Australia has deployed two custom AI agents to augment its cyber‑defence operations. The threat‑hunt agent automates up to 70% of routine investigations, shrinking a multi‑day analysis to roughly 30 minutes and even launching hunts overnight. A second...
Optus Appoints New OSS Chief
Optus has named former Wipro partner Wajid Baryalai as head of its Operational Systems and Support (OSS) division, a move that underpins a newly created unit focused on network resilience. The appointment coincides with an accelerated plan to insource network‑management...
Coles Sets up Standard Data Streaming Platform Groupwide
Coles Group has deployed an enterprise‑wide data streaming platform built on Confluent Cloud, unifying its real‑time data pipelines under a single Apache Kafka foundation. Previously, isolated event‑streaming stacks created silos, inconsistent models, and governance challenges. The new "enterprise event platform"...
Griffith University Takes Control of Its Student Recruitment
Griffith University has rolled out Salesforce’s Agentforce Education cloud across its contact centre, marketing communications and advancement units to replace a fragmented martech stack. By insourcing the student‑recruitment contact centre and consolidating phone, email, web‑form and chat into a single...
Patchy Wi-Fi at ACCC Despite Access Point Expansion
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) disclosed ongoing Wi‑Fi performance problems across its nine‑office footprint despite a recent rollout of 60 new wireless access points, bringing the total to 168. The issues include connection dropouts, weak signal strength, and...
Superloop's AI Push Continues with Billing System Project
Superloop is consolidating its legacy billing platforms into Aria Systems' cloud‑based Billing Cloud, unifying consumer, business and wholesale divisions. The carrier now serves 435,000 subscribers, adding 49,000 new consumer customers in H1 FY26. The new platform integrates Allegro AI‑assisted auditing,...
Context Engineering Emerges as ‘Next Battleground’ for Enterprise AI
Elastic’s chief product officer Ken Exner warned that enterprise AI is moving from prompt‑centric experiments to “context engineering,” where the quality and relevance of data feeding large language models determines success. He outlined the evolution from early hype, rapid pilot...
Coles Group CTO Is Leaving After a Year
Coles Group announced that Chief Technology Officer Mike Sackman is leaving after just one year, returning to the UK. His interim replacement will be Chief Operating Officer Matt Swindells, who will assume CTO duties while the retailer searches for a...
Craveable Brands Has One Eye on AI, and the Other on the Project Failure Rate
Craveable Brands, the franchisor behind Red Rooster, Oporto, Chicken Treat and Chargrill Charlie’s, is exploring AI for customer loyalty and franchisee support while demanding proven ROI from vendors due to a 95% AI project failure rate. The company has unified...
EnergyAustralia's CIO of Almost Seven Years to Leave
EnergyAustralia announced that its chief information officer Julie Bale will retire after nearly seven years in the role. The utility has appointed Eglantine Etiemble, formerly group CTO of PEXA and former DuluxGroup IT executive, as the new CIO. Etiemble highlighted...
Australian Unity's 'Shift Left' On Code Quality and Security Is Just in Time for AI
Australian Unity has made SonarQube Cloud its enterprise‑wide static application security testing platform, extending it to every codebase and infrastructure‑as‑code project. By enforcing automated quality gates at the earliest stage of development, the firm shifts left on security and quality...
Foreign Hacker in 2023 Compromised Epstein Files Held by FBI
In February 2023 a foreign hacker infiltrated the FBI’s New York Field Office server that housed files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. The breach was discovered when a special agent found a warning file, and the hacker later engaged in a...
Premier's Department NSW CDIO of Four-and-a-Half Years Leaves
Wendy Bryant has stepped down after four‑and‑a‑half years as chief information and digital officer (CDIO) of the Premier's Department NSW. The department announced a search for a successor who will develop an enterprise‑wide digital, data and technology strategy and lead...
ACCC Backs Tighter Rules on Mobile Coverage Claims
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has endorsed new rules that require mobile operators to display coverage on standardized maps using a ‑115 dBm signal threshold. The proposal, driven by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), would label areas...
Re(AI)magining Melbourne: Persistent Accelerates Australia’s Enterprise AI Momentum
Persistent has opened a Melbourne Innovation Centre to accelerate enterprise AI adoption in Australia. The centre combines AI‑led engineering, cloud‑native modernization, and domain‑specific solutions to move pilots into revenue‑generating products. Australian firms currently fail to scale 80% of AI pilots,...
IAG Prepares Integration Engineering for AI
Insurance Australia Group (IAG) is embedding generative AI into its integration engineering, moving roughly 600 APIs onto MuleSoft’s Anypoint API Experience Hub. The insurer is encouraging engineers to adopt AI prompts and "skills" to automate API migration and creation, aiming...
Macquarie Uni's AI Chief Heads to La Trobe
La Trobe University has appointed Phil Laufenberg, formerly Macquarie University’s head of AI, as its inaugural Pro Vice‑Chancellor (Artificial Intelligence) and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer. The dual role, the first of its kind in Australia’s higher‑education sector, is central to La Trobe’s...
Telstra Pushes Forward with Agentic AI Plans
Telstra is set to launch a production pilot of its agentic AI solution within six weeks, led by its customer sales and commerce engineering group. The pilot builds on a nine‑month exploration of Salesforce’s Agentforce and a joint venture with...
