David Tuffley
Satellite Orbiting Earth
Politics

The Australian government has killed off a $7 billion military satellite project, increasing the risk of cyber attacks

- November 6, 2024 3 MIN READ

In a significant blow to Australia’s defence capabilities, the federal government is cancelling what would have been the nation’s largest-ever space project: a $7 billion military satellite communications system. The decision was confirmed in a press statement on Monday. It comes just 18 months after the Albanese government gave the green light to the ambitious… Read more »

smart business man allocate egg into many baskets . do not put all eggs in one basket
Global tech

The CrowdStrike systems outage is a timely warning on the lessons for managing IT risks

- July 22, 2024 3 MIN READ

Friday’s global IT outage caused by a software update gone wrong highlights the interconnected and often fragile nature of modern IT infrastructure. It demonstrates how a single point of failure can have far-reaching consequences. The outage was linked to a single update automatically rolled out to Crowdstrike Falcon, a ubiquitous cyber security tool used primarily… Read more »

Cloud representation
Global tech

Why Amazon is building a ‘top secret’ $2 billion cloud for Australia’s military intelligence

- July 8, 2024 3 MIN READ

Amazon has secured a A$2 billion contract with the Australian Signals Directorate – the agency responsible for foreign signals intelligence and information security. A local subsidiary of Amazon Web Services will build a Top Secret Cloud to provide secure data storage for military intelligence. The deal will securely manage top secret data vital to Australia’s… Read more »

Cyber security

An cybersecurity expert explains credential stuffing and how to protect yourself

- March 1, 2024 3 MIN READ

Cyber-skulduggery is becoming the bane of modern life. Australia’s prime minister has called it a “scourge”, and he is correct. In 2022–23, nearly 94,000 cyber crimes were reported in Australia, up 23% on the previous year. In the latest high-profile attack, around 15,000 customers of alcohol retailer Dan Murphy, Mexican restaurant chain Guzman y Gomez,… Read more »

Cybersecurity
Cyber security

What you need to know about the Australian government’s 7-year plan to ramp up cyber security

- November 23, 2023 4 MIN READ

After lengthy deliberation, the Australian government has released its 2023–2030 Cyber Security Strategy, which aims to make Australia one of the most cyber-secure nations in the world by 2030. It’s a worthy goal, considering Australia was ranked as the fifth-most powerful cyber nation in a 2022 report by Harvard University’s Kennedy School. The strategy outlines… Read more »

Shipping contrainer terminal
Cyber security

The DP World logistics cyber attack looks like sabotage by a ‘foreign state actor’

- November 14, 2023 3 MIN READ

A serious cyberattack has disrupted operations at several of Australia’s largest ports, causing delays and congestion. Late on Friday, port operator DP World detected an IT breach that affected critical systems used to coordinate shipping activity. DP World is one of Australia’s largest port operators, handling approximately 40% of the nation’s container trade across terminals… Read more »

Other tech

US authorities have approved human trials of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip – but the current lessons from AI need to apply here too

- May 31, 2023 4 MIN READ

Since its founding in 2016, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has had the ambitious mission to build a next-generation brain implant with at least 100 times more brain connections than devices currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company has now reached a significant milestone, having received FDA approval to begin… Read more »

Mark Zuckerberg
Global tech

2021 was the year governments really started to wise up against big tech

- January 5, 2022 4 MIN READ

After all the bad press tech companies have received, would anyone still be surprised to learn the outwardly smiling face of social media conceals a sophisticated data-collection industry? Last year’s headlines delivered news of an array of concerning data and privacy violations from the world’s biggest tech players. But interestingly, it also seemed to be… Read more »

Mark Zuckerberg
Business

The Facebook outage reveals major problems within the social media giant

- October 6, 2021 3 MIN READ

Suddenly and inexplicably, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus services were gone. And it was no local disturbance. In a blog post, Downdetector.com, a major monitoring service for online outages, called it the largest global outage it had ever recorded — with 10.6 million reports from around the world. The outage had an especially massive… Read more »

AFP, arrest, Ironside
Data

How busting organised crime globally was done with an app born ‘over a few beers’ with the FBI

- June 9, 2021 4 MIN READ

Australian and US law enforcement officials on Tuesday announced they’d sprung a trap three years in the making, catching major international crime figures using an encrypted app. More than 200 underworld figures in Australia have been charged in what Australian Federal Police (AFP) say is their biggest-ever organised crime bust. The operation, led by the… Read more »

Other tech

If Neuralink’s monkey can play Pong with its mind, imagine what humans could do with that tech

- April 15, 2021 5 MIN READ

Some weeks ago, a nine-year-old macaque monkey called Pager successfully played a game of Pong with its mind. While it may sound like science fiction, the demonstration by Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink is an example of a brain-machine interface in action (and has been done before). A coin-sized disc called a “Link” was implanted… Read more »

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