Cyber Uncut

Phil Tarrant and Major General (Ret'd) Dr Marcus Thompson examine the growing debate over Australia's economic direction, drawing on Chris Uhlmann's recent article in The Australian on the "Argentinisation" of Australia. They unpack the risks posed by weak productivity, rising regulation, higher costs, and falling investment – and ask what sustained economic underperformance could mean for housing, business confidence, and the nation's broader strategic strength. Because if Australia enters an increasingly contested world from a position of economic weakness, its ability to fund defence, build sovereign capability, and protect its national interests becomes a much bigger question.

AI is pushing financial institutions to modernise, but the answer is not to replace everything. Banks should focus on the technology, data, and processes that directly support business outcomes. AI is putting modernisation back on the executive agenda as legacy systems increasingly limit banks' ability to adopt AI, access data in real time, and respond to regulatory and resilience demands. Atos executives Dee Lawler and Matthew Hughes argue modernisation is now a business issue, not simply a technology refresh.

"The objective to modernise isn't to modernise the technology or the most technology," Hughes says. "It's to modernise the technology that matters most."

But banks should resist the temptation to make AI the answer to everything. Leaders should first identify the business outcome they want, then determine what is holding them back – whether that is technology, data, processes, skills, or risk. Incremental modernisation can reduce operational risk while allowing organisations to measure returns, with resilience and business continuity built into the design.

The takeaway for financial services leaders is simple: modernise where technology is constraining growth, efficiency, customer experience, or resilience – not simply because AI has created a sense of urgency.

Enjoy, The Cyber Uncut team

Daniel Croft and David Hollingworth break down the essential AI and security news of the week, from sovereign capability to cyber crime, and fighting property scams. Hollingworth and Croft open the podcast with a breakdown of why Australian banks are standing up a new partnership program to promote the growth and adoption of local AI innovators – and explain why it's an important step in Australia's AI journey.

At the same time, NSW has said it is taking steps to combat the rise of AI in classrooms by tackling the technology and its impact on the HSC. It's a good move.

It's sadly been another bad week for Australian data finding its way onto the dark web via ransomware actors, with patient data once again compromised. But despite the hackers' claims that they hit NSW Health, the department has denied any such intrusion; the threat actor is definitely boasting, but the data is nonetheless real – Cyber Daily just doesn't know where it came from.

And, finally, we sit down with PEXA's chief information security officer, Graham Fairley, to talk property scams: how they work, what a recent survey reveals, and how property buyers can protect themselves.

Enjoy, The Cyber Uncut team

A dramatic political shift in Western Australia has put the major parties on notice and raised a much bigger question: what happens to Australia's national resilience when voters stop trusting the institutions that govern them?

Hosts Phillip Tarrant and Major General (Ret'd) Dr Marcus Thompson examine the rise of populism in Australia and why growing political polarisation, cost-of-living pressures and economic frustration should be viewed through a national security lens. They unpack the erosion of trust in government and institutions, the weakening of Australia's traditional political centre and the risk that social division creates opportunities for foreign interference, information warfare and malign influence. Finally, the pair look north to the Pacific Islands Forum, currently underway, and Australia's increasingly contested strategic environment. With China seeking greater influence across the region, Taiwan remaining a flashpoint and several Pacific leaders absent from the forum, they discuss why Australia can no longer take its relationships in the Pacific for granted.

Enjoy the podcast, The Contested Ground team

Join David Hollingworth and Daniel Croft for this week's round-up of cyber security and artificial intelligence news! The pair kick things off with the startling revelation that young Australians are turning to AI for their financial advice, as cost-of-living pressures bite. Can AI help get your finances in line? The jury is very definitely out.

Then it's on to the impact of cyber crime on Australian businesses, with a relative newcomer ransomware groups targeting Aussie car and automotive dealers. Is it happenstance, or have the hackers found a vulnerable third party, in common with all the victims, to exploit?

Finally, Hollingworth and Croft take a look at massive changes coming to Facebook and Instagram as Meta settles a US court case alleging the company's actions to create addictive content to capture the teen market. A definite good thing, but Meta wants the industry to go further.

Enjoy, The Cyber Uncut team

Microsoft 365 is the backbone of many Australian businesses – but are organisations doing enough to secure the platform itself? Tune in to David Hollingworth and CoreView's vice president of APAC sales, Andrew McAllister, as they tackle the risks and what businesses can do to build genuine resilience.

Microsoft 365 may be ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean it is secure by default. Hollingworth and McAllister explore the often-overlooked risks lurking in tenant configurations, administrative privileges and guest accounts, and explain why organisations need to take greater responsibility for how their Microsoft environments are configured and governed.

The conversation also examines how attackers are exploiting compromised admin accounts to manipulate settings, bypass security controls, and gain deeper access to sensitive data. McAllister explains why the traditional Microsoft 365 admin model can create an unnecessarily large blast radius, and how organisations can apply least privilege, role-based access and tighter identity controls to reduce their exposure.

Finally, Hollingworth and McAllister examine what a mature Microsoft 365 resilience strategy should look like – from establishing a secure configuration baseline and detecting configuration drift to automated remediation and recovering the tenant itself after a serious compromise.

Listen to the full episode to find out why backing up your data isn't enough – and what organisations need to do to protect the "glass" holding it.

Enjoy, The Cyber Uncut team

Malicious browser extensions, AI-powered phishing, and the evolution of Australia's Essential Eight are all putting renewed focus on proactive cyber defence. Hear ThreatLocker's lead cyber security engineer, Kieran Human, explain why organisations need to get the basics right before attackers get the chance to exploit them. Malicious browser extensions are giving attackers another route into corporate environments, with phishing campaigns tricking users into installing tools capable of running arbitrary code. Cyber Daily's David Hollingworth and Human break down how the so-called Edgecution attack method works, how initial access brokers fit into the ransomware ecosystem, and why even highly technical employees can fall for increasingly convincing social engineering.

The conversation then turns to what defenders can actually do about it. Human argues that security teams need to move beyond relying solely on detection and response, with application allow-listing and other proactive controls providing a critical layer of protection when users inevitably make mistakes.

Finally, Hollingworth and Human examine the future of Australia's Essential Eight, including the move towards the new Essentials framework and potential guidance for enterprise, cloud, and AI environments.

Enjoy, The Cyber Uncut team

In this episode of Cyber Uncut, Cyber Daily's Liam Garman is joined by Alex Nehmy, who explains why securing critical infrastructure requires a different approach to traditional IT security. Discover why operational technology has become one of the highest-value targets for sophisticated threat actors, how attacks on OT differ from conventional data breaches, and why visibility into industrial environments is the foundation of effective defence.

The discussion explores real-world examples of cyber attacks causing physical disruption, the growing risks posed by supply chains and connected devices, and why the idea of a truly "air-gapped" network is often more myth than reality.

The conversation also examines how AI is reshaping both offensive and defensive cyber operations, the challenges organisations face in protecting modern extended OT (xOT) environments, and the practical steps security leaders can take to improve resilience against nation-state threats. Whether you're responsible for IT, OT, or critical infrastructure, this episode offers valuable insights into one of cyber security's most important and rapidly evolving battlegrounds.

Listen now to hear how security leaders can strengthen their OT defences, reduce risk, and stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated cyber adversaries.

Enjoy, The Cyber Uncut team

Dr Ross Babbage warns that without urgent economic reform and industrial recalibration, Australia risks becoming a client state of Beijing.

Returning to the Defence Connect Podcast, strategic analyst Dr Ross Babbage delivers an unsparing diagnosis: Australia is drifting towards a future of strategic weakness, economic vulnerability and de facto dependence on Beijing – unless the nation urgently reverses course on industrial policy, governance efficiency and the information asymmetry crippling public debate.

In a wide-ranging conversation with host Steve Kuper, Babbage articulates an emerging geopolitical fracture: the world is crystallising into distinct economic camps. The first, led by the United States and including Western democracies, is erecting selective tariffs and deepened trade ties. Camp two is China and its authoritarian satellites. A third comprises developing nations watching carefully before committing.

Australia's position, Babbage argues, remains fatefully ambiguous. While virtually every Western ally has taken protective measures against Chinese manufacturing dumping and industrial subsidy – a regime he quantifies at eight to 18 times the support other nations provide – Australia has remained conspicuously reticent. China's leverage remains decisive: our iron ore and coal exports are non-negotiable parts of Beijing's strategic calculus.

The deeper problem, he stresses, runs through economic governance itself. Australia has deindustrialised deliberately over three decades, shed critical capabilities in steel and advanced manufacturing, surrendered energy cost advantage and starved investment in domestic capability. Without deliberate recalibration – smaller government, redirection of trade partnerships, strategic investment incentives – Australia defaults towards clientelism.

Equally critical is the communication void. Defence industry leaders, board chairs of major firms and even policymakers routinely tell Babbage they were unaware of the scale of Chinese subversion, intellectual property theft and coordinated disintegration operations aimed at fracturing Western cohesion.

The path forward, he argues, demands frank public briefings, ruthless priority setting and abandonment of exhausted economic orthodoxies. Without it, Australia becomes the strategic backwater Beijing expects.

Enjoy the podcast, The Contested Ground team

In this week's podcast, Cyber Daily's Daniel Croft and David Hollingworth argue for sovereign Australian AI, catch up with the Origin Energy data breach, uncover a Court Services Victoria hack, and ponder the efficacy of taking a foreign chat platform to court over terror content. Should Aussie banks have access to Australian Taxation Office data to stop fraud? That's how the podcast kicks off, alongside the revelation that fraudsters are using AI to fake documents to secure massive bank loans. For Hollingworth and Croft, the answer is a resounding yes, which is also the case when it comes to sovereign AI capability, as Australian company Maincode brings its own coding agent online.

This week, Origin Energy revealed the extent of its recent data breach, while Court Services Victoria disclosed it had fallen victim to prolific hacker 2019. It's been a torrid time for data security in Australia, with even an insider threat rearing its head in a data breach at NSW Health.

Finally, the pair discuss whether or not eSafety can effectively sue chat platform Telegram over pro-terror content, while the Australian Communications and Media Authority said it is suing Optus over its Triple Zero failures last year.

Just another week in cyber security.

Enjoy, The Cyber Uncut team.