Connectivity and automation provider Boomi has continued its global leadership shakeup with the appointment of Jim Fisher as vice president of channels and partners for the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.

Based in Sydney, the industry veteran is tasked with expanding the company’s channel operations across Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, Hong Kong, and Japan. 

He will also focus on working with partners to drive and expand opportunities for its licensing and services business, Boomi said in an announcement.

“Jim has a rich understanding of data integration and channel operations, which will be crucial for further expansion and enabling our APJ partners to optimize our joint customers’ cloud migrations and digital transformation roadmaps,” said Thomas Lai, vice president and general manager of APJ at Boomi.

With more than 30 years’ experience in the global software marketplace, Fisher previously headed channel strategy, marketing, and sales operations for various organizations in Australia, the US, and Asia. 

Most recently, he served as vice president of channels for the APJ region at MuleSoft, and previously worked at SAP as vice president of ecosystem and channels for South East Asia. 

He has also held leadership positions at CA Technologies, Sterling Software, and Information Advantage.

In his new role, Fisher will report to Dan McAllister, Boomi’s senior vice president of global alliances and channels.

“Going into Boomi, my priority is to ensure we are backing our partners to capitalize on a largely untapped opportunity,” Fisher said.

“This includes understanding what existing partners want, and bringing on board new ones while protecting the competitive interests of all parties.”

Boomi has now grown to work with more than 200 partners across the APJ region, and the company said it receives strong demand in industries such as government, financial services, manufacturing, retail and education, and more.

“The channel has been integral to this,” McAllister said. “Jim will help broaden strategic relationships with existing and new partners at a time when demand for integrated systems and connected data is skyrocketing. This will allow the channel organization to expand its services and tap into new markets.”

The move is the latest in a string of wider leadership changes at Boomi as the company looks to drive its worldwide expansion. Earlier this month, it announced five new appointments to its global leadership team, including a new channel chief, chief commercial officer, and chief accounting officer.

Last September, the company appointed former Deloitte CIO Larry Quinlan as an independent, non-executive member of the board to help navigate its “next phase as a company”.

Alibaba Cloud has announced it will slash prices for cloud services by nearly 50% as the Chinese tech giant embarks on a drive to expand its market share.

Price changes outlined on Alibaba Cloud’s website show that costs for elastic computing services leveraging Arm and Intel chips will decrease by 15% to 20%. 

Similarly, services which rely on Nvidia-based V100 and T4 graphics processors will also see a price decrease of between 41% to 47%.

The move from Alibaba Cloud comes amid a period of intense competition in the APAC cloud computing space, with a number of Chinese competitors vying for an increased market share.

Alongside Tencent and Huawei, Alibaba Cloud has rapidly expanded its footprint across Southeast Asia in recent months. 

In September, the tech giant announced plans to invest around $1 billion to support its expansion in the region. 

In November last year, Huawei also confirmed that it planned to invest $300 million in expanding cloud operations in Indonesia as it looks to build on an increasing foothold in the region. 

The firm currently provides services in both Thailand and Malaysia. 

However, competition with China-based providers is not the only consideration for Alibaba amid this current period of expansion.

Increasingly, hyperscalers such as Microsoft, AWS, and Google have sought to broaden their own service offerings in the region. 

In March, AWS announced plans to invest $6 billion and create a new infrastructure region in Malaysia. 

This hefty investment followed a previous commitment from AWS in October 2022 in which it unveiled plans to establish a new Asia Pacific (Bangkok) region and invest $5 billion. 

Google Cloud has also been targeting a greater foothold in the APAC region, launching a new Thailand-based unit in August last year.

Pricing out the competition 

Alibaba’s latest price reduction follows a long-running trend among Chinese cloud providers in the APAC region. 

Analysis from the Wall Street Journal earlier this year found that Chinese cloud companies frequently offer prices between 20% to 40% lower than American providers to undercut competition. 

Alibaba’s fresh move could further differentiate the provider from both domestic and international competitors and provide a springboard for greater expansion.  

Microsoft has officially launched Microsoft Teams in China via its local partner 21Vianet.

The tech giant launched the collaboration platform in the country on 1 April, at the same time as upgrading Office 365 to Microsoft 365, which will also be operated by 21Vianet.

“Under the premise of fully satisfying the Chinese market's requirements for data security, personal information protection and other laws and regulations, Microsoft and 21Vianet Blue Cloud have joined hands to officially launch the Microsoft Teams service operated by 21Vianet for the Chinese market,” the company said in a blog post.

Microsoft said that Teams has more than 280 million monthly users around the world after being launched globally in 2017.

Users in China were still able to use the service before it officially launched, although they may have experienced some latency due to the country's 'Great Firewall'.

Microsoft has advised businesses in the past on how to operate their Microsoft 365 accounts in the country if they have a branch or office there.

“For enterprises with global Microsoft 365 tenants and a corporate presence in China, Microsoft 365 client performance for China-based users can be complicated by factors unique to China telco's internet architecture,” the company said in a notice.

“China ISPs have regulated offshore connections to the global public internet that go through perimeter devices that are prone to high levels of cross-border network congestion. This congestion creates packet loss and latency for all internet traffic going into and out of China,” it said.

Users in the country who connect to global Microsoft 365 tenants from locations like their houses or hotels, without using an enterprise network, may have experienced poor network performance in the past. This is because the traffic has to go through China’s “congested cross-border network circuits”.

The new offering of Teams may improve the service within the country, but it may not change anything for global companies who need to communicate with their branches in China. It can be assumed that internet traffic from outside of the country’s borders will still need to go through the same “cross-border congestion”.

Microsoft said it doesn’t operate the service itself and it will instead be operated by 21Vianet. This partner will provide hosting, managed network services, and cloud computing infrastructure services.

21Vianet is a Microsoft strategic partner that is in charge of operating Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform in China.

It also operates Office 365 services in the country, and claims to be the largest carrier-neutral internet data centre service provider in China.

“By licensing Microsoft technologies, 21Vianet operates local Office 365 data centres to provide the ability to use Office 365 services while keeping data within China. 21Vianet also provides subscription and billing services, as well as support,” said Microsoft.

"Due to the unique nature of the China services – operated by a partner from data centres inside China – there are some features that have not yet been enabled,” the tech giant added. “Customers will see the services come closer to full feature parity over time.”

Microsoft and China's 'Great Firewall'

In October 2022, China reportedly upgraded its Great Firewall to crack down on Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption tools, which citizens had used to evade censorship.

Users had reported that at least one of their TLS-based censorship circumvention servers had been blocked, which was done by blocking the specific port the circumvention services listed on.

The year before, in October 2021, Microsoft decided to shut LinkedIn down in China which was going to be replaced by a standalone job application platform.

Social media platforms in the country have to remove content deemed inappropriate which was uploaded by users. LinkedIn had already been ordered to perform a self-evaluation and suspend new sign-ups of users inside China after failing to control political content on the platform.

“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” Mohak Shroff said at the time, senior vice-president of engineering at LinkedIn.

“We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

The tech giant had been expanding its business in the country, and in June 2021 it revealed it was set to add four new data centres in China by early 2022 to expand its service capacity.

It already had six data centres in the country, and was making the move due to new regulation in China which encouraged domestic and foreign companies to shift to local data management.

Latitude Financial has revealed that its March cyber attack has now affected more than 14 million customer records, much more than the 330,000 records it initially estimated.

According to the latest results from the Australian finance firm's ongoing investigation, 7.9 million Australian and New Zealand driver's licence numbers were stolen during the attack. 40% of these, or 3.2 million records, were provided to the company in the last ten years.

It also identified 53,000 passport numbers that were stolen, as well as financial statements belonging to around 100 customers.

In addition, Latitude said that an extra 6.1 million records dating back to at least 2005 were taken. The vast majority of these records, 94% or 5.7 million of them, were provided to the company before 2013. These records contained personal information including names, addresses, dates of birth, and telephone numbers.

“It is hugely disappointing that such a significant number of additional customers and applicants have been affected by this incident,” said Ahmed Fahour, CEO at Latitude. “We apologise unreservedly.”

The company said that no suspicious activity has been observed on its systems since 16 March.

Latitude is writing to everyone whose information was compromised to notify them of what data has been stolen and its plans for remediation.

It’s also reimbursing customers who decide to replace their stolen ID documents.

“We continue to work around the clock to safely restore our operations,” said Fahour. “We are rectifying platforms impacted in the attack and have implemented additional security monitoring as we return to operations in the coming days.”

Questions exist about the nature of the data theft and the length of Latitude's data retention, given that millions of records date back further than ten years.

The most likely assumption is that the data was being stored on older or less-secure systems, said Michael Queenan, CEO and co-founder of Nephos Technologies.

“My fundamental question is why was Latitude holding data that old in the first place? If, as referenced, ID documents were stolen surely those would have needed to have been updated every ten years or so meaning that older versions should have been deleted,” said Queenan.

“Also, if people who are no longer Latitude customers have had their data breached then it puts into question why their records were not deleted after a certain period of time. I would be asking to see their data retention policy to ascertain why they were holding so much old data including highly personal information.”

Latitude's first disclosure came on 16 March, saying it had detected unusual activity on its systems before confirming on 20 March that it was the victim of a 'sophisticated cyber attack'. The company took its systems offline and was aiming to restore them gradually.

At the time, it confirmed that around 330,000 customers and applicants had their personal information stolen. 96% of the data was driving licences or numbers, with the rest being passport and Medicare numbers.

Latitude also said it was likely to discover more information belonging to customers that had been stolen in the attack, as it was conducting a forensic review into the attack.

Now, it's believed to be one of Australia's largest-ever data breaches during a time at which the country is being heavily targeted by cyber criminals.

Professional services giant Accenture has announced the acquisition of Flutura, an industrial artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Bangalore, India.

The acquisition strengthens Accenture’s own industrial AI services, as it looks to boost the performance of plants, refineries, and supply chains, as well as help clients hit their net zero goals faster.

In an announcement, Accenture said it plans to bring Flutura’s capabilities to its global clients in the energy, chemicals, mining, and pharmaceutical industries. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Flutura democratises AI for engineers, enabling manufacturing and other asset-intensive companies with the carbon intelligence to reduce emissions, energy consumption and lost output due to unplanned downtime of industrial assets,” explained Senthil Ramani, senior managing director and applied intelligence lead for growth markets at Accenture

“This acquisition will power industrial AI-led transformation for our clients globally and particularly in Australia, South-East Asia, Japan, Africa, India, Latin America and the Middle East.”

Flutura specialises in industrial data science services for manufacturers and other asset-intensive companies, with an AI platform that serves up self-service solutions for advanced analytics.

The company has a staff base of around 110 professionals based across offices in India, the US, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

Industrial engineers and data scientists can develop digital models of industrial assets on Flutura’s AI platform, which is specially designed to processes data from disparate IT and operations technology systems.

The acquisition is the latest in a string of related buys for Accenture in recent times. Last year, it acquired Japanese data science company ALBERT, having previously snapped up a host of companies around the world to strengthen its data services.

Those included Australia’s Analytics8; France-based Sentelis; India’s Bridgei2i and Byte Prophecy; Pragsis Bidoop in Spain; as well as UK data consultancy Mudano.

The firm also acquired US data companies Clarity Insights, End-to-End Analytics, and Core Compete.

With its latest addition, Accenture said it is continuing its aim of helping businesses build a strong core of AI capabilities at a time when many are not very AI mature.

For Flutura, company CEO Krishnan Raman said that the takeover will enable the business to further grow its AI platform with Accenture’s resources.

“Our AI platform enables engineers to respond with agility to ever-changing market and operating conditions,” he said. “We look forward to scaling this as part of Accenture and helping more industrial clients achieve high-value outcomes in their production operations.”

Latitude Financial has revealed that a cyber attack that hit the company last week is now under investigation by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The company said on 16 March that it had detected unusual activity on its systems. Today, it confirmed that the activity is a sophisticated and malicious cyber attack which is still ongoing.

Latitude has taken its systems offline and is unable to service its customers or merchant partners, it said. However, it’s aiming to restore its platform “gradually” over the next few days.

Taking the systems offline has already impacted a score of its customers, all reporting various different issues.

One user complained on Twitter that they were unable to make changes to their account, such as setting a new password, but couldn't access it due to the relevant systems being taken offline.

“Unfortunately, we have restricted access to internal and customer-facing systems,” replied a customer service agent. “This is to ensure we contain the security breach. I understand it's really frustrating not being able to log in.”

Other users were unable to make payments as a result of systems being taken offline, and one said it was the second time their data had been accessed in recent times, with the first being through the major ransomware attack on Medibank in October 2022.

As well as the AFP, the financial services company has also engaged the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), cyber security experts, and other government agencies.

“Our people are working around the clock to contain the attackers. We have taken the prudent action of isolating some of our technology platforms which means that we are currently not onboarding new customers,” Latitude said.

“In conjunction with our cyber security experts, we are continuing our forensic review of our IT platforms to identify the full extent of the theft of customer information as a result of the attack on Latitude."

Latitude has confirmed that around 330,000 customers and applicants have had their personal information stolen so far, around 96% of which is related to the theft of driving licenses or numbers.

The remaining stolen data was comprised of copies of passports or passport numbers, and Medicare numbers, 4% and 1% respectively, by Latitude's estimates.

However, the company said that it’s likely to discover more stolen information affecting current and past Latitude customers and applicants, as it continues with a forensic review which will now include “non-customer originating platforms and historical customer information”.

The Melbourne financial firm, which provides credit cards, insurance, and loans to consumers and businesses, is set to contact each impacted individual to confirm what personal information has been stolen.

It will work with relevant agencies to replace identification documents at no cost to Latitude customers. Latitude has also enlisted IDCARE, a charity that provides support to individuals or businesses that suffer a cyber attack.

Latitude also confirmed that it has cyber security insurance and has notified its insurers of the cyber attack.

“While we continue to deliver transactional services, some functionality has been affected resulting in disruption,” said Ahmed Fahour, CEO at Latitude.

“We are working extremely hard to restore full services to our customers and merchant partners and thank them for their patience and support. We understand their frustration.”

Chinese tech giant Baidu has announced its own generative AI chatbot, known as Ernie Bot, in a press conference that aimed to put the firm on a competitive footing with OpenAI and Microsoft.

Ernie Bot is a large language model (LLM) that has been in development at Baidu for some time. The company will look to integrate Ernie in its popular Xiaodu smart speaker and voice assistant products.

In a livestreamed press conference, Ernie Bot was shown answering facts, drawing connections between search results, and generating images on demand. Unlike OpenAI’s recent GPT-4 demonstration livestream, Baidu relied on pre-recorded videos for its demonstration.

The bot was also shown to struggle with questions it did not understand. Early into the announcement, Baidu CEO Robin Li showed that the chatbot would insist that users rephrase questions it could not parse.

Elements of the bot that require further development didn’t appear to have inspired investor confidence. Shares in the company dropped 10% in the wake of the announcement, and were down 6.4% at market close.

“Our expectations for Ernie Bot are close to ChatGPT or even GPT-4,” said Li, as translated by the press conference’s English interpreter.

“During our initial internal testing, we experienced the capabilities of Ernie bought and we feel that it is not perfect yet. However, we need to launch it today because we have a huge demand in the market because of various product lines including search, AI cloud, autonomous driving, and Xiaodu.”

Analysis: Can Xiaodu compete with OpenAI?

Baidu is serious about its AI goals - the firm stated that it spend ¥23.3 billion (£2.8 billion) on research and development in 2022, equivalent to almost 20% of its revenue for the year.

Within China, there seems little doubt that Ernie Bot and Baidu’s wider AI ecosystem is set for commercial success. 650 companies have publicly agreed to sign up for the AI system already, and Baidu’s search engine dominance - 56% of the local market - gives it an edge that could stamp out local competition.

Its planned integration with the firm's smart device and AI spinoff Xiaodu also gives it a competitive edge. Although there was nothing like the multimodal capabilities of GPT-4 on display in the demonstration, none of the major firms pursuing generative AI have successfully implemented their models as virtual assistants.

But there are still big challenges to overcome if Baidu is to sell Ernie Bot overseas. Li openly admitted that Ernie Bot is not as effective with the English language as it is in Chinese, putting it behind OpenAI’s multilingual GPT-4 model and even ChatGPT, which runs on the slightly older GPT-3.5.

Li stated that Ernie Bot has been announced ahead of competing models by Google, Meta, and Amazon. Name-checking Google here made sense, as the search firm might be the closest Western company to Baidu in terms of size, purpose, and blended focus on AI and search.

Ernie Bot operates using more than 100 billion parameters, putting it somewhere between Meta’s 65-billion-parameter LLaMA model and OpenAI’s 175-billion-parameter GPT-3.

While it isn’t terribly consequential for its overall performance, as the size of a model is only as important as the quality of its training, it does show a lack of scale that could put the model at a disadvantage against the largest models such as Google’s 540-billion-parameter PaLM.

When it’s released, Ernie Bot will perform a similar function to Google’s Bard, in its smart augmentation of the search experience through natural language processing. But with Microsoft’s backing of OpenAI pushing the firm’s products into greater integration across the business world, it’s the Redmond giant that Baidu will likely have to go up against in the short term.

Microsoft has admitted that its own search engine AI, Bing Chat, was powered by GPT-4 all along. This surprise announcement recontextualises the AI search space, with Google’s ‘code red’ response to counter ChatGPT having shown the company unprepared to compete with the company’s previous generation model, let alone GPT-4.

Baidu could still benefit from China's strict regulations on AI. OpenAI's products are currently banned in the country, and government controls on internet services that restrict the kind of data scraping that has bolstered Western AI firms might shield Baidu from significant local competition.

When organisations are breached, it’s easy to forget the damage cyber attacks can inflict on individual victims. Information stolen can range from sensitive health data, like the recent MediBank hack, or data that could lead to identity theft, such as in the Optus breach. This is against the backdrop of an 81% surge in cyber attacks between July 2021 and June 2022 in Australia, according to Imperva.

Given the increased media focus in recent, many business leaders may be tempted to sweep data breaches under the carpet. We’ve seen countless examples throughout history, such as Uber's 2016 attempt to hide a data breach affecting 57 million users and drivers. Needless to say, this approach is always dangerous for the victims, given they can’t take reasonable steps to protect themselves.

Hoping to eradicate terrible – sometimes non-existent – incident response is IDCARE. Based in Napier, New Zealand, and Caloundra, Australia, IDCARE is a charity founded in 2013 to help the victims of cyber attacks on an individual and organisational basis, whether through personal counselling, dark net monitoring, or staff training. But the crescendo of cyber attacks in the second half of 2022, which has forced legislators to vow to ‘hunt down hackers’, has forced the organisation to confront the reality that it lacks the resources to cope with this ever-escalating onslaught.

IDCARE is, therefore, ramping up its operations, says David Lacey, the charity's managing director. Like many charities, however, resourcing is a constant battle, and IDCARE had to adopt ‘creative solutions’ to ensure it could continue to serve its core purpose not just now, but in the future. To lead the fightback in Australia and New Zealand, and the rest of the world, it’s cooking up plans to mobilise its own reserve army.

IDCARE is a unique charity with global ambitions

IDCARE describes itself as Australia and New Zealand’s national identity and cyber support service. Funded by 35 public and private organisations as well as public grants, it aims to provide advice on how individuals and businesses should respond to data breaches, cyber security concerns, and identity theft.

Although IDCARE mostly serves those living in Australia or New Zealand, people can access the charity’s services from anywhere in the world, says Lacey. All you have to do is fill in its Get Help form online, and you’ll be put in touch with an IDCARE case manager. Around one in ten people that engage IDCARE don’t actually live in Australia or New Zealand, he adds.

The charity was born from an 18-month feasibility study Lacey decided to launch more than ten years ago. He wanted to examine what kind of national services the victims of cyber crime need, reporting his findings to a joint industry and government committee. The charity was then created from the reproted demand for services independent of government and not commercially motivated.

IDCARE's MD David Lacey established the organisation a decade ago following an 18-month feasibility study

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a branch of GCHQ, fulfils a similar role in the UK. But IDCARE was established in-part as a vehicle to deliver the aftercare and support for victims that other institutions tend not to. Lacey has previously highlighted victims of cyber attacks suffer from anxiety and poor emotional health. This is where IDCARE posititions itself as unique in the market, given it employs a number of consellors in addition to the technical staff you’d expect.

The charity employs a team of 55 to this end comprising identity and cyber security case managers, counsellors, community education officers, computer scientists, data scientists, lawyers, project managers and developers. One part of the team works one-on-one with individuals and breached organisations to discover what’s happened, assess risks, and develop response plans, says Lacey, with the other monitoring online and market behaviours, examining insights, and working with industries and governments to review performance and improve best practice.

“I think the reason for them reaching out is they don’t see the unique support service available in their country – a service that is free to the community and blends the behavioural with the technical,” Lacey says. “That’s why we don’t reject people who reside outside of Australia and New Zealand. We think our service is universal and there are plans to establish regional centres in other locations should the right government and corporate support be identified.”

Funding the fight against cyber crime

One of the main challenges it faced on conception was funding. “In Australia there are different types of charities. Some can collect donations and others cannot. In Australia, our charity cannot, but in New Zealand, our charity can,” explains Lacey. Instead, it must entice organisations to subscribe in exchange for providing services, with the additional revenue reinvested into delivering charitable services to the community.

“Initially this was a real challenge, but over time those services have become really valued in the market and are allowing IDCARE to continue to grow to meet the community demand,” he says. These services include online profiling and alerting, where the charity has a separate Identity Security Operations Centre. It also provides data breach response services, organisational benchmarking, incident response reviews, and bespoke reporting.

The organisation pulled in more than $6 million in its 2022 financial year, with 68% coming from ‘goods and services’ and the remainder from grants. All revenue generated must be reinvested back into the delivery of its services. It also currently has a wide range of subscriber organisations. Governmental organisations are a core subset, including the Australia’s Department of Home Affairs, Queensland police, the New South Wales (NWS) government, New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs, and the Tasmanian government. Many private sector entities, like Commonwealth Bank, Bupa, Equifax, Woolworth Group, and Telstra, also subscribe to IDCARE.

Calling in the reserves in 2023

The surge in cyber attacks targeting Australia during 2022 forced the charity to rethink its scale and delivery. For context, despite a population of roughly 25 million, up to 10 million accounts were exposed in the Optus breach alone, alongside 9.7 million in the Medibank breach. Demand for IDCARE services grew 45% at the same time. Lacey expects more of the same in 2023.

“This year we are introducing an IDCARE Incident Response Reserve which is delivering a training and development programme to individuals across government and corporates that leverages donated time they allow for their staff to assist with charities,” he says. “We are talking with a number of tertiary sector partners about assisting this work and offering the programme as a micro-credential to recognise and create more value for participants.”

When a “mega-breach” event occurs, Lacey explains, IDCARE will call on its reserve to help with its case management demands. When such events occurred last year, IDCARE was impressed by corporations who called to offer support, but it didn’t have the means to train people to its standards, so they can be effectively deployed.

IDCARE is asked each day by three to five organisations to help with a data breach response. “We get to see first-hand the good, the bad and the ugly in terms of organisational response with our case management services, then the flow-on effects to impacted persons,” he says. “When organisations genuinely place the breached person at the centre of their response, things typically work well. When they don’t, it’s disastrous.”

Lacey hopes there’ll be no need for IDCARE in future, but he doesn’t see this as likely. Alongside rising demand is the fact data breaches are borderless. This is what Lacey calls the internationalisation of identity exploitation, where, for example, a UK citizen will have their identity exploited in Asia. “We can expect much more of these scenarios in the future,” he notes. “This is why a big piece of our work involves maintaining an intimate knowledge of response system affordances across the world.”

Over the next five years, IDCARE is aiming to prioritise being “client first”. This means focusing on the reduction of harm to individual victims, as well as carrying the response load for organisations and shaping industry and government behaviours. Summarising his mission, Lacey states: “For many, if you are not harmed by the crime, you almost certainly will be by the response. We are determined to do our bit to change this.”

A British quantum computing startup will install its technology at a data centre in Japan to be used by businesses around the world via the cloud.

Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) quantum computing as a service (QCaaS) offering will be available in late 2023 and will connect to Equinix Fabric, the company’s cloud platform.

To run workloads using OQC's QCaaS technology, businesses will connect their own digital infrastructure to Equinix Fabric hosted at the TY11 Tokyo International Business Exchange data centre.

“The world has been waiting for quantum computing to mature to the point that it can change our lives. Installing quantum computing in Equinix's world-class TY11 data centre brings us a step closer to this reality,” said Ilana Wisby, CEO at OQC.

“Quantum computing represents a major shift in terms of technology and process. Unlike traditional classical computers, quantum computers can crunch vast amounts of data at incredible speeds.”

OQC claims to have the UK’s most advanced quantum computer, as well as the only quantum computer commercially available in the country.

The company currently hosts its quantum computer on AWS. It’s an eight quantum processing unit (QPU) quantum computer, named Lucy, which launched on Amazon Braket on 28 February 2022.

"We are installing in Equinix’s TY11 Tokyo IBX data centre, given the extent of customer demand both in the Japanese market and the APAC region more generally," an OQC spokesperson told IT Pro. "We are excited to work with leading Japanese companies as they build their quantum capability and experiment and learn about our technology."

The startup has had three funding rounds and managed to raise a total of £38.9 million, according to Crunchbase. It also has two investors located in Japan - investment consortium HiJoJo partners and the University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners.

“IDC predicts that by 2026, 95% of companies will invest in compute technologies that deliver faster insights from complex data sets to drive differentiated business outcomes,” said Andrew Buss, senior research director at IDC's European enterprise infrastructure programme.

“Making quantum computing available 'as a service' on a globally interconnected digital infrastructure should significantly reduce barriers to experimentation and adoption such as cost, skills, and the complexity of integration - and open up quantum technology to many more organisations to test and use."

In August 2022, Fujitsu became Japan's first domestic company to commercialise quantum computing. It partnered with the Riken research institute to offer the service to businesses in the country. The new technology was expected to be used in sectors like medicine development and financial forecasting.

MI5 is set to establish a new agency to help UK businesses protect themselves against Chinese espionage and state-sponsored hacking.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak will unveil the news later today, as part of the UK’s updated diplomatic and defence strategy when it comes to China, The Times reports.

Sunak will reveal a new “National Protective Security Authority” which will sit in MI5. It aims to provide businesses and universities with advice on how to deal with industrial espionage.

Officials have reportedly compared the new agency to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which was established by GCHQ in 2016 as a central authority tasked with protecting the nation against cyber security threats.

It also routinely offers guidance to organisations and the wider public on cyber security best practice.

The National Protective Security Authority will be able to help organisations by providing advice on how to deal with Chinese companies, how to do business in China, or how to buy equipment from companies located in the country.

The motivation for the agency's creation is thought to be born out of longstanding concerns around China and its history of conducting sophisticated cyber attacks against organisations in the West.

The government’s new authority will also provide guidelines on how to approach Huawei or Hikvision, although it isn’t clear yet what these are.

It was decided that Huawei’s equipment would be removed from the UK's 5G network in 2020 to protect national security, a move encouraged by US sanctions placed on the Chinese company.

In July 2022, a group of MPs also demanded that Chinese surveillance equipment companies like Hikvision should be banned from the UK, expressing concerns about the ethics and security of the company.

Lastly, the new agency is expected to provide guidance on takeovers in "sensitive” industries. In July 2021, an MP raised concerns about Chinese-owned Nexperia acquiring Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), a Welsh semiconductor company.

MP Tom Tugendhat said at the time he was surprised the deal had taken place without being put through a review under a National Security and Investment Act.

“The semiconductor industry sector falls under the scope of the legislation, the very purpose of which is to protect the nation’s technology companies from foreign takeovers when there is a material risk to economic and national security,” he said.

“The government is yet to explain why we are turning a blind eye to Britain's largest semiconductor foundry falling into the hands of an entity from a country that has a track record of using technology to create geopolitical leverage.”

China's hacking history

China's state-sponsored hackers are long-known for their attacks on high-value organisations and universities, often with the intention of information stealing.

Recent examples include the February 2022 attack on News Corp - China was originally accused as the force behind it which saw staff emails and other business documents stolen.

In February this year, it was revealed that the China-linked hackers went unnoticed in the organisation's network for two years.

Further back, state-sponsored Chinese and Russian hackers were accused of targeting vaccine data during the COVID-19 pandemic. The attack on vaccine supplier Moderna drew worldwide attention in 2020.

In 2021, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) revealed it played an important part in vaccine delivery, helping by intervening in cyber incidents and protecting individuals in the health sector. It handled 777 incidents that year, with 20% of them focused on the health industry or companies involved in the vaccine rollout.

The UK is set to appoint a tech envoy to the Indo-Pacific region, its second appointment to a role of this nature after it appointed an envoy to the US in 2020.

James Cleverly, the UK’s foreign secretary, is set to make the announcement on 1 March. This will be the UK’s first tech envoy to the Indo-Pacific region, with the role geared towards strengthening the nation’s ties to India.

The envoy will work with partners in the region, in areas like setting global technology standards and using innovative tech to solve challenges.

The government is hoping this new role will help better present the UK as a science and tech superpower. It also wants to underline its commitment to forging partnerships in India and South Asia.

The announcement from the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) highlighted the fact that India has the world’s third-highest number of tech unicorns and startups, making it a promising region for tapping future partnerships and skills.

“India is also an emerging global leader on technology and there are immense opportunities for better collaboration between us in this sector,” said Cleverly. “That is why we will be sending our first tech envoy to the Indo-Pacific region, to maximise the tech expertise of both countries.”

Cleverly is set to meet India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to discuss the UK-India 2030 Roadmap, which is looking to improve defence, security, trade, and investment between the two countries.

The foreign secretary will also open the Young Professionals Scheme, a partnership between the two nations which allows 3,000 UK citizens and 3,000 Indian citizens to live and work in the other country for two years.

The UK is also set to reaffirm its commitment to forge a free trade agreement with India. The UK-India trade relationship is worth around £34 billion, the FCDO said.

Joe White was named the UK's first tech envoy, devoted to the US in 2020, a role that was merged with the appointment of Her Majesty's Consul-General to San Francisco.

White was set to lead the consulate as well as support the UK’s ambassador to the US when it came to areas like technology and entrepreneurship.

Australia is set to establish a second cyber security agency to coordinate the cyber security efforts across government - part of its response to numerous high-profile cyber attacks that rocked the nation last year.

The new agency will be called the National Office for Cyber Security and will sit in the department of Home Affairs. The government will appoint a coordinator for cyber security to lead the new agency and coordinate its cyber security responsibilities.

Australia already has the Australia Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) which leads the government’s efforts to improve cyber security and is part of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) - an agency in the defence portfolio.

“We're serious about making Australia the most cyber-secure country in the world by 2030,” said Clare O’Neil, minister for home affairs and cyber security, on Twitter. “That means we [are] appointing a new national coordinator to lead Australia's cyber security responses to cyber attacks.”

The coordinator is also set to oversee the government’s cyber security investment strategies and lead the government response to cyber attacks, according to Reuters.

At the same time, the government has released a discussion paper to guide the development of its new cyber security strategy. It’s currently seeking feedback on proposed policies and included a number of questions hinting at the direction it’s looking to take.

This includes the potential formation of a Cyber Security Act, prohibiting businesses or insurers from making ransom payments, and creating a single portal for businesses to report cyber attacks.

It’s also mulling greater engagement between ASD and ACSC, and organisations that experience a cyber attack to allow more information to be shared without the data being shared with regulators.

For now, details of the potential policies aren’t entirely clear. More information about how the policies may look will come after the 15 April 2023 deadline for responses.

“For businesses these days, cyber security is as important and essential as the shop having a lock on the door,” said prime minister Anthony Albanese. “We need all Australian businesses to be able to protect themselves and – just as importantly – protect their customers.”

In December 2022, O’Neil revealed that Australia was planning to be the most cyber-secure country by 2030, and would proactively hunt hackers as part of this strategy.

She highlighted the Optus and Medibank cyber attacks, underlining that those events needed to be used as a way to bring in a permanent cyber security change in the country.

O’Neil formally launched the programme to develop the nation’s Cyber Security Strategy, looking to help the nation strengthen its critical infrastructure and government networks.

Medibank has revealed that it has suffered $26.2 million AUD (£14.7 million) in cyber crime-related costs following the hack of its systems in the second half of 2022.

It expects its cyber crime costs to be around $40-$45 million for the 2023 financial year. This involves additional investments in IT security, but excludes further customer and other remediation, regulatory, or litigation-related costs.

According to IBM's figures in 2022, the average cost to an Australian organisation following a ransomware attack was $4.5 million, putting Medibank's losses considerably above the average.

The attacker accessed its systems through a stolen username and password belonging to a third-party IT service provider, Medibank revealed. This was used to access the company’s network through a misconfigured firewall which lacked an additional digital security certificate.

The company said the attacker then went on to obtain more usernames and passwords to access other systems. Since the company was alerted to the attack on 11 October, it confirmed that it hasn’t detected any additional criminal activity on its systems since 12 October.

“We recognise the significant impact the cyber crime event has had on our customers. We will continue to support them through our Cyber Response Support Program, which includes mental health and wellbeing support, identity protection, and financial hardship measures,” said David Koczkar, CEO at Medibank.

“There is more work to do, and the lessons we have learnt from the cyber crime will continue to shape our response and we will emerge stronger.”

Since the attack, the company said it has implemented greater security controls, including ensuring its firewall authentication is fully configured across its entire network.

It has also improved its network monitoring and added further detection and forensics capabilities to help defend against the 18 million perimeter attacks it experiences every day.

An unknown hacker targeted Medibank in October 2022 and threatened to release stolen data unless the company paid a ransom.

Data belonging to 9.7 million former and current customers was exposed, which was believed to include information like health claims data and passport numbers. At the time, the company thought the hack could set it back by $25-$35 million, especially since it didn’t have cyber insurance.

Medibank delivered its most detailed account of the 2022 attack in its half-year earings report released on Thursday.

It reported a gross profit of $233.3 million, an increase of 5.9% compared to the previous half-year. Over the past year, the company has gained around 35,000 customers, despite losing 13,000 clients following the attack in the second half of 2022.

Indian IT and consultancy multinatinoal Wipro has almost halved salaries for its graduate scheme employees, prompting widespread criticism and calls for explanation over the sudden change in its hiring practices.

Wipro runs two graduate hiring tracks known as ‘Elite’ and ‘Turbo’, which carry annual salaries of ₹350,000 and ₹650,000 (£3,500 and £6,500) respectively. Through an internal scheme known as the Wipro Velocity Upgrade Program, Elite candidates can partake in 4-6 months of training in order to be upgraded to ‘Turbo’ status and receive the higher pay package.

But in an email sent last week, candidates who had completed the programme were offered project engineer roles at the Elite rate of ₹350,000, and told they had days to decide whether to accept the offer. Those that accept will be onboarded in March, with no commitment made for higher-paid roles per the company’s previous offer.

It is believed that more than 4,000 candidates were affected by the decision and given until February 20 to notify the company of their decision. The significant cut in starting rate raised alarm and confusion in the hiring pool.

“Our talent is our most valuable asset. We are committed to creating an environment where all our current and future employees are able to build successful careers and realise their goals,” a spokesperson for Wipro told IT Pro.

“In light of the changing macro environment and, as a result, our business needs, we had to adjust our onboarding plans.

“As we work to honour all outstanding offers made, this current offer creates an immediate opportunity for candidates to start their careers, build their expertise and acquire new skills—both through the interesting and innovative work that we do, as well as our extensive learning and development programmes.

“At Wipro, we are committed to the growth and success of all our employees and look forward to welcoming this new group of recent graduates.”

The cut is especially significant considering the average salary of earners in India. According to The Economic Times, those who earn ₹300,000 (£3,000) or more per year place in the country's top 10% of earners.

The Times of India reported that the Indian IT industry union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has filed a complaint with the labour ministry in response to Wipro’s decision.

NITES also issued a statement in solidarity with Elite candidates who have been made to wait months for roles in the lower-paid tier, some of which have now been seemingly offered to Turbo candidates as part of the reduced offer.

“The delay in onboarding has caused immense stress and financial strain for these freshers, many of whom have been waiting for months on end with no clear end in sight. This is unacceptable, and it is a clear indication of the unethical practices that are rampant within Wipro,” wrote Harpreet Singh Saluja, president of NITES.

“We urge all workers to stand together in solidarity with these freshers and demand that Wipro take immediate action to resolve this situation. We call upon the company to provide these workers with fair compensation for the time they have spent waiting, and to ensure that they are onboarded in a timely and respectful manner.”

Macroeconomic headwinds have been blamed for a number of cuts, layoffs, and changes in workplace conditions in the past few months. Amidst big tech layoffs that have seen tens of thousands fired, Intel slashed staff salaries and bonuses and benefits at Twitter were been decimated.

In October 2022, Meta cancelled promised internships in a cost-cutting move similar to Wipro's decision.

Princeton Digital Group (PDG), an APAC data centre company, is set to invest around $1 billion (£881 million) into a data centre campus in Indonesia.

The campus will be built in Batam and will contain four buildings, each with a 24 MW capacity across its 15-acre site. PDG said it has fully secured the power needed for the new infrastructure.

The development is part of PDG’s SG+ strategy which aims to help customers in Singapore expand their infrastructure to data centre campuses across Singapore, Batam in Indonesia, and Johor in Malaysia.

Construction of the Batam campus marks the first stage of the strategy. PDG is also planning on building another campus in Johor, although it hasn’t speculated when this will begin.

"I think the decision to invest in Indonesia is a wise one. Being only 20km from Singapore, it is still ideally placed to service that market with low network latency," said Tiny Haynes, principle edge computing infrastructure and services analyst at S&P Global.

"It has chosen a Special Economic Zone allocated by the Indonesian government which will provide financial and regulatory incentives for investment," he added.

"It is no doubt being built in an area where real estate prices are comparably cheaper than mainland Singapore and finally it has been able to allocate not just the space it requires, but the 96 MW of power which would be more challenging to source in Singapore," he said.

Batam is an island located 20km south of Singapore, and the new campus will be located in the Nongsa Digital Park, located on the northeastern part of the island.

PDG said that Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president, has described Nongsa and Batam as a “digital bridge” between the two countries.

“As a Singapore-headquartered Pan-Asia data centre operator, PDG is at the forefront of enabling customers to continue leveraging the unique set of characteristics that have made Singapore such a successful hub for the region," said Rangu Salgame, chairman and chief executive officer at PDG.

"Our SG+ strategy is aimed at providing a seamless infrastructure growth roadmap for our customers. The new campus in Batam reinforces our growth strategy and solidifies our already-strong presence across the region in China, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and Japan.”

“PDG’s investment in Nongsa Digital Park further strengthens the [special economic zone's] position as a data centre hub in the region,” said Muhammad Rudi, chairman of Badan Pengusahaan Batam (BP Batam), Batam Indonesia Free Zone Authority. “We look forward to working closely with PDG as the company continues to scale as a Pan-Asia leader in digital infrastructure.”

PDG is headquartered in Singapore. Its most recent investment was in December 2022, when it launched a 48 MW data centre in Mumbai. The company has a total capacity of 600 MW across 20 data centres in five markets. It’s also constructing a 100 MW data centre in Saitama, Tokyo, which is expected to be completed by 2024.

Business software specialist Freshworks has announced the appointment of Sandie Overtveld as its new senior vice president for its Asia-Pacific, Japan (APJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA) markets.

Based in Singapore, Overtveld will oversee the company’s growth efforts across the regions, as well as work with brands to help them retain customers and employees central to their business, Freshworks said.

A recognised digital transformation expert, he brings more than 30 years of experience to the role, as well as a strong track record of growth and strategy development. Previously, he has worked for the likes of Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, ZenDesk, and WalkMe.

“We’re thrilled to have Sandie onboard to drive Freshworks business growth in the APJ and MEA regions,” said Pradeep Rathinam, acting chief revenue officer at Freshworks.

“Sandie’s rich regional know-how of the digital transformation experience can help Freshworks deliver even more value to businesses in these regions - showing them that legacy software is a thing of the past and easy-to-use and implement business software is the future for delighting both customers and employees alike.”

Overtveld began his leadership career in South Africa as regional manager of WordPerfect Corporation, before going on to become marketing director at systems provider Workgroup Systems. His career then expanded internationally, taking on leadership roles at Corel Corporation and Pivotal Corp in London.

From there, he spent more than seven years as general manager of Microsoft’s Dynamics Business Applications segment for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, before becoming general manager of Hewlett Packard’s Microsoft Dynamics Service line in APJ, and later taking regional leadership roles at software as a service (SaaS) provider Zendesk.

Most recently, Overtveld served as the APJ leader for WalkMe in Singapore, a company that successfully pioneered digital adoption platforms (DAP) around the world.

Commenting on his latest appointment, Overtveld said he deeply admires Freshworks’ “longstanding vision and commitment to its customers”.

“Having worked with both entrepreneurial startups and complex global matrixed environments, I’m excited to take on this new challenge to expand business in the APJ and MEA regions,” he said. “Excited to ultimately expand Freshworks’ global presence and deliver value to businesses of all sizes.”

TikTok is set to establish two new data centres in Europe as the Chinese social media platform looks to comply with local data laws.

The company, which has more than 150 million users across Europe, said that it’s finalising a plan for a second data centre in Ireland with a third-party service provider.

It's also in talks to secure a third data centre in Europe. It didn’t specify where, though it said it will complement its Ireland operations.

European TikTok user data is set to begin migrating this year and continue into 2024.

“We also remain focused on building trust with our community by demonstrating to them that their data is secure,” said Rich Waterworth, general manager of operations, Europe, at TikTok.

“We're continuing to deliver against the data governance strategy we set out for Europe last year, which includes further reducing employee access to European user data, minimising data flows outside of Europe, and storing European user data locally.”

TikTok tightens data protection

TikTok announced in April 2020 that it would establish a data centre in Ireland, its first in Europe, with the intent to store European user data at the facility.

The following year, the company also revealed its data governance strategy, underlining that it was committed to Europe’s data protection regulations.

In April 2022, TikTok gave an update on this data governance strategy for Europe and revealed that it had finally signed a contract for a data centre in Dublin to store UK and EEA user data through a third-party service.

Operations at this site were expected to commence in early 2023. A spokesperson from TikTok told IT Pro that it plans to start the migration of Europe user data beginning in Q2.

TikTok has stored global user data overseas, in locations like Singapore or the US. However, it said it wanted to provide a localised solution which would help it to comply with European data sovereignty laws.

“Chinese-owned TikTok is under pressure to assure its international customers that the user data it holds is secure and safe from being accessed by the Chinese state,” said John Abbott, infrastructure analyst at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“It’s part of a broader data governance plan set out by TikTok intended to reduce the flow of European user data outside of Europe.”

Abbott said that Ireland has been chosen as a location for data centres as it’s popular with hyperscalers, like AWS, Google, and Microsoft, as well as colocation providers like Digital Reality and Equinix.

“Opening data centres nearer customers has two benefits: It can help reduce lag by allowing access to data locally rather than thousands of miles away in China,” said Frank Jennings, partner and head of commercial at Teacher Stern LLP.

“It can also help assuage concerns over the transfer of personal data to China, a regime that doesn’t have a strong human rights record, let alone data protection laws comparable to GDPR.”

Jennings said that keeping data in the EU won’t fix all the problems facing the company on this issue.

“It wasn’t that long ago that a New York District Court forced Microsoft to hand over customer data it was holding in its Dublin data centre under the aptly named “Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data” – aka the Cloud Act,” he said. “No doubt the Chinese government will have such powers too.”

The new data centres are a good start, said Jennings, but won’t be enough to address the underlying issue.

In June 2022, the head of the FCC in the US urged Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores due to the way it handled data.

FCC commissioner Brendan Carr said the app collects vast troves of sensitive data on its users. He pointed to a report which stated that ByteDance officials, the company which owns TikTok, had accessed the app’s sensitive data which had been collected from US citizens.

Microsoft has secured a three-year deal with Suncorp Group which will see the financial firm continue to move its data to the cloud.

As part of the company’s multi-cloud strategy, Suncorp is winding down its on-premise data centres and is aiming to migrate 90% of its workloads to the cloud by the end of 2023.

The remaining 10% is set to be moved to other colocation sites in Sydney and will be ready to move to the cloud by January 2024.

Suncorp's ambition is that the strategy will help it reduce costs and hasten the development of digital products for customers. Suncorp is also trying to simplify its technology infrastructure by moving its operations to the public cloud.

“We are always looking for opportunities to leverage cloud infrastructure to be more agile and responsive to market needs,” said Charles Pizzato, executive general manager of IT Infrastructure at Suncorp.

“The Microsoft Azure platform gives us that flexibility and scalability, along with the underlying security posture we need as a financial services organisation."

Currently, 65% of the company’s applications are in the cloud, a process that was initiated in 2013, Pizzato said.

Back in 2013, Suncorp announced at AWS re:Invent its plan to move to the cloud. It now has a mix of workloads and applications in the public cloud which is divided up between AWS, Azure, and Kyndryl’s zCloud and pCloud, according to ITNews.

“Once we’ve migrated our workloads to the cloud, we’ll be able to build and deploy digital solutions for our customers at game-changing speed,” said Pizzato.

Suncorp has tapped some of its partners, including Avanade, to help with the migration to Microsoft Azure.

The financial firm is also planning to deploy 3,600 Microsoft Surface laptops across the organisation in Australia and New Zealand, on top of the 10,000 Surface devices it has already introduced.

This is part of its strategy to help its 13,000 employees collaborate through hybrid work. Suncorp has also deployed 150 Surface Hubs at its offices.

“We’re excited to play an even greater role in Suncorp’s cloud strategy and workplace evolution as the next step in our longstanding partnership,” said Duncan Taylor, general manager of financial services industry at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand.

“Together, we will empower its people to connect, collaborate and innovate in new ways that deliver better customer outcomes.”

Cloud benefits for financial services

Like many businesses, companies in the financial services industry have realised the benefits cloud computing can offer in terms of innovation and cost savings.

By moving to the cloud, financial services firms can develop new products for customers faster and use various services to improve their business. Businesses are able to access a number of tools that are already located in the cloud to do this, including enterprise resource management or customer relationship management tools.

Other benefits also include faster data processing thanks to data analytics tools that are provided by most cloud platforms - essential for banks and other financial institutions that have to respond in real time to market fluctuations.

Banks also are able to achieve savings of around 20% by running their workloads in the cloud, according to Accenture. For some organisations, these savings rates can even reach 40% or 65%. It can be easier to introduce new tools to the business too, like machine learning or artificial intelligence, improving data analysis or products for customers.

At peak times, banks can experience unexpectedly high demands for their services and ultimately their computing capacity. If on-premise infrastructure is relied upon too heavily, it can be difficult to automatically scale the compute resources needed to handle the increase in demand without sacrificing user experiences.

Through the cloud, organisations can pay for their compute flexibly - paying for greater resources to deal with any increase in demand for services, and then pay for fewer resources once demand has decreased again.

Companies are also able to mix and match between on-premise and cloud approaches when it comes to data storage, according to Deloitte.

This depends on business needs and the firm said it can be as secure, or even more, than on-premise. For banks specifically, these organisations could choose to store extremely sensitive data on-premise, if they’re worried about security in the cloud, and put the rest of their data in the cloud.

NTT, Japan’s biggest telecoms company, is set to invest $3.5 billion (£2.8 billion) into India’s digital infrastructure over the next seven years.

The investment will be staggered in $500 million (£404 million) chunks each year over the time period, as reported by Nikkei Asia.

NTT's investments will mainly be focused on digital infrastructure, with some of the money also going towards building nine new data centres, although it’s unclear exactly how much it will spend in this area. This would bring the telco’s capacity to 300 MW, almost double what it currently has.

Data centre power is measured in megawatts (MW), with the more MW present at a facility, the more infrastructure that can be deployed. Due to advancements in server technology, it’s harder to work out how many servers are deployed if data centres are measured in the physical space available, such as square feet, so it has become more common to measure the energy consumed instead.

NTT is also looking to construct subsea cable landing stations in the Indian cities of Mumbai and Chennai in 2023. The venture forms part of its digital infrastructure investment into the country. The new investment is a step up from the $800 million (£647 million) the company invested in India from 2021 to 2022.

As of May 2022, the company had launched a data centre in Mumbai and was expected to open eight more around the country, according to the Economic Times.

It already had 12 sites across India, in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Delhi, totalling a 220 MW capacity. In 2021, the company revealed it was intending to invest $2 billion into the country on data centres, networks, and solar projects, reported Data Center Dynamics.

IT Pro has contacted NTT for comment.

Japan’s domestic market is shrinking, causing some companies to look overseas for other markets for their investments. This has been fuelled by an ageing population, the weak yen, and the impact of the pandemic.

In October 2022, NTT launched NTT Data to control the company’s international overseas operations. At the time, the company said that NTT Data would have a total revenue of around $30 billion (£24 billion), with $18 billion coming from outside Japan from more than 80 countries.

Since 2007, NTT has been steadily growing its international business by more than 20%. It offers technology consulting, edge-to-cloud infrastructure, and global data centres.

India has continued to attract investments into its data centre industry, with local telco Bharti Airtel revealing this month it was going to invest £200 million into a new data centre in Hyderabad. It’s set to be a large hyperscale centre, with 60 MW of capacity.

Although NTT hasn’t invested in data centres in the city, it has hinted in the past that it is interested in entering Hyderabad, but is waiting for more demand before it does.

“Hyderabad is indeed turning out to be a hub for hyperscaler data centres in India as the government of Telangana is looking to attract investments in the state,” Rajiv Ranjan, associate research director at IDC India, told IT Pro.

“Mr K T Rama Rao, IT and industries minister, is very IT-friendly. Besides, it’s a seismic zone, has a stable power supply which is essential for data centres. Lastly, presence of talent and skilled professionals is another driving factor with more IT professionals working there, good number of engineering colleges in the state.”

Bharti Airtel is set to invest £200 million in a new data centre in India, its biggest investment since it began construction of a data centre in Kolkata in November 2022.

The company revealed at Davos on 18 January that it’s set to invest ₹2,000 crore (£200 million) in a large hyperscale data centre in Hyderabad, as reported by The Economic Times. It will have a 60 MW capacity and is expected to be completed in five to seven years.

Bharti Airtel will make the capital investment through Nxtra Data Centers, its data centre arm that has more than ten large data centres and 120 edge data centres across the country.

“I think it is inevitable that Bharti Airtel is going to want to attract cloud hosting organisations as they constitute the lion's share of DC deals globally,” Tiny Haynes, principal edge computing infrastructure and services analyst, at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, told IT Pro.

“India is also promoting investment in sovereign cloud hosting organisations, although it does not forbid data transfer to other countries so long as there is consent and adequate security measures in place. Being a telco, they will be in a strong position to offer well-connected cloud hosting services sitting on their network backbone.”

"I am very happy to see Airtel-Nxtra Data Centers invest in Telangana. Hyderabad is now the hub for hyperscale data centres in India and Airtel's investment adds to the pace we look to keep up,” said K T Rama Rao, minister for IT and industries at the state of Telangana.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Airtel said: "This is one of our biggest greenfield data centre projects in India and we are happy to be working with Telangana".

Data centre "expansion spree"

Nxtra Data Centers, Bharti Airtel’s subsidiary focused on building data centres, started constructing a new data centre in Kolkata in November 2022. This was valued at ₹600 crore (£5.9 million) and is expected to serve the east and northeast regions of the country. The facility, with 25 MW of capacity, is set to be operational by 2024.

The data centre arm revealed in November 2022 that it was set to embark on an “expansion spree” and spend over ₹5,000 crore (£498 million) over the next four years to triple its capacity to over 400 MW.

Global investment firm Carlyle Group announced in 2020 it would invest $235 million (£190 million) into Nxtra, a deal which took two years to officially complete in June 2022, giving the firm 24% ownership of the data centre company.

“India is witnessing a considerable surge in demand for secure data centres as businesses undertake digital transformation and consumer demand for digital services continues to increase,” Carlyle Group said when it made its initial investment.

“The expansion of hyperscalers across the region following the government’s directive on data localisation is propelling a lot of this demand, with other market drivers including the growth in user data and increase in cloud penetration.”

Bharti Airtel’s move to Telangana follows in the footsteps of Microsoft which announced in March 2022 it would establish a fourth data centre region in Hyderabad as well.

The new region joined the company’s existing ones in Pune, Mumbai, and Chennai. Microsoft tapped Telangana as it called it a “challenger” to the country’s IT sector thanks to a 7% increase in software exports in 2021.

"Data consumption in India is rising at an exponential rate primarily on the back of cloud adoption, digital payments, data localisation, and adoption of 5G Networks," said Arif Khan, India sales director at Colt Data Centre Services, to IT Pro.

"Therefore all segments, specifically hyperscale, enterprise, and consumers are demanding a reliable data and network infrastructure which makes India an attractive market for investments."

Tencent has revealed that it was forced to fire more than 100 employees on grounds of bribery and embezzlement in 2022.

The company also decided to stop doing business with 23 third parties in accordance with its anti-corruption measures, Nikkei Asia reported.

It's the second time a scandal like this has rocked the tech giant. The company fired more than 70 employees in 2021 for similar reasons and blacklisted 13 companies with which it previously used to conduct business.

Tencent described the corruption in 2022 as “more severe” due to the company's history with insider crime.

Out of the 100 employees fired, more than ten of them were arrested and some were sentenced to prison, including one who has been set a three-year term.

The Chinese tech giant revealed in a WeChat post that 2021's cases included employees in charge of its news portal and some in its gaming studio. These employees allegedly took bribes or stole company property, reported the South China Morning Post.

Tencent’s founder and CEO Pony Ma raised issues around corruption in December 2022, reportedly telling employees that corruption had been discovered within the company and called it “astonishing,” according to a report from local Chinese news outlet Jiemian.

Ma revealed that Tencent had carried out more internal probes over the past year as part of an initiative to reduce costs and improve business efficiency. However, it also uncovered a large number of corruption cases.

Other big tech companies have also had to deal with claims of corruption in recent times. In March 2022, a whistleblower claimed he was fired by Microsoft after trying to raise awareness of bribes being accepted by employees at the company.

Whistleblower Yasser Elabd revealed that a Microsoft executive or salesperson would allegedly propose a side agreement with a partner and a decision-maker at an entity looking to purchase services from the company.

The decision maker would ask the tech giant for a discount, but would then pay the full fee anyway. The discount would then be shared amongst the individuals involved in the scheme, Elabd alleged.

In 2019, Microsoft also paid $25.3 million in criminal and civil fines to settle a case in Hungary where the company’s employees were accused of carrying out an operation to bribe government officials. Employees allegedly inflated software sales margins to raise money to pay off officials in the country.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its first local zone in Perth, the first of its kind in Australia and the Oceanic region.

The local zone is the 29th AWS now offers around the world which promises to provide lower latencies when running cloud workloads.

By launching the local zone in Perth, AWS said it's hoping to help customers easily deploy applications closer to end users in the surrounding area. Customers can then make the most of the low latency required for use cases such as running virtual workstations and augmented and virtual reality processes.

It can also help customers in regulated sectors that might have to keep data within a geographic territory, such as in healthcare, public sector, and financial services.

The cloud giant said that local zones are important when an AWS region isn’t close enough to meet low latency or data residency preferences.

Instead, a customer might need infrastructure closer to their data source or end users, which is when a local zone is used. In the past, companies have managed these workloads on-premises or in data centres managed by other companies.

However, this can end up making things more complex, since a different set of APIs and tools might be used for on-premises and AWS environments. Through AWS local zones, customers don’t have to procure, operate, or maintain infrastructure in various cities to support low-latency applications.

“We are pleased to deepen our investments in Western Australia by bringing the first Australian AWS local zones location to Perth,” said Sarah Bassett, head of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland Enterprise at AWS Australia.

“Speed matters in business, and we’ve designed AWS local zones to deliver low-latency capabilities for organisations to improve the performance of their digital applications, process large amounts of data faster, and drive productivity gains.”

AWS is planning to launch another local zone in Brisbane, on Australia’s east coast, as well as in Auckland, in New Zealand in 2024, although it didn’t reveal exactly when these would be running.

It’s also planning to launch local zones in 21 other locations across the world, including in countries in the Asia-Pacific region like Bengaluru and Chennai in India, Hanoi in Vietnam, and Manila in the Philippines.

“AWS' investment to launch its first Australian AWS local zones location in Perth is a big win for Western Australian organisations and the economy,” said Stephen Dawson, Western Australian minister for innovation and the digital economy.

“An AWS local zones location in Perth opens up more opportunities for Western Australian businesses to innovate and develop new services enabling better experiences for their customers and our citizens.”

Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has secured a whole-of-government arrangement with IBM to allow agencies to access the company’s products, including the application of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.

Details of how the government will be using AI and quantum computing were not supplied, but the deal would see all government agencies being able to tap into IBM's offerings.

The agreement is valued at $725 million (£413 million) and will last for the next five years, replacing an agreement signed in 2018 between the two entities.

Focus areas of the deal include flexibility for agencies to move assets and encourage reuse opportunities across government, as well as reducing the time, effort, and resources needed to streamline contracting, said the DTA.

IBM will also provide training and certification to improve digital skills across the government, as well as work with the DTA to establish data protection and encryption measures to protect the government better against future cyber security threats.

All agencies will continue to be able to access IBM’s technology. This includes IBM’s suite of technology capabilities like IBM Watson, which uses AI to automate processes, and the IBM Cloud, to store government data.

The new agreement follows the first of its kind in 2018, which was valued at $1 billion (£567 million). However, overall spending exceeded $2 billion (£1.1 billion) and was claimed to be the highest-value contract negotiated by the Australian government, according to IT News.

“This arrangement is the right fit for the current context and requirements for its participating agencies. It offers important continuity for the business systems that support critical government services which Australians rely on,” said Chris Fechner, CEO at the DTA.

“Through the Commonwealth negotiating as one entity, the contract will continue to give government agencies better value for money and more flexibility when sourcing commonly used IBM products and services with a focus on essential government requirements.”

The new deal was jointly negotiated and signed by the DTA, Australian Taxation Office, Department of Defence, Department of Home Affairs, and Services Australia.

IBM already expanded its agreement with the state of New South Wales (NSW) in June 2021, in which it extended its arrangement for another three years.

The company claimed the revised whole-of-government agreement would deliver cost savings and provide a more streamlined process for agencies to access IBM’s offerings, including IBM hybrid cloud, security, and AI.

Apple is reportedly looking to transfer some MacBook production from China to Vietnam as it aims to avoid ongoing US-China tensions and supply chain disruptions.

Foxconn, one of the tech giant’s suppliers, will start producing MacBooks in Vietnam from around May onwards, according to Nikkei Asia. Once the production of MacBooks begins, it will mean all of the tech giant’s main products will have a production site out of China.

iPhones are being made in India while MacBooks, Apple Watches, and iPads will be produced in Vietnam. The tech giant is reportedly securing options outside of China for part of the production of all of its products.

Securing an additional production site for the MacBook has taken longer than Apple’s other products due to the MacBook's complex supply chain.

The plan to move MacBook production has been in the pipeline for nearly two years, with the tech giant already establishing a test production site in Vietnam. Currently, the company produces 20-24 million MacBooks each year, which are made in Chengdu and Shanghai.

Recent years have seen the trade tensions between the US and China escalate. In September 2022, this culminated in US officials banning Nvidia from exporting AI-based chips to China as the country may have used them for military use.

Similarly, in November 2021, the US Department of Commerce added 12 Chinese tech companies to a blacklist, aiming to stop the Chinese army from gaining access to important US technologies.

This may have caused Apple to be concerned, especially since in January 2019 it blamed the US-China trade war for its first drop in revenue in 12 years. It said that economic deceleration in China was a significant influencing factor in its decreased revenue figures, with sales of the iPhone suffering in the country.

"We believe the economic environment in China has been further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States," Cook said at the time. "As the climate of mounting uncertainty weighed on financial markets, the effects appeared to reach consumers as well, with traffic to our retail stores and our channel partners in China declining as the quarter progressed.”

Additionally, Apple has been impacted by disruptions in its Chinese supply chain in recent years. Most recently, workers launched protests at an iPhone plant belonging to Foxconn in November 2022, as reported by the Guardian, triggered by a delay in paying workers their bonuses.

In March 2022, Foxconn also resumed making Apple products at its manufacturing hub in Shenzhen after halting production for a week during a lockdown.

The company said it had resumed normal working order, with the factory continuing to produce the iPhone SE and MacBook Air. However, it added that it had to comply with the local government’s epidemic prevention policies, where factory workers had to limit outside interactions and live and work in a bubble.

The Australian telco TPG Telecom has been hit by a cyber attack that has put data belonging to 15,000 customers’ at risk.

Mandiant, the firm’s cyber security advisers, notified the company on 13 December that it had found evidence of unauthorised access to a hosted exchange service. TPG Telecom then notified customers the day after, on 14 December, sharing that the affected service hosts email accounts for 15,000 iiNet and Westnet customers, separate companies owned by the telco.

TPG Telecom said that initial analysis suggested the attacker was hunting for cryptocurrency and financial data.

“We apologise unreservedly to the affected iiNet and Westnet Hosted Exchange business customers,” the company said. “We continue to investigate the incident and any potential impact on customers and are advising customers to take necessary precautions.”

Mandiant said it had been enlisted to help TPG Telecom with conducting an investigation into the incident. As part of this, it carried out a forensic historical review and found the unauthorised access to the hosted exchange platform.

“We have implemented measures to stop the unauthorised access, further security measures have been put in place, and we are in the process of contacting all affected customers on the Hosted Exchange service,” the company said.

It has also notified the relevant government authorities and plans to communicate directly with affected customers when more information is available.

“This latest breach really does demonstrate that criminals are using Australia to showcase to the world how easy it is to walk into top corporates’ digital premises and steal their customer information,” said Julia O’Toole, CEO of MyCena Security Solutions.

“Details into the incident are still emerging, but with 82% of today’s breaches being executed through stolen credentials, there is a high probability employee usernames and passwords were found and used to access the company, and that through lateral movement and privilege escalation, criminals quickly got the crown jewels,” said O’Toole.

This makes it the third Australian telco to suffer a cyber attack since October 2022. Telstra, the country’s largest telco, was impacted by a data breach in October 2022, which saw around 30,000 past and present employees affected. This was followed by a hack at Optus, leading to a data breach of 10 million customers, in October too. More recently, in December 2022, Telstra shared that an internal IT error caused a data leak, which affected hundreds of thousands of customers.

The number of damaging cyber attacks targeting Australia in recent months led the government to start creating a new cyber security strategy in December 2022. Officials are hoping to help the nation strengthen its critical infrastructure and government networks, and help deepen its cyber security capabilities.

Australian telco Telstra has said that an internal IT error was the cause of a data leak affecting hundreds of thousands of customers.

The company said on 9 December that it had discovered an error that caused customers’ names, numbers, and addresses being listed on the Directory Assistance services and the White Pages.

The White Pages are a directory of contact information for people and businesses in Australia, while the Directory Assistance is used to search for a phone number of a person or business listed in the pages. The services used to be government-owned and are now privatised, and as part of Telstra’s regulatory obligations, it’s responsible for providing both to the public.

The country’s biggest telco said that a misalignment of databases was to blame for the leak, although it has not specified further. It added that no malicious cyber activity was involved.

“As soon as we became aware, we started work to remove the identified impacted customers from the Directory Assistance service and the online version of the White Pages,” said Michael Ackland, chief financial officer (CFO) and group executive of Strategy & Finance at Telstra.

Telstra is also contacting every customer affected in the incident and will offer them free assistance with IDCARE, a charity that provides national identity and cyber support to Australia and New Zealand.

The company said it is carrying out an internal investigation to understand the full scope of the incident. It added that protecting its customers’ privacy was paramount and that the incident was considered a breach of customer trust.

Telstra was also hit with a data breach at the start of October 2022, which involved the unauthorised access of employee details. It said at the time a third-party platform had been attacked and was used to access its data. The data was confined to company employees and dated back to 2017, with around 30,000 people reportedly affected.

Fellow Australian telco Optus experienced a similar attack just two weeks before the October Telstra incident, which saw the leaking of sensitive customer data online. The data included names, phone numbers, email addresses and, in some cases, passport and driving licence numbers.

Medibank plans to shut down its systems for a weekend while it carries out essential upgrades to its cyber security system, with help from Microsoft experts.

The company was hit by a cyber attack in October that saw data belonging to the company’s 9.7 million current and former customers exposed. Hackers are believed to have had access to a range of data, including passport numbers and health claims data.

The private healthcare insurance company said it plans to take systems belonging to Medibank, and its subsidiary ahm, temporarily offline from 08:30pm Friday 9 December, to undertake maintenance and strengthen its systems to boost its security. The company expects the systems to be back online by Sunday 11 December.

When the systems are down, customers will be unable to access Medibank or ahm services through the company’s website or app. Its retail stores and customer contact centre is also set to close on Saturday 10 December. However, health services like its 24/7 critical health support lines will remain open.

Medibank, one of Australia's largest private health insurance providers, said the work forms the next phase of its ongoing effort to safeguard its network. As part of this, Microsoft IT experts are flying in from across the Asia Pacific region and will join the company at its Melbourne headquarters. It isn’t clear what specific assistance the tech giant will provide.

Medibank said the work has required several weeks of preparation, given the complexity associated with taking systems offline entirely.

“While there has been no further suspicious activity detected inside our systems since 12 October 2022, as part of the next stage of our work we are undertaking maintenance across some of our systems to further strengthen security,” said the company.

Medibank said it has boosted its security since the attack took place. This includes implementing two-factor authentication at its contact centres, aiming to increase the security for customers when they call for support.

The Australian company has also boosted its existing monitoring, added more forensics and detection capabilities across its systems and network, and has also improved its analytical support by hiring specialist third parties.

The company is continuing to analyse its customer data that was released by the hacker on the dark web. It has found that the number of stolen customer files hasn’t changed.

It will also begin contacting customers who have limited provider data stolen, including provider numbers, discharge data, and admission date.

“Like most of the data stolen, this data has been released in a raw form and is hard to understand,” said the company.

Australia has been rocked by a series of high profile cyber attacks in recent months, which has led the government to begin developing a new cyber security strategy. The new plan aims to help the country strengthen its government networks and critical infrastructure, and build sovereign cyber security capabilities. Home Affairs minister Claire O’Neil said on 8 December that the country will also look to create a 100-person team which will be focused on hunting down hackers.

Australia is planning on hunting down hackers as part of its plan to be the most cyber-secure country by 2030, a government minister revealed today.

Claire O’Neil, the country’s home affairs minister, launched a programme to develop Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy. She pointed to the Optus and Medibank cyber attacks, branding them “terrible events”, and said that these disasters need to be turned into a permanent step change in cyber security for the country.

As part of this, Australia is looking to “punch back” at hackers through a collaboration between the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Signals Directorate, the agency responsible for its offensive cyber operations.

“This will be a 100-person team, permanently focused on hunting down people seeking to hack our systems, and hacking back,” said O’Neil. “It will take some time to get this singing, but when it does, it will change the game for cyber in Australia.”

The Cyber Security Strategy is aiming to help Australia strengthen its critical infrastructure and government networks, as well as build sovereign cyber security capabilities.

O’Neil also said she wants to bring the whole nation into the fight to protect Australian citizens and the economy, and wants to strengthen its international engagement to make Australia a global cyber leader. This will also see it work with its Pacific neighbours to improve cyber security in the region.

The development of the strategy will be led by three experts, said O’Neil. These are Andy Penn, former Telstra CEO, Rachael Falk, one of Australia’s cyber security and telco experts, and Mel Hupfeld, former chief of the Air Force. The government also has the assistance of other cyber experts, including former UK NCSC CEO Ciaran Martin who will lead a global cyber expert panel.

“We have the burning platform, we have the mandate for change, we’ve genuinely got the best minds on this problem,” said O’Neil. “Now, it’s time to translate that into a more cyber-secure Australia.”

She said that the government had made changes to how it responds to cyber incidents, including bringing in new penalties under the Privacy Law. Once enacted, this will see new maximum penalties for businesses, which will change from $2.22 million (£1.2 million) to a new maximum.

The new maximum is the greatest of either: $50 million (£27 million), three times the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of information, or 30% of a company's adjusted turnover in the relevant period.

“Our government has [the] commitment and resolve to fix this,” said O’Neil. “But it’s going to take time. Better cybersecurity for Australia means all businesses and citizens changing how they engage with the internet. We need to prepare for more major cyber attacks over the coming years as we undertake this important work.

“The truth is, we are unnecessarily vulnerable. We did not do the work nationally over the last decade to help us prepare for this challenge. Prime Minister Morrison’s decision to abolish the Cyber Security Ministry when he came to office was a shocker.”

O’Neil added that in September and October 2022, the country experienced the two worst cyber attacks in its history, within three weeks of each other. The first of these was the Medibank hack, which affected 9.7 million current and former customers. The other was the Optus hack, a data breach of 10 million customer accounts.

The National Australian Bank also revealed two months ago that Australians are subject to 50 million attempted cyber attacks each month, while the Australian Taxation Office said the figure was around 3 million.

Google's cyber security team has identified a zero-day exploit for an Internet Explorer vulnerability that was used to target users in South Korea.

The tech giant’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) made the discovery in October 2022 and found malware embedded in documents that were emailed to targets. The hidden malware residing in the documents exploited a vulnerability in the browser's JScript engine, tracked as CVE-2022-41128.

TAG attributed the attacks to APT37, a known threat group that is has attributed to North Korean state-sponsored hackers. It said that APT37 has used Internet Explorer zero-days in the past to target users, and tends to focus on those based in South Korea including journalists, human rights activists, and North Korean defectors.

The malware-laden document was titled “221031 Seoul Yongsan Itaewon accident response situation (06:00).docx”, which Google said was attempting to take advantage of public interest in an accident, a Halloween crowd crush, that took place in South Korea in October.

Multiple submitters from South Korea flagged the malware to Google's TAG by uploading this Microsoft Office document to VirusTotal, a website Google owns that analyses suspicious files, domains, or URLs.

Researchers found that the document downloaded a rich text file (RTF) remote template which then went on to fetch HTML content.

“Because Office renders this HTML content using Internet Explorer (IE), this technique has been widely used to distribute IE exploits via Office files since 2017 (e.g. CVE-2017-0199),” said TAG. “Delivering IE exploits via this vector has the advantage of not requiring the target to use Internet Explorer as its default browser, nor to chain the exploit with an EPM sandbox escape.”

“The vulnerability resides within “jscript9.dll”, the JavaScript engine of Internet Explorer, and can be exploited to execute arbitrary code when rendering an attacker-controlled website,” said TAG. “The bug itself is an incorrect JIT optimisation issue leading to a type confusion and is very similar to CVE-2021-34480, which was identified by Project Zero and patched in 2021.”

TAG informed Microsoft of the vulnerability on 31 October 2022, and it was then assigned the CVE-2022-41128 tracking code. Five days later, on 8 November 2022, the vulnerability was patched.

Microsoft has fixed Internet Explorer bugs in the past that were previously exploited by North Korean hackers. The flaw, discovered in March 2021, was used to target security researchers through a memory corruption vulnerability which enabled hackers to run malware on a victim’s PC. It did this by encouraging them to access a malicious website.

In September 2021, Microsoft also had to issue another fix for a zero-day vulnerability embedded in the browser that powers legacy Internet Explorer. It was a remote code execution flaw embedded in the MSHTML browser engine which allowed hackers to create a malicious ActiveX control which was used by a Microsoft Office document hosting the engine. The attackers would then tempt victims into opening the document.

The UK and Japan have unveiled a new digital partnership which will see the pair collaborate on a range of digital technologies.

Announced on Wednesday, the partnership aims to deliver on the UK’s plan to increase international collaboration with technology.

It’s set to cover a range of digital issues, including how to improve the resilience of global supply chains, such as with semiconductors, as well as developing research and development projects to share expertise.

The countries are set to promote initiatives to standardise IoT security as well as address the risks of digital services in supply chains. They are also hoping to align their approaches to digital regulation to try and make it easier for organisations to operate in each territory.

It will also see collaboration between the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) - the UK’s data regulator - and Japanese regulators to help businesses and citizens trust data sharing more between the two countries.

“The UK’s relationship with Japan has grown from strength to strength in recent years based on a foundation of shared goals and values,” said UK digital secretary Michelle Donelan. “Our thriving tech sectors are another opportunity for us to work together to benefit citizens and businesses across both countries. I look forward to deepening our relationship through the UK-Japan digital partnership in the future.”

The partnership also will see the creation of a UK-Japan Digital Council. It will take the format of an annual meeting between representatives from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) and Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and the Digital Agency. In the meeting, the officials will discuss new priorities for both countries.

The collaboration also accomplishes the UK’s goal of becoming the European nation with the biggest presence in the Indo-Pacific region, said the government. This part of the world has become more and more important as global tech competition has intensified.

Japan and the UK signed a post-Brexit trade deal in September 2020 which allowed the free flow of data between the nations. The government estimated that it would increase trade with Japan by around £15.2 billion.

It also included a ban on data localisation, meaning that UK companies can operate in Japan without having to have a data residency or local server in the country.

This article originally appeared in issue 32 of IT Pro 20/20, available here. To sign up to receive each new issue in your inbox, click here

Japanese culture is a hugely successful national export, working its way across the world thanks to the nation’s rich history, heritage, and cuisine – all married with technological supremacy. When picturing Japan, you might imagine a high-tech country where bullet trains zip across the countryside and into cities powered by futuristic systems.

Not all is what meets the eye, however. Japan has, surprisingly, been lagging behind in digital transformation for decades. A quarter of firms hold off digital transformation, while 9% shun it completely, according to Forrester. This is higher than other comparable countries, applying to just 2% of businesses in Malaysia and 1% in Indonesia. Moreover, just 39% of decision makers surveyed said their firm is engaging in digital transformation.

This may come as a shock, especially considering the global prominence of tech giants like Sony, Toshiba, or Fujitsu. Domestically, however, it’s a different story, with a sluggish approach to digitisation typified by the continued use of fax machines and floppy disks, underpinned by a cultural lethargy towards change at the heart of government.

Fax to the future

Most Japanese offices still use fax machines and, until two years ago, it was rather common to expect organisations to answer any questions through faxes, says Parissa Haghirian, professor of international management at Sophia University, Tokyo. Another tradition still in use is the hanko, or personal stamp, whereby, before COVID-19, almost every document had to be stamped instead of signed.

Online banking, meanwhile, was introduced almost a decade later than in many other countries, underlines Haghirian. “From what I know many banks still don’t have apps. Most Japanese [citizens] still use a small bank book if they need an overview on their spending,” she explains, pointing out that online banking records at Mizuho Bank are only available for the last three months.

The hanko stamp was still in widespread use before COVID-19

There are a number of reasons change is so slow, she says. Japanese workers don’t change jobs very often, meaning you won’t find many changing internal processes based on experience from their previous firm, so things stay as they are. There aren’t enough IT professionals, either, due to a labour shortage. This means companies begin developing their own platforms with employees who don’t have the right skills or background. There’s also little outsourcing to technology firms, meaning such companies don’t spread teachings across the wider business landscape, nor train employees in using specific software.

On top of this, Japan is grappling with a demographic challenge that underlines a wider reluctance to change. Its society is the oldest in the world, with people aged 65 or older numbering 36.21 million in 2021 – a record-high 28.9% of the population. By contrast, it’s 2020 figure (28.6%) was far higher than the likes of the US (16.6%), Sweden (20.3%), France (20.8%) or Germany (21.7%).

“The decision makers are old and they have no other experience than one firm,” adds Haghirian. “If something new comes up, they often cannot understand why this is necessary, and disapprove of change.”

Many customers are elderly, too, and Haghirian believes they aren’t comfortable using new systems or apps. They also have the time to physically travel into city offices and banks during the week, rather than rely on online services.

Haghirian believes it will be difficult for the Japanese government to move away from using outdated technologies, especially since – even in government – the right people aren’t in charge. She explains, in the past, individuals have been appointed as the cyber security minister but without the right expertise in the field. Meanwhile, many key responsibilities are devolved to regional governments, which makes coordination more difficult.

Market influences, on the other hand, are more effective. When Chinese tourists in Japan started using cashless payment services, for example, Japanese companies realised they were missing out on a big market, explains Haghirian. This led to SoftBank and Yahoo Japan starting a joint venture called PayPay, which now provides cashless payment services.

As for whether the government successfully digitally transform public services, she thinks Japan needs an overall long-term strategy for the whole country, managed and implemented by IT professionals, “not some Japanese grandfathers”. “Paternalistic decision-making structures, and the belief that anyone can do the job, are the biggest problems,” she explains. “Not only in the government, but also in many big Japanese firms.”

Let’s get digital

This paternalistic tradition is a major impediment that makes it difficult to get rid of outdated technology, agrees Jun Mukoyama, visiting senior research fellow at the Asia Pacific Initiative. Standards are set by the most senior participants in an organisation, who prefer a ‘business as usual’ approach to adopting new technologies. She adds the risk-averse and inerrant nature of government officials slows the change too.

The Japanese government’s failure to use digital technology in response to the pandemic sparked criticism in Japan. Mukoyama explains it took months to deliver cash grants to citizens, and the government couldn’t capture real-time patient data since hospitals and health centres use telephones and fax machines to communicate. This was much unlike the experience in countries like the UK, in which digital transformation actually accelerated.

“The shock of such a ‘defeat in the digital war’ has led it to establish the Digital Agency in September 2021. It has been a year since its inception, and the government is making gradual progress,” says Mukoyama.

Recently, the new digital minister Taro Kono declared a war on floppy disks. This was because a government committee discovered around 1,900 areas in which businesses are required to use storage media like floppy disks when making applications, or holding data.

The digital minister Taro Kano (pictured) has declared a war on floppy disks

This issue came to light as part of the committee’s broader aim to audit the nation’s processes, explains Mukoyama. It’s been working on evaluating around 60,000 laws, orders, circulars, guidelines, and administrative procedures to check whether “analogue procedures”, like requiring floppy disks for specific processes or conducting a process in-person when it can be done online are still in place.

The nation’s Digital Agency is hoping to introduce a bill to revise all such regulations in 2023, while guidelines and orders that don’t require a legal amendment will be revised within 2022.

Over the past year, it’s focused on laying the groundwork for digital transformation in government, says Mukoyoma. It’s cleaning up fragmented or non-standardised data, for instance, to create proper base registries which will act as a reliable source of information on data points like people, companies and locations. It’s also created inter-ministerial roadmaps to plan for the years ahead, and handed out My Number Cards, which is part of the social security and tax number system. Mukoyoma hopes digital transformation will be implemented more smoothly in the coming years, with this groundwork meaning companies and municipal governments have fewer obstacles.

Change begins at home

In 2018, Japan’s government realised it needed to transform digitally, which is why it introduced a paper on digital transformation which warns of the ‘Digital Cliff 2025’, says Tsuneo Fujiwara, vice president and Gartner fellow with the CIO Research team. Reaching the Digital Cliff means the country could suffer an economic loss of up to ¥12 trillion (roughly £71.6 billion) per year if it can’t digitally transform.

There are a number of challenges that needed to be overcome, he says. The Ministry of Economy and Trade (METI), for example, was concerned about the combination of an ageing population and the insufficient availability of IT talent.

Japan’s leadership around digital transformation is also fragmented. One of the most outspoken pro-digitisation prime ministers was Yoshihide Suga of the Liberal Democrat party. He was elected in September 2020, and created the Digital Agency, but resigned just a year later after struggling to contain COVID-19. The first head of the digital ministry, Yoko Ishikura, was also forced to resign. Beyond this, it appears other ministries often ignored the Digital Agency’s recommendations on how to digitise internal processes.

The government’s track record is poor, says Fujiwara. He thinks, however, the leadership is there with Digital Agency chief Taro Kano. He underlines that METI, too, has, been a serious and continuous force in pushing the digital transformation agenda.

The government's record is poor, but there are signs of optimism for the future

The ministry, for example, has published a digital governance code, which encourages companies to kickstart digital transformation projects. If companies show they have adhered to the code, they can apply for special recognition, with certified businesses able to use a prestigious logo in their marketing to show they’ve embraced modernity.

“You have these incentive programmes to get companies to transform which will, in turn, transform the citizens,” believes Fujiwara, adding these schemes, combined with consistent leadership in the Digital Agency, should be incentive enough to get people – including the government – to digitalise.

Like in any country, digital transformation will help modernise Japan, he continues. It could also once again spark a culture of innovation the nation has lacked for the last 30 years. He says Japan was highly innovative after WW2, but has, in recent decades only been making incremental improvements to existing processes rather than implementing new ideas. From a cultural perspective, he believes introducing digital transformation could be a breath of fresh air for the country, and set it back on the right path.

Japan is running out of time. Although the country’s making encouraging steps, it continues to face an ageing population, leaders who refuse to embrace change, and public services in desperate need of modernisation. Failing to get a grip was devastating during COVID-19, and might lead Japan to the digital cliff-edge by 2025. This need to digitise, however, will only become more urgent and challenging the longer it takes, with Japan’s leadership charged with fundamentally transforming business culture alongside, simply, the tools and systems organisations use.

The Japanese food giant Ajinomoto has recorded a record-breaking share price after receiving a boost from its technology used to make materials for the semiconductor industry.

The company, famous for its MSG seasoning, saw its share price reach a high of ¥4,357 ($31.46) on 29 November. This beats the company’s former record of ¥4,350 which was recorded back in March 1987, as reported by Nikkei Asia.

The company first expanded into the semiconductor industry in the 1990s, when it repurposed its amino acid technology to develop Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF), a microfilm insulation for electronic devices.

This was first adopted by a major semiconductor manufacturer in 1999, but its popularity has surged in recent years due to the chip crisis, especially since ABF has been in scarce supply since the pandemic began.

The company’s non-food segments are predicted to provide over 40% of its overall profit this financial year. Its net profit is on track for a 10% increase to ¥83 billion too, with the semiconductor material production area of the business helping to inflate its earnings the most.

Spurred on by this, the company revealed that it will accelerate the expansion of its ABF technology and may potentially invest more than the planned ¥17 billion ($122 million) to keep up with demand, said Taro Fujie, CEO at Ajinomoto, according to Bloomberg.

Ajinomoto forecasted that its ABF product shipments will grow 18% each year to March 2026, and the growth is predicted to stay in double digits until 2030, said Fujie.

Around 70% of the multinational food company’s ABF goes into data centre servers, and it’s expected that the expansion of 5G will also ramp up demand. It also provides electrical insulation for high-performance CPUs.

The company said that sales in the ABF unit grew 30%, reaching ¥37.2 billion, during the six months ending with September. Ajinomoto’s frozen food business, on the other hand, makes up around 20% of its revenues and reported a loss of ¥300 million in the same time period.

ABF can be found in most of the world’s personal computers, Ajinomoto said. The material is used by most modern chipmakers when designing the smaller components inside CPUs and GPUs.

Ajinomoto said that the need for CPU substrates grew in the 1990s for three reasons. This is because there was a rise in the integrations of CPUs in personal computers, PCs transitioned from MS-DOS to Windows operating systems, and there was an increase in terminals from around 40 to over a thousand today.

"Advances in circuit integration have made possible CPUs composed of nanometre-scale electronic circuits," the company said. "These circuits must be connected to the millimetre-scale electronic components in electronic equipment and systems. This can be accomplished by employing a CPU 'bed' composed of multiple layers of microcircuits, known as a 'build-up substrate'."

It said that the ABF helps to create the micrometre-scale circuits since its surface works well with laser processing and direct copper plating. It's now considered to be an essential material for creating circuitry which guides electrons from nanoscale CPU terminals to the millimetre-scale terminals on printed substrates.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to launch the country’s first pilot for retail digital rupee (e₹-R) on 1 December 2022 - a token that will constitute legal tender.

The RBI is hoping to test the robustness of a digital rupee, including its creation, distribution, and retail use in real time. After gathering this data from the pilot, future trials will test other features and applications of the digital currency.

During the pilot, select customers and merchants will form a closed user group that will test the performance and usability of e₹-R across different locations.

The digital token is set to be issued in the same denominations that the physical rupee comes in and would be distributed by intermediaries like banks.

Users will be able to transact the token through a digital wallet offered by the banks taking part in the pilot. Like other existing digital wallets, this will be stored on users’ mobile phones or other electronic devices.

The transactions can be made between users (person-to-person) and between a user and a merchant (person-to-merchant). Merchant payments will be facilitated through QR codes displayed by the merchant in their stores.

“The e₹-R would offer features of physical cash like trust, safety, and settlement finality,” said Yogesh Dayal, chief general manager at the RBI. "As in the case of cash, it will not earn any interest and can be converted to other forms of money, like deposits with banks."

Eight banks are set to take part in the pilot which will initially be launched in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Bhubaneswar. This will later be extended to Ahmedabad, Gangtok, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Lucknow, Patna, and Shimla.

The first phase will start with four banks: State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, and IDFC First Bank. Four other banks will then join the pilot: Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

The RBI said that the scope of the pilot could be gradually expanded to include more banks, locations, and users if needed.

India is aiming to launch the digital rupee, a central bank digital currency (CBDC), in a bid to boost its digital economy. In February 2022, the RBI said it would introduce the digital currency in either 2022 or 2023. The digital rupee was hoped to lead to a more efficient and cheaper currency management system, built on the blockchain and other technologies.

If fully implemented, India would join China as one of the few countries with a nationwide digital currency. At an international level, several world banks are running CBDC trials too.

In October 2022, several banks successfully completed trials of a blockchain platform designed to encourage faster adoption of CBDCs across global banks. The banks that took part in the project were the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China, and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates.

Japan is reportedly considering establishing a new organisation to protect the nation against cyber attacks, after the country has suffered a number of major incidents in the past few years.

If the country proceeds with the plans, the new unit will be created within the National Security Secretariat, a department that leads Japan's National Security Council, and tasked with advancing its cyber security capabilities.

The organisation will oversee cyber security across Japan's military and its National Police Agency if plans to establish it go ahead, according to a government source who spoke to Kyodo News.

To create the new organisation, the government is currently developing a new security budget for 2024. It’s set to expand on the function of the current National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC).

NISC is responsible for promoting cyber security policies across the government and sharing information on attacks with ministries, agencies, and businesses.

Taking a proactive approach to cyber defence is not typically part of the NISC's remit, but powers are being proposed to give the new body the freedom to actively pre-empt and stop attacks before they reach Japan's systems.

The head of the new organisation will aim to strengthen the country’s response to cyber attacks by increasing cross-border collaboration and intelligence-sharing between Japan and its counterparts in the US and European cyber security agencies.

This comes as Asia moved into first place as the most-attacked global region in 2021, being the targeted in 26% of all cyber attacks, according to IBM’s Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022 report. Japan, Australia, and India are the three most attacked countries in the region.

Additionally, the average ransom demand for Japanese businesses was around 26 times greater than for UK organisations in 2021. Research from Sophos, published in April 2022, found that organisations in Japan paid the highest ransoms in the world in 2021, with the average payment recorded at around $4,327,024 (£3,440,330).

The creation of the new body may be spurred by the increasing number of cyber attacks that have hit Japan recently. In May 2021, the country's government had its data leaked when hackers gained access to Fujitsu’s project management platform. One ministry said that it had suffered a data breach, with around 76,000 email addresses exposed.

The month after, Fujifilm was hit by a potential ransomware attack, forcing it to shut down part of its network.

In 2022, Bandai Namco confirmed in July that it had been a victim of a cyber attack. Several of its companies in Asian regions were breached by a third party earlier in the month. Some reports suggested that AlphV, or BlackCat, were the ransomware group behind the attack.

The government also came under attack this year when in September investigations focused on the pro-Russia Killnet group launching cyber attacks on government websites.

It had problems accessing more than 20 websites across four ministries, an incident which was thought to be caused by denial of service attacks (DDoS). The Tokyo police launched an investigation into the attacks as well.

UK organisations are set to be able to share personal data with the Republic of Korea (ROK) by the end of the year, a year after the EU secured a data deal with the country.

The government said that sharing data without restrictions will help businesses in each country to operate and grow. The legislation, expected to come into force on 19 December, is estimated to reduce the administrative friction associated with cross-border data transfers and ease financial burdens for UK businesses by £11 million per year.

Additonally, the deal is also projected to increase exports to South Korea by £3.8 million a year, the government said.

Since the UK left the EU, it’s now independently able to strike data adequacy agreements with international partners, with this legislation representing its first decision to recognise an adequate “priority country” since then.

Other priority countries undergoing data adequacy assessments include the US, Australia, Singapore, the Dubai International Finance Centre, and Colombia. The government said it’s making "excellent progress" in assessing these countries.

With the legislation set to come into force on 19 December, it means it will be implemented a year after the EU and South Korea made a data adequacy agreement on 17 December 2021. Personal data has been able to travel between the EU and the ROK since then, without any need for further authorisations.

However, the UK government said that its adequacy decision with South Korea is broader than the EU’s deal. The biggest difference is that UK organisations will be able to share personal data related to credit information to help identify customers and verify payments.

The government said this will help businesses with a presence in the ROK to boost lending, insurance, and credit operations in the region.

“Before the end of the year, businesses will be able to share data freely with the ROK - safe in the knowledge it will be protected to the high privacy standards we expect in the UK,” said Julia Lopez, minister of state for media, data, and digital infrastructure. “Removing unnecessary burdens on businesses will help unleash innovation, drive growth, and improve lives across both our countries.”

The UK and the ROK agreed to a data adequacy agreement in principle in July 2022, and now the UK government has carried out an assessment of the ROK's personal data laws.

It concluded that the Asian country has strong privacy laws which will protect data transfers to South Korea. At the same time, it will also uphold the rights and protections of British citizens.

The government said that the legislation will open up opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses, who before may have avoided international data transfers to the country since they needed to have contractual safeguards in place, like data protection clauses.

Research and innovation are also expected to be boosted as experts can collaborate on vital research since barriers to data transfers have been removed.

Countries around the world are embarking on a digital transformation to boost their economies and revitalise public services. While some nations continue to languish in analogue processes, struggling to break into this digital age, others are setting new standards and innovating at pace.

From preserving the city-state's greenery, to eliminating manual processes in agriculture, Singapore is one such nation aggressively injecting technology into the fabric of society. Questions, however, arise as to how desirable it is to digitise as much as possible, and what the best model for digital transformation might be. IT Pro visited a number of projects across the island nation over the course of a week to find out how Singapore is attempting to lead the world on digitisation.

Using technology to preserve greenery

Thanks to its location on the equator, Singapore enjoys a climate of perpetual summer and is dominated by tropical rainforests and mangroves. Officials claim that it's one of the greenest cities in the world. Travellers who arrive at the airport are immediately struck with Singapore’s greenery, with trees lining every road and plants crawling up designated spaces on the sides of buildings. Over the years, Singapore has shifted its ethos from being a ‘Garden City’ to a ‘City in a Garden’, whereby the city bathes in tropical foliage – emphasised by its seven million trees, with two million of them planted in the urban area.

Indeed, the National Parks Board (NParks) has its work cut out, with 3,347 hectares of nature reserves to look after, alongside 400 parks and gardens. To help, it’s aiming to create an ecosystem of technology by digitising a swathe of processes, says Tan Chong Lee, assistant chief executive officer of NParks.

An NParks employees knocks a tree with a metal hammer to determine its health

The organisation has created a digital twin of its urban trees by coupling light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology with machine learning. This lets NParks remotely inspect its trees and manage them better, since it can model growth or monitor carbon sequestration. Lee says staff can check their trees on a regular basis through remote access software from the office. Additionally, if there’s any sudden tree movement, wireless tree tilt sensors attached to some alerts NParks to if a tree has been uprooted.

If any trees need a physical touch, NParks deploys its contractor fleet management system to monitor contractors’ vehicle locations and work progress through videofeed. The closest contractor can be alerted to a tree and solve any issues. From there, they’re able to use drones or tree drills connected to tablets to monitor the tree’s health. The TreesSG software also allows the public to plant, plot, and search for trees through its website. Members of the public can even leave a 'Treemail' to post a photo along with a comment.

Cutting grass has become digitised too. NParks has installed grass height sensors, attached to its employees or vehicles, which is paired with an automatic lawn mower. Once the grass gets above a specific height, the lawnmower can get to work. It claims this saves 70% on manpower versus manual grass-cutting. It also uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to verify its plant stocks.

The NParks robot helps visitors, and also lets them know when it's time to go home

These different forms of technology are all developed in-house, reveals Chong Lee, before they’re shared with NParks partners. He hints these systems are also shared with other countries, but declines to name them.

A smart city begins with a smart district

Singapore is also developing its first smart district so it can decentralise its main business district due to traffic congestion, explains James Tan. Tan is director of digital transformation agency GovTech’s sensors and IoT team as well as the JTC, an agency in charge of Singapore’s industrial progress.

The Punggol Digital District (PDD), located in the north east of Singapore, is around 50 hectares, which “isn't very big”, says Tan. The district is targeting high tech companies to move in and start new ventures, with the aim of creating 28,000 new jobs.

This drive comes hand-in-hand with the Open Digital Platform (ODP), a smart district operating system, which the agencies aim to deploy by January 2025. This is essentially a platform that hooks up to sensors and IoT devices across an area and allows them to be controlled from single user interface (UI). The agencies are aiming to bring in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities to also turn the ODP into a digital twin, to help make better decisions.

This will be the first time a district comes with software to power it and govern how smart systems work together. The ODP aims to unify a host of separate functions, including a smart car park system, cleaning robots, a smart grid, and more. It’s already running in two of JTC’s estates, including a building in the western Jurong region. In a demo, the platform was able to control door locks, delivery robots and cool temperature inside a room.

Tan highlights how it could be used in the new Punggol district; it can provide data on anything from local transport to water levels. The idea is that by combining different streams of data, it can help businesses and local authorities be more prepared. For example, if there are high water levels in the district, the platform combines this with weather forecasts to see whether flooding could be an issue

Tan (pictured) demonstrates how weather data and water levels could be combined in JTC's digital twin to predict flooding

Integrating smart systems together can lead to significant cost savings for the public sector, he adds. Fewer people are needed on the ground to inspect systems, since this can be done through the platform. Companies may also be able to link up with the system to smoothen businesses operations. For example, last-mile delivery firms, like Amazon, could connect to the platform and help their robots enter buildings to complete a delivery.

However, Tan admits when the platform was created, cyber security was the team’s first major worry. “They were very concerned as to what happens if your command and control systems got hacked,” he says. Tan adds if the overarching system goes down, every single silo system must continue to work, which is part of the platform’s design principle.

As to whether the project is looking to integrate the tree data from NParks, Tan says they could bring tree information onto the platform, but only using JTC data. He questions how useful “outside data” would be, and is scpetical of mixing datasets together. It’s an early hint that, despite progress Singapore’s agencies are making, digitisation within the island nation might not be so collaborative.

Using AI to feed fish

Singapore imports 90% of its food, with the 10% it produces comprising vegetables and fish. Due to this imbalance, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) was estsablished in 2019, with a target of boosting domestic production by 30% by 2030, or “30 by 30”.

To help fish farmers increase production, SFA’s Marine Aquaculture Centre (MAC) teamed up with GovTech’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Division (DSAID) to create a tool to count rotifers.

A crucial component in large-scale fish hatchery, rotifers are zooplankton used to feed fish. They only live for 72 hours, and a disruption in their supply leads to a significant loss in any fish harvest. On St John’s Island, DSAID and SFA are developing a mobile app that can count the number of rotifers in an image of a water sample taken from fish larvae tanks. This process takes 40 minutes if carried out manually, but it takes just one using the app. The AI tool uses the open source library yolov3 to train labelled images, and is hosted on the cloud.

The process of counting rotifers will be slashed from 40 minutes to just one by applying AI

Developing the tool took up to six months, reveals Tan Kai Wei, a GovTech software engineer. He underlines that, since it’s based on open source code, the agencies didn’t have to build the AI engine from scratch. All they needed to do was train the model. It’s missing some functionality, such as an authentication layer, although Tan stresses they can add a layer in future if they want. Set for deployment within three to six months, they hope farmers will use the app to count rotifers based on images taken on their smartphones.

An island embracing technology

This anthology of digisation offers a glimpse into how Singapore is undergoing an exciting phase of digital transformation across its public sector. It’s worth considering, however, whether it’s necessary to digitise absolutely everything – and to the nth-degree.

For example, is it really necessary to measure grass height through sensors to know when parks need to be cut? Given Singapore has a similar tropical climate all year round, it may be easier and more cost-effective to set a simple schedule.

Alternatively, considering the security and privacy consideration that must be overcome to build and launch smart city IT infrastructure, one might question whether many innovations will see the light of day. It’s also important to consider whether businesses will really attach sensors to all corners of their buildings, given the cost involved. Although it might look flashy, and attractive to visitors, organisations might find the immediate ROI lacking.

Also related to this abundance of technology is the fact each government agency appears to be working on different projects and in different ways – giving the impression technological transformation is being pulled in different directions. While each agency does know best – using their own data to build systems to solve specific problems they face – it could also lead to inefficiencies. With each agency choosing its own path, it isn’t clear to what extent these tools and systems will be interoperable across the breadth of the public sector, or whether workloads and functions might be needlessly duplicated.

Opting for a federalised approach, rather than a centralised approach, provokes a sensation that agencies are competing with each other, hence an almost over-the-top infusion of technology into every process. That said, Singapore is comfortably ahead of many of its international counterparts, and confident in its approach. It’s impressive how agencies, along with a soft guiding arm from GovTech, are developing their own tools to solve everyday problems. With more encouragement from the digital transformation agency, it’s exciting to see what might come next, and whether these systems could eventually be shared across the spectrum of Singapore’s public sector.

Fresh accusations have been made against the latest draft of India’s data protection bill, alleging that it continues to facilitate state surveillance.

India’s Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), an Indian digital liberties organisation, said that the new draft retains the wide and vague exemptions that were present in previous interactions of the Bill - key clauses that would provide the government powers that could violate the privacy of its citizens.

“This is because these standards are excessively vague and broad, therefore open to misinterpretation and misuse,” said the IFF. “If the law is not applied to government instrumentalities, data collection and processing in the absence of any data protection standards could result in mass surveillance.”

The IFF said that it’s essential for government collection and processing of citizen data to be regulated as well, to avoid any misuse.

Additionally, the data protection board (DPB), which is set to be formed through the Bill, will not have the independence needed to protect the data laws. This is because the government has the power to prescribe the composition of the board, the selection process, and remove its chair and other members.

The IFF said that this may result in the board reflecting the hierarchies of government, and since it’s meant to oversee the compliance of the legislation by the private sector as well as government agencies, it’s important for it to be fully independent.

The Indian government released the draft of its Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022 on 18 November and has made it available for public feedback until 17 December. This comes after it decided to withdraw the Bill’s predecessor in August 2022, the Personal Data Protection Bill that was first proposed in 2019, to develop a new law instead.

The IFF highlighted how the latest draft eliminated many of the clauses that were in the previous version of the Bill. It now contains around 30 clauses, reduced from more than 90 in previous versions.

The Indian government said this was to draft it in simple and plain language so that more people could understand its provisions. The IFF argued this has removed key information, adding that since the public consultation accompanying the Bill will not be disclosed it will also weaken public trust in the development of the Bill.

One of the biggest changes of the Bill is that it removes data localisation requirements, opening the path to cross-border data transfers. However, the IFF said that data fiduciaries, similar to data controllers under GDPR, are only able to transfer personal data to countries that the government selects, meaning that data transfer to any other country is not allowed. The clause also doesn’t define how the government should decide which countries can be chosen to allow data transfers to.

“This enables arbitrary exercise of power where countries may be selected or not selected based on considerations other than protection of personal data of Indians,” said the IFF. “This is in contrast with Articles 44 to 50 of the General Data Protection Regime which permits the transfer of personal data of Europeans only to such countries which provide a minimum level of protection to such data.”

The IFF also outlined some positive changes in the new Bill. Data fiduciaries are now forced to notify the DPB whenever they’ve suffered a breach, and then the DPB is able to tell the fiduciary to adopt urgent measures to remedy the personal data breach or mitigate any harm.

The digital liberties group said this was important as previous iterations of the Bill didn’t require fiduciaries to notify data principals in the event of a breach. Users wouldn’t have known that their data had been compromised because of this.

Additionally, more barriers have been introduced when it comes to processing children’s personal data. There are tighter restrictions around how entities carry out tracking or behavioural monitoring of children, including targeted advertising aimed directly at them.

The latest recruitment data has revealed that hiring levels in Singapore are down 14% in 2022 after a 40% global surge was recorded in the previous year.

Careers and recruitment platform LinkedIn reported that between 2020 and 2021, the world saw a 40% increase in hiring across all industries - a figure that has not plummeted according to data taken between 2021 and 2022.

Singapore's hiring rate has fallen 14% which reflects the global average with different countries reporting decreases in hiring between 12% and 18%, according to Frank Koo, head of Asia, talent, and learning solutions at LinkedIn, speaking during a panel discussion held at Stack 2022, a developer conference organised by GovTech, Singapore's digital transformation agency.

Koo called this a rebalancing of the industry. What LinkedIn has found in Singapore, and other countries around the world, is that there are still many more jobs available on the market than there are people available for the jobs.

Recruiting the right talent now requires businesses to rethink their overall offering when it comes to the job package. In order to attract employees, organisations will have to prove what they can offer workers when it comes to their skills development as well as career development, said Koo.

Additionally, tech companies have pulled many of the best people out of the jobs market in the last five years, said Noah Pepper, former APAC head at Stripe and GovTech board member.

Retaining such skilled individuals has proven beneficial to the companies that were able to attract them - these people have added great value to their respective businesses through research, development, and the delivery of new products.

However, smaller companies and other organisations outside of the tech sector have found it more difficult to hire the right people for the job because the talent pool has decreased and thus recruitment has faced new challenges.

Pepper said there’s currently an uneven distribution of labour change for big tech companies as they pull back, referring to how a number of big tech companies have fired employees recently.

Despite this, there are plenty of small early tech companies still hiring, and plenty of venture capital money on the market. There are also lots of non-tech companies that now have the opportunity to expand their technical teams.

The panellists also discussed some of the transformational changes in the world of work that have come about as a result of the pandemic, highlighting that such transformations have evolved into modern-day buzzwords and phrases, such as 'working from home' and 'return to the office'.

However, according to Kok Ping Soon, chief executive at GovTech, the latest concept on the minds of business leaders is 'quiet quitting'.

Quiet quitting is a phrase to describe idea that employees complete their work doing what they can, and don’t spend unnecessary additional time on their work, said Soon.

He questioned whether quiet quitting is taking place in Singapore, or whether it was a calibration of the workforce. Soon added that Singaporeans are the second most hardworking workforce in the world, in terms of overtime.

It’s really about people just doing enough to fulfil their role, said Koo, who believes it is based on two different environmental factors.

The first is where workers are trying to establish a healthy boundary around where they work so they can contribute to work at the same time as maintaining mental wellness. On the other hand, he outlined that there are a number of workers who aren’t engaged in their jobs, pointing to a Gallup survey that found 30% of workers in Asia are engaged, meaning that two-thirds aren’t engaged.

Koo said it was important for leaders to provide the right opportunities and collaborative culture for employees so they can bring their best selves to work. At the same time, he said employees have a growth mindset meaning that they know their career has ups and downs, and they’re working towards improving it.

Some believe, such as Pepper, that quiet quitting is ultimately a leadership problem which comes down to how organisations structure accountability within their teams.

It’s a problem if the leadership approach is aiming to get employees back in the office for a specific number of hours and measuring them by that metric, instead of whether tasks are completed appropriately or whether customers are happy, for example.

He added that over the years, he didn’t care what hours employees or colleagues were working, or whether they were in the office or not, but what’s important was that goals were set and accomplished.

“I think, as an organisation, you have to be paranoid about the incentive structure that you create, because humans are really, really good at sniffing out what the leaders care about,” said Pepper. “And if they care about people showing up in person, and that’s the main thing they’re paying attention to, folks will show up but they’re going to find ways to take back something else for themselves.”

The Singapore government has managed to save around 50% of its hosting costs after moving to the cloud, according to a recent cost-benefit study.

Around 60% of the government's eligible systems have been migrated the government commercial cloud (GCC), said Janil Puthucheary, senior minister of state at the ministry of communications and information, and minister-in-charge of GovTech, the nation’s digital transformation agency, after a continued effort to shift more reliance on cloud infrastructure over time.

New systems are now being developed directly on GCC by default, resulting in significantly shorter lead times, and ensuring the government’s engineers and partners become more experienced in cloud development and deployment, said the minister.

“Moving software development onto the cloud also allows developers to focus less on infrastructure and compliance, and more on developing application logic,” said Puthucheary. “This saves countless hours and reduces human errors.”

The minister underlined that the government hasn’t been able to grow its cloud capabilities or create a strong tech culture by itself. He said that partnerships are vital and the GCC wouldn’t have been possible without these links to cloud service providers.

One of the partnerships the government has established is with the Singapore Financial Data Exchange (SGFinDex) which was developed in collaboration with seven participating banks. It gives individuals a consolidated view of their financial information held across different government agencies and financial institutions.

“It’s the world’s first public digital infrastructure to use a centrally managed online consent system, backed by a national digital identity,” said Puthucheary. “SGFinDex has expanded beyond government agencies and banks, to include insurance companies, and so enhancing the financial planning process for our users.”

The cloud has been a focus for the government recently after it chose Microsoft in February 2022 to develop a sovereign cloud to accelerate the digital transformation of the country’s Home Team Science and Technology agency (HTX).

It’s set to be built on the tech giant’s Azure platform and provide HTX with high-performance cloud computing and data storage capabilities. At the time, the agency was set to use the infrastructure to quickly adopt and produce new technologies.

The Australian government has said it is considering the introduction of legislation that would ban companies from paying ransom demands set by hackers in ransomware attacks.

In an interview on Australia’s ABC, home affairs minister Clare O’Neil said that there are “some really big policy questions that we’re going to need to think about and consult on, and we’re going to do that in the context of the cybersecurity strategy”.

When directly asked if the government could seek to bar companies from providing threat actors with ransom payments, O’Neil responded “that’s correct”.

O'Neil's comments come in the wake of a series of high-profile cyber attacks on Australian private sector businesses that left millions of its citizens' records exposed.

Medibank is the latest of eight high-profile Australian firms to be hit by ransomware attacks, having disclosed on 19 October that it had been hit by a cyber attack now believed to have affected 9.7 million past and present customers.

Other attacks include one against telco giant Optus, affecting 10 million Australians, and a service used by the Australian Department of Defence.

The REvil ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the Medibank attack, posting stolen data on its leak blog in numerous stages. Records belonging to an additional 500 Medibank customers were posted on 13 November, including their names, addresses, email addresses, and unique customer numbers.

In a post on the REvil blog, the group taunted Medibank, stating “we warned you, we always keep our word, if we wouldn't receive a ransom - we should post this data, because nobody will believe us in the future.” In the same post, it was announced that the next batch of data will be posted on Friday.

When it first reported the attack, Medibank indicated that it was negotiating with the hackers behind the attack, while trying to ascertain if data had been stolen.

However, since establishing the scale of the breach, the firm has refused to make a ransom payment to the group behind the attack, stating that cyber security experts have said it is unlikely that the threat actor would remain true to their word in returning unpublished data.

The REvil group has long been a threat to businesses, and has claimed attacks against Kaseya, and August's attack on the Midea Group. It was the subject of a series of mass arrests in November 2021 carried out by the US Department of Justice, Interpol, Europol, and authorities from Romania alongside 17 other countries, after which its activity seemingly shut down before resuming activity in mid 2022.

Along with the medical data that it is threatening to continue posting, REvil claimed to have access to “source codes, list of stuff, and some files obtained from medi filesystem from different hosts”. Along with Medibank customers, the attack is believed to have affected customers of Medibank’s subsidiary Ahm, as well as a number of international customers.

What action can the Australian government take?

“The Medibank breach has taken Australia by storm, so it is not surprising the government is analysing how to handle cyber incidents moving forward, but isolated knee-jerk responses will only make the problem worse,” said Jordan Schroeder, managing CISO at security service Barrier Networks.

“Banning ransomware payments would be a move to make attacks on Australian organisations less attractive to cyber criminals, but it won’t stop them entirely. Attacks will still occur and in these situations, companies would have absolutely no chance of recovery, which will potentially cost more than a ransom demand.

“Furthermore, making ransomware payments illegal in one jurisdiction could push the payment of ransomware underground, which will hide these crimes and make coordinated responses with law enforcement difficult, or it could even force companies to use third parties in other jurisdictions to make payments on their behalf, which will not solve the problem.

“A better focus for the Australian government just now could be on equipping organisations with better defences against ransomware. This would include raising awareness around cybercrime techniques and introducing legislation on minimum cybersecurity requirements for businesses.”

Following the attacks, the Australian government has also formed a task force, composed of officers from both the AFP and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the federal agency responsible for intercepting and extracting information from foreign electronic communications. This will hunt cyber criminals on a permanent basis.

Additionally, the maximum data breach penalty will be increased for repeated or serious privacy breaches in Australia. The former ceiling of AU$2.2 million will rise to the greatest of $50 million (AUD), three times the value of benefits obtained through the improper use of data, or 30% of an accused company’s adjusted turnover across a defined period.

Data breaches should be prevented as a matter of course within companies as a result of proper data protection policies and procedures, rather than simply to avoid fines. In addition to the legal and ethical ramifications of improper data handling, processing, or disposal, companies that engage in bad practice will incur a great deal of reputational damage.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is reportedly set to invest billions of dollars into another semiconductor plant in Arizona.

The chipmaker is set to announce it will build a new chip plant near Phoenix, beside the factory it invested into in 2020, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). TSMC is expected to make an investment of around $12 billion, mirroring the amount it poured into the first factory two years ago.

The company, which accounts for around 50% of Taiwan's chip foundry market according to Trendforce, is reportedly planning on making 3nm transistors at this new factory. TSMC told the WSJ it’s making a building which could serve as a secondary fab at its Arizona site. It's thinking about adding more chip capacity but hasn’t made a final decision.

TSMC confirmed in 2020 it would build a $12 billion chip factory in Arizona. At the time, the company was set to begin construction of the fab in 2021, with production expected to start in 2024. The factory is set to produce 5nm chips, manufacturing 20,000 wafers per month.

Last year, it was reported the chip giant made plans to build an additional five chip plants on the same site. The plan was to build six factories in the following three years, representing a shift in the company’s manufacturing from Taiwan to the US.

This comes at a time when the US is aiming to attract more investment from chip companies in order to secure its domestic supply chain of these valuable components. US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022 and her delegation reportedly met with TSMC chairman Mark Liu to discuss the passage of the CHIPS act in the US.

The legislation is important for chip companies as they're able to receive subsidies from the US government and tax incentives for building new chip factories. The act also states companies that receive the subsidies won’t be able to boost the production of chips in China.

During Pelosi’s visit to the island, a number of Taiwanese government websites were hit by cyber attacks, which seemed to come from China and Russia. Taiwan has accused China of increasing cyber attacks against the island since 2016, with some officials stating that the country faces around five million attacks a day.

Singtel and five regional carriers are set to build a $300 million submarine cable network known as the Asia Link Cable System (ALC).

The consortium is co-led by Singtel and China Telecom Global Limited (CTG) and is made up of four other regional carriers: China Telecommunications Corporation (CTC), Globe Telecom, Inc. (Globe) and DITO Telecommunity Corporation (DITO) of the Philippines, and Unified National Networks Sdn Bhd (UNN) of Brunei.

The group will build a 6,000km submarine cable system, expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2025. The system aims to support Southeast Asia’s economic growth by connecting Hong Kong SAR and Singapore, with the Philippines, Brunei and Hainan, China. The companies added that demand for high-bandwidth, low latency, and high redundancy internet connectivity is rising in the region, with its digital economy forecast to reach $363 billion by 2025.

The ALC will contain eight fibre pairs that can transmit up to 18 terabits per second per fibre pair, which the group said is the same as downloading over 2,500 hours of ultra high-definition video per second. It’s also expected to add more capacity and route diversity to existing networks, and bolster resiliency for international internet traffic through Southeast Asia.

"Southeast Asia is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, with rising digital demand from consumers and businesses, accelerated by the pandemic,” said Bill Chang, chief executive officer of Group Enterprise and Regional Data Centre Business at Singtel. “Consumers and Businesses are increasingly relying on services and solutions that require higher-bandwidth and lower-latency connectivity for their work, studies or entertainment."

The ALC will also adopt the open cable system design, which aims to reduce dependency on any single provider consortium partner and ensure timely capacity upgrades can be implemented to meet carriers’ needs.

Singtel underlined that submarine cables are critical information infrastructure, with nearly 100% of all international data traffic that companies consume being transported and routed daily through undersea cables on the ocean floor.

The Singaporean telco also revealed in February 2022 it had invested in a 19,200km submarine cable system connecting Southeast Asia to Europe through the Middle East. The system is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025.

The regional telcos aren’t the only companies constructing a submarine cable in the Asia Pacific region. In August 2021, Google revealed it would build an undersea internet cable system to connect Japan, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore, using 7,456 miles of cable. Known as Project Apricot, it also involves Meta which has funded part of the project.

The UK and Taiwan have announced a £5 million fund as part of a pledge to increase collaboration between the countries across technology and innovation.

UK trade minister Greg Hands will co-host the UK-Taiwan 25th annual Trade Talks in Taipei, aiming to boost trade and future-proof the UK’s economy by collaborating on green trade and supply chains, the government revealed today.

During the talks, Innovate UK, the country’s national innovation agency, will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Taiwan, which will include committing to a £5 million fund through to 2025 and support UK businesses through an innovation programme.

Additionally, the countries aim to promote diversified, resilient supply chains, and greater economic cooperation, bolstered by Taiwan's position as a leading manufacturer of semiconductor chips and a key player in global supply chains.

Hands set to meet with Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen, minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-Hua, minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang, and ministers Kung Ming-Hsin and John Deng.

“Boosting trade with this vital partner is part of the UK’s post-Brexit tilt towards the Indo-Pacific and closer collaboration will help us future-proof our economy in the decades to come,” said Hands.

Taiwan has a GDP of over $770 billion, with the UK and Taiwan building on an existing £8 billion trade partnership that has grown by 14% in the last two years. The government added that visiting Taiwan in person has underlined the UK’s commitment to boosting its trade ties with the country.

Hands will also meet with deputy minister Chern-Chyi Chen to look at tackling barriers to trade in areas like fintech, food and drink, and pharma, hoping to aid more UK firms export and invest into the country. He will also promote UK expertise in offshore wind, hydrogen and electric vehicles, as well as in science and innovation.

Taiwan is a key semiconductor hub for many countries. and is crucial to the global supply chain of these components. It accounted for a 26% market share of semiconductor revenue in 2021, ranking second in the world, according to Trendforce. It also accounts for 64% of the foundry market, where the country’s manufacturers make chips for other companies.world.

The island was visited by the US in August 2022, and a number of its government websites were hit by cyber attacks which seemed to come from China and Russia. US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island, which is important to the US since it houses the chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). Pelosi’s team reportedly met with the company to discuss the CHIPS act, a piece of legislation the US hopes will help it cultivate a domestic semiconductor supply chain.

Medibank has revealed that 9.7 million current and former customers have been affected by a cyber attack on the company's systems in October, with those affected being substantially higher than previously thought.

The company, one of Australia’s largest health insurance providers, disclosed on 19 October that it had been hit by a cyber attack and was negotiating with the attackers. A week later, Medibank said the attacker had access to all of its 3.9 million customer data and hinted that the number of affected customers in the attack could grow substantially.

Following an investigation, the company has now revealed the attacker gained access to the data of 9.7 million current and former customers. It said that it’s required by law to retain certain customer information, including former customers, for particular periods of time, generally for seven years from when a customer leaves the company, but sometimes longer.

The 9.7 million figure represents around 5.1 million Medibank customers, 2.8 million customers belonging to Medibank subsidiary Ahm, and around 1.8 million international customers. The attacker also accessed Medicare numbers for Ahm customers, and passport numbers and visa details for international student customers.

Health claims data for around 160,000 Medibank customers were also accessed, as well as those belonging to 300,000 Ahm customers, and 20,000 international customers. This included service provider name and location, the location where customers received medical services, and codes associated with diagnosis and procedures administered.

The company also has decided that it will not make a ransom payment to the attacker responsible for the data theft. It said this decision is consistent with the position of the Australian government.

“Based on the extensive advice we have received from cybercrime experts we believe there is only a limited chance paying a ransom would ensure the return of our customers’ data and prevent it from being published,” said Medibank CEO David Koczkar.

“In fact, paying could have the opposite effect and encourage the criminal to directly extort our customers, and there is a strong chance that paying puts more people in harm’s way by making Australia a bigger target.”

The company added that it believes that all of the customer data accessed could have been taken by the hackers. It advised customers to remain vigilant as the attackers could publish the data online or attempt to contact customers directly.

Medibank added that its business operations weren’t affected during the cyber attack and that it hasn’t detected any more suspicious activity inside its systems since 12 October 2022. It has also boosted its existing monitoring capabilities, added further detection and forensics capabilities, and scaled up analytical support through third parties.

This comes as the Australian government is looking to introduce tougher penalties for serious privacy breaches after the country has been exposed to a number of cyber attacks recently.

In October 2022, the attorney general said the maximum penalty will rise from $2.22 million (£1.2 million). Companies will be fined a new maximum of whatever is greater of three potential numbers: 30% of a company's adjusted turnover in the relevant period, three times the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of information, or $50 million (£27 million).

Japan is set to establish a $450 million (£400.2 million) fund to support research into 6G as countries around the world are looking to dedicate more resources to the emerging technology.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is set to dedicate 66.2 billion yen in a second budget for 2023 to create the fund, according to Nikkei Asia. It will be set up and live in the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and look to provide financial support for 6G research and development for a number of years.

The ministry added that 70% of the global market for mobile base stations belongs to three overseas companies: Huawei in China, Ericsson in Sweden, and Nokia in Finland.

The sector is dominated by these foreign rivals, although some organisations in Japan are competitive when it comes to some of the components used in the base stations.

Although 5G technology is still yet to be rolled out across the globe, the industry has started to gear itself up for 6G. The new technology is expected to be ten times faster than its predecessor, offering peak data rates at 100 Gbits/sec. However, the technology is still early in its research and development cycle, meaning there are no official standards for it.

This hasn’t stopped countries around the world from beginning to invest in it, however. Aside from Japan, India declared in May 2022 that it was hoping to roll out 6G technology by the end of the decade. Despite this, it didn’t outline what the technology would be used for or explain how it would help the country.

Additionally, the UK and South Korea announced in July 2022 that they would collaborate on 5G and 6G development. The UK invested £1.6 million into a competition totalling £3.6 million, alongside South Korea. The money was set to be used to create research and development of interoperable solutions like Open Radio Access Network technology.

Lastly, the US teamed up with Japan in January 2022 to work on creating international standards in unmanned technology that uses 6G. The pair were hoping to prevent Chinese companies from dominating the field, as there’s fierce competition from companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei.

Australian defence e-communications platform ForceNet has reportedly been hit with a ransomware attack, in yet another attack of a similar nature on an Australian organisation.

ForceNet, a service used by the Australian Department of Defence for auditable communications and personnel information sharing, has been revealed as the subject of a ransomware attack carried out by as-yet-unidentified threat actors.

Although there is no indication that sensitive data belonging to the military was stolen in the attack, it's believed that between 30,000 and 40,000 staff records may have been contained in the affected data set. Both current and former military personnel, as well as public servants, could be affected by the potential data breach.

"I want to stress that this isn't an attack or a breach on defence (technology) systems and entities," said assistant minister for defence Matt Thistlethwaite, on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio.

"At this stage, there is no evidence that the data set has been breached, that's the data that this company holds on behalf of defence".

Employees within the Australian DoD have been ordered to change their passwords, and an investigation into the precise nature of the data set is ongoing.

The Australian Signal Directorate (ASD), the agency responsible for military signals intelligence and cyber warfare, had posted an advisory in November 2021 warning that software suite SiteCore contained a remote code execution vulnerability. Tracked as CVE-2021-42237, the vulnerability affected SiteCore Experience Platform, and had been actively exploited by threat actors to install malware and webshells on the websites of victims.

SiteCore was used to build ForceNet, along with some other Australian public organisation websites. No link has yet been conclusively drawn between the advisory and the reported attack, although the degree to which the ASD was aware of a potential weakness in ForceNet is likely to become a matter of interest to security teams.

“The most important step the Australian government could take towards both preventing and mitigating breaches such as this is mandating MFA,” said Rob Griffin, CEO of MIRACL.

"Password abuse remains the number one means of installing malware and is the cause of 70% of all breaches. Moreover, in mitigation, any user credentials that malware captured would be of little value if MFA had been in place. We can see from the report that the Assistant Minister for Defence has suggested that potential victims should change their passwords - this wouldn’t now be necessary.

"If the Australian government or ForceNet wanted to go the extra mile, they would implement single-step MFA, meaning they would not have to sacrifice the service’s accessibility for the added security.”

Australian firms have faced a wave of malicious activity in the past few months. On 26 October, health insurance provider Medibank revealed a widespread hack, with attackers gaining access to around 3.9 million customer records — around 15% the population of Australia. In September and October, Australia’s second-largest telco, and Singtel subsidiary, Optus confirmed a cyber attack, and the largest telco Telstra suffered a data breach of its own.

The former prompted a government minister to criticise Optus for having caused ‘systemic ID problems for 10 million Australians’, with at least 2.1 million customers directly impacted by the breach. The same month, another Singtel subsidiary Dialog discovered that its employee information had been posted to the dark web, following a “cyber security incident”.

In response to the attacks, the Australian government recently increased the maximum penalties for serious breaches of privacy, through the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022. Whereas the maximum is currently A$2.22 million, the new limit will be the greater of either A$50 million, three times the value obtained by the company as a result of the breach of privacy, or 30% of the adjusted turnover during the breach period.

HPE has built a new Cray supercomputer for the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) to advance weather forecasting and tropical climate research for Singapore and the broader Southeast Asia region.

The new hardware is set to replace MSS’s existing system, delivering nearly twice as much performance and advanced capabilities across compute, storage, software, and networking.

It will be hosted at MSS’s data centre in the Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS). The organisations underlined that as climate modelling becomes increasingly complex due to new seasonal patterns, it requires faster, more sophisticated supercomputing capabilities.

The supercomputer will help increase forecast skills through improved numerical model configurations and advanced data assimilation of ground-and space-based weather observations in MSS’s numerical weather prediction system called ‘SINGV’.

Additionally, it will enable the use of modern forecast postprocessing algorithms, using machine learning techniques, to improve the quality of forecasts.

HPE said the enhanced computational power will help the MSS to further develop models to deliver improved weather and climate products. This includes sub-kilometre scale urban modelling (uSINGV), which is being developed to represent the urban environment more appropriately in weather and climate applications.

An improved coupled ocean-atmosphere-land-wave modelling system (cSINGV) will also capture and improve the understanding of the strong feedbacks between the atmosphere, land and ocean, which have a significant impact on the weather and climate over the Southeast Asia region.

“At CCRS, our scientists and software engineers are committed to developing advanced modelling systems and examining complex data to provide timely weather forecasts for our nation, which due to the island’s unique geological positioning, often experiences various of weather processes on a daily basis,” said Prof. Dale Barker, director at CCRS.

“After collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to design the new supercomputer, our research centre will gain a faster system with next-generation technologies to advance modelling and simulation tools, while introducing new capabilities to test and apply future types of applications for deeper research methodologies.”

MSS will get nearly double the performance, with a peak performance of 401.4 teraflops. It has 196 3rd-gen AMD EPYC processors to target modelling and simulation of weather and climate data as well as HPE Slingshot to deliver an additional boost in speed while enabling congestion control for larger data-intensive and AI workloads.

The supercomputer contains a Cray ClusterStor E1000 storage parallel system and a framework to address storage demands of data growth and complexity from an increase of workloads in modelling, simulation, and AI.

Lastly, the new system will continue to use Altair PBS Professional, a job-scheduling and workload manager to efficiently scale and optimise various modelling, simulation, and AI workloads.

With a peak performance of 401.4 teraflops, it is significantly slower than other supercomputers HPE has built recently. In December 2021, the company was set to build a supercomputer for Thailand’s science agency, with a peak performance of 13 petaflops. A petaflop is equal to 1,000 teraflops.

Additionally, in September 2022, HPE revealed it would build a system for a university in Saudi Arabia, which is set to reach 100 petaflop/s of performance. It’s set to deliver supercomputing and artificial intelligence capabilities for research in fields like food, water, energy, and the environment.

Major national banks have successfully completed trials of a co-developed blockchain platform that could see a faster uptake of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) across global commercial banks.

National banks that took part were the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China, and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, Bank of International Settlements (BIS) revealed this week.

The banks custom-built the mBridge platform which was based on a new blockchain called the mBridge Ledger which aims to support real-time, cross-border payments and foreign exchange transactions using CBDCs.

As part of ongoing efforts, it's thought the success of the platform will help deliver faster, cheaper, and safer cross-border payments and settlements.

Many jurisdictions, in particular emerging and developing economies, are losing access to the international network of correspondent banking services, leaving many households and firms without sufficient or affordable access to the global financial system for payments, the BIS said.

The experiment was designed to operate across different jurisdictions and currencies, to explore the capabilities of distributed ledger technology, and the application of CBDC in cross-border payments between commercial banks.

Real corporate transactions were tested during the pilot. These centred around international trade and involved the central banks, selected commercial banks, and their customers. 20 banks in the four jurisdictions were able to conduct 164 payment and foreign exchange transactions totalling over $22 million over six weeks.

By enabling peer-to-peer technology and instant exchange of multiple CBDCs on a single network, Project mBridge aims to solve long-standing inefficiencies in cross-border payments and foster greater financial inclusion and innovation in international payments.

"Financial exclusion is not just a problem for individuals; it is also affecting economies," said Cecilia Skingsley, head of the BIS Innovation Hub. "This project makes important strides towards developing a platform that has the potential to foster more inclusive and efficient payments systems that will benefit those making and receiving payments in different currencies and jurisdictions as well as the overall functioning of the global financial system."

The BIS said it would continue to work on this and similar projects to explore the user requirements, technical specifications, and governance framework needed for interoperable CBDCs.

The mBridge project team will continue building the technology and testing it with a view to producing a product with enough features to be used by early adopters in the year ahead and a production-ready system thereafter

This isn’t the first time central banks have come together to trial CBDC technology. In September 2021, the reserve banks of Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Africa partnered to test CBDC use for international settlements, hoping it would reduce the time and costs for these types of transactions. It aimed to develop a prototype shared platform for cross-border transactions using multiple CBDCs.

The UK has considered experimenting with CBDCs but a House of Lords committee said this year there was "no convincing case" for adopting a digital centralise currency that could risk financial instability.

An Australian pathology company, Medlab Pathology, suffered a data breach that led to its patients' data being leaked on the dark web for four months before the government's cyber security agency intervened.

Australian Clinical Labs (ACL), which acquired Medlab Pathology in December 2021, determined that the personal information belonging to around 223,000 individuals has been affected, with the individuals impacted largely confined to New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland.

The records breached of most concern are around 17,539 individual medical and health records associated with a pathology test and around 28,286 credit card numbers and individuals’ names.

Of these records, 15,724 have expired and 3,375 have a CVV code, and 128,608 Medicare numbers, a government national insurance programme, and an individual’s name. ACL publicly confirmed that Medlab experienced a cyber incident affecting patients and staff on 27 October.

Medlab became aware of unauthorised third-party access to its IT system in February 2022. ACL said it immediately coordinated a forensic investigation led by independent external cyber experts into the Medlab incident. At the time, the external forensic specialists did not find any evidence that information had been compromised.

In March, the company was contacted by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) which said that it had received intelligence that Medlab may have been the victim of a ransomware incident.

The company responded to the request for information and confirmed that to its knowledge the company did not believe that any data had been compromised.

In June, ACL was again approached by the ACSC, suggesting that Medlab information may have been posted on the dark web. ACL took immediate steps to find and download the unstructured data set from the dark web and made efforts to permanently remove it.

“On behalf of Medlab, we apologise sincerely and deeply regret that this incident occurred,” said Melinda McGrath, CEO at ACL. “We recognise the concern and inconvenience this incident may cause those who have used Medlab’s services and have taken steps to identify individuals affected.”

The company also informed the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) that has been kept up to date on the progress of the forensic investigations into the incident.

ACL said that there is no evidence of misuse of any of the information or any demand made of Medlab or ACL, and that the compromised Medlab server has been decommissioned. ACL’s broader systems and databases are not affected by the attack either, it said.

Following advice from privacy and legal specialists in cyber matters, ACL said it implemented a programme to determine the nature of the information involved and any individuals that could be at risk of serious harm as a result of the incident.

It added that because of the complex and unstructured nature of the data set being investigated, it has taken forensic analysts and experts until now to determine the individuals and the nature of their information involved.

ACL will now commence the process of directly contacting at-risk individuals by email and postal mail, to provide them with information about the incident, how it affects them and additional steps that can be taken to protect their information, the company said.

The company will be offering free-of-charge credit monitoring and/or ID document replacements to individuals whose affected information types may put them at risk of credit and/or identity fraud, and is working alongside Federal and State government authorities in this regard.

The news comes after Australia has been rocked by a series of cyber attacks in recent months. Private health insurance provider Medibank revealed on 26 October that a cyber attack that hit it earlier in the month could set the company back by $35 million AUD (£19.5 million).

At the same time, the company disclosed that the attackers had access to all 3.9 million customers’ data, which is equivalent to around 15% of the population of Australia.

In October, Telstra, the country's largest telco, was hit by a data breach and advised customers to improve the security on their accounts. The incident involved the access of around 30,000 past and present employee details, with a third-party platform being affected in the attack.

Optus, another major telco, was also hit by a cyber attack in September which saw 10 million of its accounts affected. It warned 10,200 customers that their Medicare records were included in a cache the hackers was trying to hold to ransom online, with the government underlining that the breach had caused systemic problems for million of Australians.

Australia private health insurance provider Medibank has revealed that the cyber attack that hit the company earlier in October could set the company back by $35 million AUD (£19.5 million), at a time when the government has declared its rules around data breaches 'inadequate'.

The company predicts that, based on its current actions in response to the hack, and noting that it doesn’t have cyber insurance, it estimated it will have costs of around $25-$35 million which will impact its earnings. The costs do not include further potential customer and other remediations, regulatory, or litigation-related costs.

Hackers attacked Medibank earlier this month and said they would release a trove of stolen company data unless a ransom was paid.

The company originally believed that no customer data had been accessed during the attack, but said last week the hackers were willing to negotiate over the return of the stolen data. Medibank was working to urgently establish if the claim was true.

This comes at a time when the Australian government has described its current rules around data breaches as 'inadequate' and plans to raise the maximum penalty handed out to companies who suffer data breaches from $2.22 million (£1.2 million) to $50 million (£27 million).

It is unclear which figure will be applied to Medibank, as the hack took place before the new rules have come into force.

Medibank also disclosed today that the attacker had access to all of the company’s customer data, some 3.9 million records, which is equivalent to around 15% of the population of Australia.

The company added that the criminal has removed some of its customers’ personal and health claims data and it is now likely the attacker has stolen further personal and health claims data too. As a result, Medibank believes the number of affected customers could grow "substantially".

“Our investigation has now established that this criminal has accessed all our private health insurance customers' personal data and significant amounts of their health claims data,” said David Koczkar, CEO at Medibank.

“As we’ve continued to say, we believe that the scale of stolen customer data will be greater and we expect that the number of affected customers could grow substantially,” he added. “I apologise unreservedly to our customers. This is a terrible crime – this is a crime designed to cause maximum harm to the most vulnerable members of our community.”

The company will continue to work to understand the specific data that has been taken for each customer so it can contact them directly to let them know, it stated. It has also announced a support package for customers who are in a vulnerable position because of the crime.

This includes access to a mental health and wellbeing support line for all customers, access to specialist identity protection advice and resources, and free identity monitoring services. It will also provide reimbursement of fees for the re-issue of identity documents that have been fully compromised in the crime.

The company reiterated that its IT systems haven’t been encrypted by ransomware and normal business operations have been maintained with customers continuing to access health services.

Medibank also said it is prioritising preventing further unauthorised entry to its IT network and is continuing to monitor for any further suspicious activity. This includes bolstering existing monitoring, adding further detection and forensics capability across Medibank’s systems and network and scaling up analytical support via specialist third parties.

The cyber attack is subject to a criminal investigation by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Medibank is working with the police as well as the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and government stakeholders.