Will Sharpe
Chief Information Security Officer at Telstra Health
Healthcare can’t stop. When a digital system behaves unexpectedly, a cyber incident disrupts access or a control fails, health leaders must be ready to respond while keeping
patient care moving. The recent breach of Australia’s Medicare statistics reporting portal highlights a related challenge: health data and digital services now sit within a much broader
ecosystem, and weaknesses in one part of that ecosystem can expose sensitive information, undermine trust and create risk across connected services.
The scale of the threat is growing: the latest Australian Signals Directorate reports that ransomware incidents targeting healthcare doubled year-on-year. For health leaders, that
escalation makes cyber resilience more than a security priority; it is a prerequisite for maintaining care during times of disruption.
In healthcare, downtime is not only disruptive, but it can also affect access to records, delay treatment, leave clinicians without the information they need and, ultimately, put lives at risk. The challenge is not simply identifying, containing and resolving an incident but ensuring services can continue safely while systems are restored.
Cyber and clinical resilience are fundamentally linked. In healthcare, operational continuity is patient care.
Sarah Carney
Head of AI & Automation at AustralianSuper
It’s encouraging to see so many members taking an active interest in protecting their cyber security and super. As more of our financial lives move online, protecting our super needs to be part of how we think about our overall financial security. Super is one of the largest financial assets many Australians hold, but because it’s relatively out of sight, people may not think about securing it in the same way they secure their everyday bank accounts."
The frequency and sophistication of scams has made it harder to identify a threat, particularly as AI creates new ways for criminals to impersonate trusted organisations. Offers to review your super and promises of high returns can often be a red flag. Understanding how these threats work, and knowing what to look out for, can help people feel more confident about protecting themselves and their retirement savings.
Good cyber security isn’t just about preventing an attack; it’s also about knowing when something isn’t right and acting quickly. Using strong, unique passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication and accessing your super through trusted channels can help reduce the risk of someone gaining access to your account. Regularly checking your account and keeping your details up to date can help you spot unusual activity sooner. If something looks wrong, contact your super fund straight away so it can be investigated.
David Lee
Field Chief Technology Officer at Saviynt
Cyber Security Awareness Month is a good reminder that security fundamentals still matter, even as the technology we're securing changes. AI agents, non-human identities and automated workflows are moving into enterprise environments faster than many organisations can govern them. The challenge isn't stopping that adoption. It's making sure you know what identities exist, what they can access, who authorised that access and whether it still makes sense over time.
Attackers don't always need a sophisticated exploit when they can take advantage of excessive permissions, forgotten credentials or access that was never removed. As environments become more automated, those gaps become harder to see and easier to scale. Security teams need to get back to the basics: establish visibility, enforce least privilege, continuously monitor access and remove it when it's no longer needed. The fundamentals haven't changed, but the speed and scale at which organisations need to apply them have.
Philipp Eryushev
Founder and CEO of Xyper
Cyber Security Awareness Month is a good opportunity to look at how we keep AI agents secure as they take on more tasks and gain access to more systems. Salt Security’s 2026 research found that 49.8% of surveyed organisations had confirmed or suspected an AI agent taking an unintended or unauthorised action in the previous year.
The same research found that only 12.5 per cent of organisations can consistently trace an agent’s full activity across all their agents. As agents gain access to tools, accounts and payment systems, we need to be able to track what they do and limit their permissions. If an agent is compromised or manipulated, those controls can help contain the damage.
Trust becomes just as important as agents start earning money. Platforms need to identify spam, fake engagement and attempts to manipulate reward systems. A payment can go through successfully without the work behind it being genuine or useful. Users also need confidence that delegating tasks won’t give agents unnecessary access to their personal information.
For the agent economy to reach its potential, people need confidence that agents can operate within clear limits, that their actions can be verified and that there are safeguards in place when things go wrong. Without that trust, wider adoption will be difficult to sustain.
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?Make Cyber Daily a preferred news source on Google.
