Mileva Security Labs<\/a>, Harriet Farlow says the moment she heard the news, the first thing she experienced was disbelief.<\/p>\nThe next was excitement.<\/p>\n
The initiative is being undertaken in partnership with Malware Security, a company managed by Miranda R., another technical woman shaping the field. And as they begin to work with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to develop the first AI security framework and risk assessment guidance in government outside of national security, it marks not only a professional milestone, but a significant moment for women in tech across the country.<\/p>\n
Starting Mileva Security Labs in 2023 to help organisations harness the power of AI, Harriet\u2019s passion for security comes from her firsthand experience seeing the vulnerabilities in AI systems and the growing complexity of AI advancement.<\/p>\n
Harriet\u2019s career spans roles at Deloitte Australia (where she specialised in Defence portfolio projects as a Senior Consultant), the University of Sydney (as a Data Scientist), a tech education start-up in New York City (as Senior Delivery Lead), and the Australian Government (as acting Tech Director). But it was a pattern she noticed across all these experiences that led her to launch Mileva: a significant gap in AI security awareness and implementation.<\/p>\n
Realising that many organisations \u2013 especially those outside of the intelligence community \u2013 are not prepared for the unique cybersecurity risks associated with AI, Harriet launched Mileva with the support of the Canberra Innovation Network to equip them with the tools they need.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI was never anticipated to suddenly be integrated into literally every enterprise system,\u201d she says. \u201cIt started as cool techniques to do specific problems faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the two and a half years that I\u2019ve been running Mileva, I\u2019ve been working with organisations and getting people to not just care about the safety impacts of AI\u2026but specifically caring about cyber security attacks on AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something of a contentious topic.<\/p>\n
As debate continues in the public sphere about the benefits and downfalls of AI \u2013 from automating tedious emails to the risk of embedded biases and discrimination \u2013 Harriet\u2019s work focuses on a different threat entirely: how AI systems themselves can be attacked, manipulated, or misused to compromise organisations.<\/p>\n
Winning the tender for the Australian Government\u2019s first AI security contract, Mileva and Malware Security are breaking barriers in a largely male-dominated field as it makes history in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely just amazing that of all the companies to win it, it wasn\u2019t one of the big consultancies everyone expects \u2013 it was us,\u201d says Harriet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just so shocking, but lovely that it was us, and I\u2019m really grateful for that. And the ABS has been amazing to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a female-led team, Harriet also hopes that by winning the tender, Mileva can help shine a spotlight on the women leading the way in the world of AI and cyber security.<\/p>\n
And while she admits that hiring a majority of women is likely due to her own \u201csubconscious biases\u201d, it\u2019s a nice twist on the usual tale told about women working in technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen still aren\u2019t taken seriously in tech \u2013 they\u2019re seen as women first, rather than professionals. All of us have ridiculous stories about how we think that we\u2019re having a sales conversation with someone, and then the person asks you out on a date,\u201d says Harriet.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople in tech companies say that they can\u2019t find female talent. I think that\u2019s ridiculous, because I have people reaching out to me all the time and they are mostly women.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that women will find the spaces where they feel empowered and included and I feel really glad that my space is one of those for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harriet is currently studying her PhD in Machine Learning Security and is about to release her first book \u2013 The AI Security Handbook<\/a>. And when she looks to the future of AI and society, she says that she\u2019s an optimist.<\/p>\nBelieving that AI has the potential to make everyone\u2019s lives better, she hopes that the more people and organisations who understand AI security is something that needs to be taken seriously, the more it can be used for good.<\/p>\n
It all just comes down to how it\u2019s used \u2013 and that\u2019s where she comes in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all depends on how it\u2019s implemented and making sure that it\u2019s implemented correctly, safely and securely,\u201d says Harriet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere could be such a great future where people don\u2019t have to do menial jobs and people don\u2019t need to have jobs that put their lives in danger\u2026AI can bring a lot of productivity and growth to the world, but it can also make the rich get richer, and so much of that is how we set it up now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Posted on 18 November, 2025 Against a field of industry giants and in a landscape often dominated by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-300399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Mileva-Security-Labs_Supplied-720x460.png\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n