Widespread Microsoft outage<\/a><\/p>\n A global outage hits Microsoft platforms, including Outlook, with many users having trouble using their email accounts.<\/p>\n University of Melbourne’s Andrew Cullen, who specialises in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI), said US tech is integrated throughout Australia’s digital infrastructure.<\/p>\n “We’re so dependent upon these tech companies. Most of our emails come through either Microsoft or Google. Most of our websites are managed under the hood by Amazon or a few other kind of key cloud providers.<\/p>\n “So, it’s really challenging for us all to kind of have control of our own digital destiny.”Can Australia be more tech resilient?<\/p>\n University of Melbourne’s Toby Murray, who previously worked for the Department of Defence and specialises in cybersecurity, said advice about what organisations should be doing to be more resilient was changing.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n “The usual way we set up our organisations, at least in the last 10 to 15 years, has been to move to cloud-based services,” Professor Murray said.<\/p>\n “It is a real challenge once you move these systems into the cloud and when we all rely on a very small number of vendors for those cloud services.”<\/p>\n Dr Cullen said organisations had to create plans for outages, because they might not be able to anticipate the source of an outage, but could create contingencies.<\/p>\n “So, for businesses, that means having a plan to work out how you run operations if you don’t have access to email or access to Teams,” he said.<\/p>\n Microsoft has been working on its back-end servers to find a solution. (Supplied: Microsoft)<\/p>\n “It’s important for governments to play a role in saying we are dependent upon these services. They can’t be treated as being too big to fail.<\/p>\n “There really needs to be a push to try and make sure that they’re as robust as our banking system is through legislation, through oversight and regulatory controls.”<\/p>\n Apart from legislation, Professor Murray said government or businesses could create alternatives to the likes of Microsoft to improve resiliency, but moving those services in-house would be more expensive and require significant investment.<\/p>\n “You’re then responsible for maintaining them yourself, which brings its own risks and its own costs as well.<\/p>\n “For many organisations, it’s much cheaper, and it’s often more secure, to put these services in the cloud. Instead of having a thousand different small businesses each having to run their own email systems.”<\/p>\n More outages and attacks to come<\/p>\n Toby Walsh, the chief scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute, said he expects more outages and hacks in the years to come.<\/p>\n![\"Long](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/6cb0098505f9c997f1fe8a6d03f91510.jpeg\")
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