The iTnews Podcast

This episode is brought to you by iTnews Executive Retreats, a new iTnews event series designed to provide senior technology executives from end user organisations with the space to connect, reflect and share insights with their peers in an environment removed from daily pressures. Our next retreat is for security leaders, September 17-18 in the NSW Hunter Valley. Follow the link here: https://pages.itnews.com.au/nsw-executive-security-retreat-8b772862-1dfb-46d6-9599-1b9c41f5db2 or visit itnews.com.au to register your interest. Thanks to Dicker Data and Microsoft, Quorum Systems, Oreta, Tecala and MicrotechDPS for sponsoring the retreat. ~~~ Hello and welcome to the iTnews Podcast Our guest this fortnight is Andy Weir, the Chief Technology and Transformation officer at People First Bank. People First Bank is nearing completion of its fully modernised technology stack, after forming from the combination of People’s Choice and Heritage Bank in mid-2023. The new technology stack should be fully implemented towards the end of 2027. Andy walks us through the origins of the transformation, the key components of the stack, and what it means from an operational and front-facing customer experience. But we begin with Andy describing his joint technology and transformation remit, how this has evolved and how he balances these two key areas.

This episode is brought to you by Lumify. Stay tuned to hear from Lumify’s Iain Morrison on the challenges organisations face when building and implementing AI solutions, and the role that ITIL can play in structuring a considered and measured approach to AI adoption. Hello and welcome to the iTnews podcast. Our guest this fortnight is Alex Caroly, First Assistant Secretary in Technology, Digital & Data at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Alex walks us through the department’s technology strategy and roadmap, and introduces some of the future-facing work underway at the department including its use of AI.

iTnews is hosting our State of Security Breakfast Roadshow 2026 in Melbourne on September 10 , proudly sponsored by CoreView, Delinea, and Huntress. Join us, and executives from end user organisations as we explore the key trends, challenges and opportunities identified in our State of Security 2026 report that are shaping Australia's cybersecurity landscape and operations. Attendance is complimentary for qualified end-user technology and security professionals. Follow the link in the description (https://pages.itnews.com.au/itnews-state-of-security-melbourne-breakfast) to register your interest, or visit itnews.com.au Hello and welcome to the iTnews Podcast. Our guest this fortnight is Associate Director for Hosting Infrastructure at the University of Southern Queensland, Stephen Payne. We’ve seen and written about a lot of customers affected by price hikes for their virtualisation software upon renewal. This one’s different, because the university kicked off a strategic review of its virtualisation environment in late 2024, well ahead of its renewal, and has now replaced its hypervisor software for around 800 VMs supporting 100 applications. It is now looking ahead to a microsegmentation implementation, and outside of that, augmenting its hosting options with some Azure.

iTnews is hosting our State of Security Breakfast Roadshow 2026 in Melbourne on September 10 , proudly sponsored by CoreView, Delinea, and Huntress. Join us, and executives from end user organisations as we explore the key trends, challenges and opportunities identified in our State of Security 2026 report that are shaping Australia's cybersecurity landscape and operations. Attendance is complimentary for qualified end-user technology and security professionals. Follow the link in the description (https://pages.itnews.com.au/itnews-state-of-security-melbourne-breakfast) to register your interest, or visit itnews.com.au Hello and welcome to the iTnews podcast. Our guest this fortnight is Chris Doyle, the CIO for non-bank lender Finance One. Finance One, part of the Investor Central Group, is implementing its first AI strategy outline and framework, with the aim of finding operational efficiencies, improving service and moving faster with new products. Join us as Chris discusses the company’s approach to AI as well as its broader technology strategy and approach, where harmonisation, modernisation and automation are key themes.

This episode is brought to you by the 2026 iTnews State of Security report and Brennan. Stay tuned to the end to hear from Peter soulsby, the director of cyber security and government at Brennan, as he discusses how AI is changing the threat landscape for organisations, but also how visibility can help cyber security practitioners move forward in enabling their organisations to embrace the technology and continue to redefine how work gets done. Hello and welcome to the iTnews Podcast . Our guest this fortnight is Chris Horlyck, head of cyber security resilience at the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) within ASD. Chris sat down with iTnews recently to discuss the planned changes to the Essential Eight, including its planned replacement with a new Essentials series. There’s been a lot of discussion out in the industry since we first published our story in late June. Here, iTnews editor Ry Crozier and our security specialist Juha Saarinen talk to Chris to unpack the changes with Essentials, as well as recent changes to the Information Security Manual or ISM, and how these might also be reflected within the Essentials.

This episode is brought you by Cisco. Stay tuned as later we'll be talking to Craig Neiberding, the CIO at Canberra Institute of Technology and Reg Johnson, Director of Education and Strategic Industries for Cisco Australia and New Zealand. We'll be exploring how CIT's new Woden campus is reshaping hybrid learning, and what the rest of the education sector can learn from it. Hello and welcome to the iTnews Podcast. Our guest this fortnight is Kate Collareda, the current CIO of Mars and former IT director for A/NZ at Kellanova, which Mars completed its acquisition of at the end of last year. Kellanova - among other things - is home to Kellogg’s international cereal brands. Kate spoke to the iTnews Podcast about a trade promotion system that Kellanova implemented to help it run promotions across the major supermarket chains. We begin by discussing the changing behaviour of consumers, how this shaped the need for a newer and more data-driven approach to trade promotions, and how the outputs of the system can influence broader operational levers.

This episode is brought to you by the 2026 iTnews State of Security report and CoreView, the leading SaaS platform for Microsoft 365 Tenant Resilience . Stay tuned until the end to hear from Andrew McAllister, Vice President of APAC Sales at CoreView, as he discusses the security implications of Microsoft 365 becoming the operational heartbeat of today’s enterprises, including the shared responsibility model and best practices for privilege management.] Our guest this fortnight is David Stockdale, the director of cyber security at the University of Queensland and also director of AUSCERT David talks about building resilience in a university environment, including the contribution of the cyber domain to that effort and the lessons learned from cyber that could be applied in a broader university-wide context. He also examines the trend towards platformization of capabilities - a key theme of the state of security report - and touches on the rise of Anthropic's Mythos and what it means for security teams.

This episode is brought to you by the iTnews State of Security 2026 report . Featuring insights from CISOs and senior security leaders across Australia, the report explores the key trends and challenges shaping cyber security this year - from AI governance and identity security to Zero Trust, XDR and cyber resilience. Download your copy today to benchmark your organisation’s security strategy against the rest of the industry. Thanks to our 2026 State of Security partners - Sumo Logic, Saviynt, Virtual IT Group, CoreView, Brennan and Rubrik - for supporting this year’s report. Visit iTnews.com.au and search “State of Security 2026” to download the report now. Hello and welcome to the iTnews Podcast. Our guest this fortnight is Australia Post’s Executive General Manager of Enterprise Services Michael McNamara. Join us as we unpack Australia Post’s target state architecture and the progress of technology initiatives within the broader Post 26 strategy. We also explore the structure of Enterprise Services - how teams are organised and what it looks for in the organisations it partners with.

This episode is brought to you by the iTnews Cloud Covered Breakfast Summit powered by Microsoft and Dicker Data. Hosted at the Ivy Sunroom in Sydney on June 4th we are bringing together technology business decision makers to discuss building AI-ready data in the cloud. With panels on stage and audience discussion sessions, the summit will cover Australia's rapid shift to public cloud as a foundation for scalable AI. Register your interest in joining us now, on iTnews.com.au Our guest this fortnight is Telstra’s Group Executive of Product & Technology Kim Krogh Andersen. Telstra has reached a significant milestone in its multi-year IT estate transformation and simplification. The telco is exiting its 20-year-old Siebel CRM, alongside technology by Teradata, Veritas and Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Join us as we unpack the retirement of systems and discuss the composable architecture that now underpins Telstra’s IT estate, which, among other things, is de-risking the telco from vendor lock-in and associated price hikes.

This week’s episode is brought to you by Optus. Modern work happens everywhere, and businesses need to deliver seamless digital experiences without compromising security. Smart organisations are building security into the device and the connection. Giving employees frictionless access, wherever they’re working, while the business gains visibility, control, and resilience. Talk to Optus today about our Managed Mobility Solutions. Our guest this fortnight is the executive general manager of technology and data at carsales, Michelle Low. carsales has long been data driven. Increasingly they are seeking to connect with prospective car buyers from inside of AI chat apps and ecosystems, which are proving influential in the car buying experience. They’re also putting more data into the hands of car dealers and manufacturers to help them understand what is selling and why.

This week’s episode is brought to you by Optus. Modern work happens everywhere, and businesses need to deliver seamless digital experiences without compromising security. Smart organisations are building security into the device and the connection. Giving employees frictionless access, wherever they’re working, while the business gains visibility, control, and resilience. Talk to Optus today about our Managed Mobility Solutions. Hello and welcome to the iTnews Podcast Our guest on the podcast this fortnight is James Ng, the Chief Information Security Officer for Insignia Financial. Insignia Financial is perhaps better known by its component parts, which include the old IOOF, as well as the ANZ Wealth and MLC Wealth divisions that it acquired from ANZ and NAB respectively. It’s spent the past three years consolidating its security estate and removing duplicated effort and inefficiency from security operations processes. James starts by taking us through the current security strategy, as well as the next one under development.

This episode is brought to you by the iTnews Cloud Covered Breakfast Summit, powered by Microsoft and Dicker Data . Join senior technology leaders from across Western Australia on 31 March at QT Perth for a practical discussion on modernising workflows into public cloud, reducing architectural risk, and understanding where edge fits into long-term cloud strategy, with insights grounded in real-world experience. Hello and welcome to the iTnews Podcast. Our guest this week is Sallie Moore-Wood, the director of governance and information systems at Waratah-Wynyard Council and Circular Head Council in Tasmania’s north-west. The two councils share personnel and a digital transformation strategy and roadmap, which covers information systems, cybersecurity and other bodies of work. We asked Sallie to drill into particularly the cybersecurity aspects of the transformation, into some of the challenges faced so far and how these have been addressed and overcome.

Hello and welcome to a new season of the iTnews Podcast. We begin this year by speaking to Aussie Broadband’s Head of Cloud and SRE Ben O’Shea. Eagle-eyed iTnews readers and listeners might remember Ben’s appearance at Cisco Live in 2024, when he revealed work that was underway to build a new cloud platform for Aussie Broadband’s own internal use, and to retire older virtualisation and containerisation platforms. In this episode, we hear where that cloud platform is at a year on, we discuss Ben’s role expansion to cover SRE, and we also hear about a recent change to the company’s backup tooling.

In this episode, iTnews host Jennifer O’Brien is joined by Stephanie Barnett, Vice President of Presales and Interim GM for Asia Pacific & Japan at Okta. Together they unpack why identity has moved from an authentication project to a board-level business layer, and why “attackers don’t break in – they log in”. You will hear how organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the wider APJ region are responding to Essential Eight-driven identity requirements, the rise of non-human identities and AI agents, and the growing challenge of fragmented identity estates. Stephanie also shares what CISOs should be telling their boards in 2026, including practical steps to reduce risk while enabling productivity and secure automation.

Discover how private 5G is reshaping data-driven mining. Ian Ross, Head of Enterprise, Australia and New Zealand at Ericsson explains why fast, stable onsite connectivity is now essential for safer, more productive operations, from teleremote dozers to real-time digital-twins powered by smart sensors. Learn how 5G overcomes the limits of Wi-Fi and 4G and unlocks the next wave of mining innovation.

This episode, from late last year, sees ANZ's chief information security officer Dr Maria Milosavljevic talk all things security. We'll be back with a new episode soon.

Our guest this fortnight is Rob Ison, the chief information officer of Vocus. Rob takes us through the telco’s IT strategy, as well as its agile ways of working program. He also discusses infrastructure modernisation and an ongoing simplification effort that aims to optimise how customers experience and interact with Vocus’ services.

Our guest this week is Trent Dawson, the Chief information officer of Civil construction firm Symal. Trent walks us through the past four years of IT transformation at Symal, which debuted on the ASX at the end of 2024. He also discusses the company’s burgeoning DevOps practice and AI capabilities, which tap into services and tools from Microsoft Azure.

NetSuite’s MCP connector enables organisations to harness Agentic AI to automate complex processes and improve decision-making. Operating within defined guardrails, Agentic AI manages tasks such as financial reporting while maintaining accountability. The MCP connector’s flexible API integrates with multiple AI platforms, supported by Fusion5’s tools for custom applications. For more information on NetSuite's MCP Connector, delivered by Fusion5 please visit www.fusion5.com/netsuite or click the link(s) in the description below. Talk to a NetSuite expert in Australia Talk to a NetSuite expert in New Zealand