David Swan
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Articles by David Swan
Origin Energy says 900,000 customers had data hacked
Nick Toscano, David Swan Australia's largest electricity and gas retailer has confirmed that the personal information of about 900,000 current and former customers was accessed in a major cybersecurity incident Origin Energy chief executive Frank Calabria issued an apology to customers on Tuesday and said the company had begun contacting affected individuals to offer identity protection and cyber support services.
Telstra opens satellite link to maps, weather and WhatsApp – but not Triple Zero
David Swan Telstra has switched on satellite access to a small group of smartphone apps, letting customers check Google Maps, look up the forecast and message family on WhatsApp from parts of Australia where its mobile network does not reach. The expansion, live from Tuesday, takes the Starlink-powered service beyond the text messages which Telstra launched 13 months ago and is a first for an Australian carrier.
AI broke out of its cage and hacked a company. The grid could be next
David Swan Two OpenAI models broke out of a locked-down testing environment this month, made their way onto the open internet and hacked a real company. Australian security experts say the same capability, in less careful hands, could be aimed at the systems running the electricity grid, banks, telcos and key government systems such as My Health Record.
Origin Energy confirms data breach has exposed customer information
Nick Toscano, David Swan Origin Energy, the largest Australian power and gas company, has confirmed that a hacker has gained unauthorised access to some customers' private information, including names, addresses and partial credit card and bank account numbers. The company said on Thursday it was still working to determine how many customers were affected by the cybersecurity breach, and was contacting customers individually once it was confirmed their information had been comprised.
Nation’s largest power company probes potential data breach
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Nation's largest power company probes potential data breach
Nick Toscano, David Swan Power and gas giant Origin Energy has launched an urgent investigation into a potential security breach that may have accessed the personal details of some of its 4.7 million Australian customers. Origin, the nation's largest energy retailer, said on Wednesday it was investigating the potential hacking incident and acknowledged it might raise concerns for customers. The company said it did not believe customers' credit card or bank details had been accessed.
Full scale of Telstra network outage exposed
David Swan, Elias Visontay Millions of people were knocked offline by Telstra's mobile network failure last week, chief executive Vicki Brady has revealed, confirming the outage hit a scale the telco did not disclose at the time. The admission that approximately 45 per cent of the network that has more than 25 million mobile devices on it went down at its peak dovetailed with confirmation that more than 400 Triple Zero calls were not transferred to another network as a backup.
Telstra concedes 15-year-old, $30,000 device responsible for outage
David Swan, Elias Visontay Telstra has conceded that its nationwide outage last week would have been averted had the telco replaced an ageing server that cost just $30,000, as its chief executive reveals approximately 45 per cent of all calls and data sessions on its network were hit at the peak of its fault.
‘Our controls were not good enough': Telstra's outage admission
David Swan Telstra has conceded its mass network outage may have been avoided if a software update had been applied to the device that triggered it, and that its internal controls “were not good enough”, in a submission lodged with a Senate inquiry hours before executives face questioning.
Australia's millionaire factory is closed for business
David Swan For most of the past decade, the surest way to get rich in Australian technology was not founding a startup. It was getting a job at Atlassian. The company's 2015 Nasdaq float, and the stock's subsequent 20-fold run to a 2021 peak above $US450 ($650), minted more everyday millionaires than any business in the country's tech history.
Telstra outage: your right to claim and the fine print that limits it
David Swan Australians who lost income or could not reach critical services during last week's Telstra outage may be entitled to compensation of up to $100,000, but the industry's ombudsman has urged the company to offer payments across the board to avoid customers having to apply individually.
Telstra may have avoided national meltdown by spending $22,000 on known problem
David Swan, Elias Visontay, Jack Gramenz, Paul Sakkal The Telstra outage that cut hundreds of people off from Triple Zero this week was likely to have been caused by a server that had reached the end of its supported life almost a decade ago and was never replaced, despite costing just $22,000. Company sources said the equipment that is believed internally to have caused the cascading failure was a device called a SyncServer S300, which is designed to set the time in a network.
Telstra boss: 'We have let our customers and Australians down'
David Swan Telstra boss Vicki Brady has apologised for the company's mass outage on Wednesday , and says she has spoken to the Communications Minister Anika Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “We have let our customers and Australians down, and for that, I am deeply sorry,” Brady told a press conference in Sydney on Friday.
Premier demands Telstra match 'dollar for dollar' compensation for V/Line commuters
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V/Line to resume trains after commuters again left stranded in morning peak hour
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Elderly people unable to get help after Telstra’s Triple Zero failures
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V/Line network halted indefinitely, more than 24 hours after mass Telstra outage
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WiseTech’s value swells by $1b after Richard White steps down as chairman
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Taking in the forest
After the cold, dreary quiet of winter, spring hiking is amazingly comforting and reassuring. The quiet of winter is replaced by busy woodland creatures—from bees, butterflies, and birds, to humans and their furry companions. Even as a child, I noticed how the smell of the earth changed as billions of microbes came to life each year. The most telling change […]
Remembering the Bicentennial of ’76
The summer of 1976 was a momentous one for many Tooele High students. The high school band directors, Roy Ferrin and Gerald Seely, had the crazy idea of taking the entire band, as well as the flag corp., back east for the country’s bicentennial celebration. In researching for this article, I talked to several band members about their experience of […]
Can smart kitchen devices with a Wi-Fi chip make me a better cook?
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Data centres vow to fund Australia’s renewables shift, not derail it
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Meta declares war on Australia’s plan to make it pay for news
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Australia gets access to AI model 'too dangerous to release'
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Data centre boom could send power prices 26 per cent higher: Climate group
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The $180m payday that 'meme king' didn't share with most staff
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Musk’s X admits breaking Australian child safety law, fined $650,000
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AI start-up boss who faked millions in revenue faces jail time
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LinkedIn cuts hit Australia as global cull claims 875 jobs
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Firmus quietly scrubs UN logo ahead of $12b IPO push
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Firmus quietly scrubs UN logo ahead of $12 billion IPO push
David Swan The United Nations has forced Firmus to remove its emblem from every page of the AI infrastructure unicorn's website, in a blow to its marketing as the buzzy pre-IPO contender chases a blockbuster ASX listing on a valuation as high as $12 billion.
Firmus quietly scrubs UN logo ahead of $12 billion IPO push
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Ransom 'paid' to hackers who crippled online learning in Australia
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DroneShield directors sold $67 million in shares. The watchdog has questions
David Swan The corporate watchdog has launched a formal investigation into DroneShield, scrutinising the ASX-listed drone ‘gun' company's disclosures about a $67 million share sell-off by its former chief executive and two directors that wiped more than 30 per cent from its share price last November.
DroneShield directors sold $67 million in shares. The watchdog has questions
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Aussie tech giant pauses work, devotes entire week to AI
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Atlassian billionaire boss, now solo, faces his biggest test yet
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Atlassian billionaire boss, now solo, faces his biggest test yet
David Swan Six weeks ago, Mike Cannon-Brookes was the billionaire whose company hadbecome the cautionary tale of Australian tech. Atlassian's shares had plunged 70 per cent in 12 months to $US57 as investors feared its products would be replaced by AI-made alternatives while its ultimate customers, software engineers, were being laid off in droves. The Sydney-based software giant had been bumped from the Nasdaq 100 list of companies.
AI tool 'too dangerous to release' could wreak havoc on businesses
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The world’s richest man, the AI king, and a courtroom showdown
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AI giant Anthropic hires Australian boss as it opens local office
David Swan US artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has appointed long-time enterprise software executive Theo Hourmouzis as its first general manager for Australia and New Zealand, asthe Claude maker formally opens its Sydney officethis week. Hourmouzis joins from data cloud company Snowflake, where he was most recently senior vice president for Australia, New Zealand and ASEAN.
Give me back that old-time religion
April 20, 2026 Press enter or click to view image in full size The First United Methodist Church of Kalamazoo A president who thinks he’s Jesus. A defense secretary who doesn’t know the difference between the actual Bible and the Book of Samuel (L. Jackson) in “ Pulp Fiction.” Although I’m no longer a person of faith, I’m grateful that I grew up with real Christian values.
$3.1m per job: Does the employment case for data centres stack up?
David Swan As tech giants and local data centres operators race to transform Australia into an Asia-Pacific hub for artificial intelligence, they are demanding access to the nation's energy grid, water supply and prime land, backed in part by a big number: 935,000. That's how many jobs some in the industry say they are indirectly supporting. One operator said data centres “underpin” 935,000 jobs; its chief lobbyist said that many roles were “enabled” by the sector.
Major Australian crypto company CEO out, jobs cut as bitcoin rout bites
David Swan, John Buckley Major Australian cryptocurrency exchange Swyftx has laid off nearly 20 per cent of its workforce and replaced its chief executive Jason Titman after less than two years in the role, as the company restructures following major acquisitions and a sharp retreat in bitcoin prices.
Canva embarks on buying spree as AI wave batters rivals
David Swan Canva has acquired two Australian-founded technology companies in a deal designed to accelerate its transformation from a design platform into an end-to-end AI work system, as the $60 billion company navigates one of the most turbulent periods in enterprise software history. The Sydney-based design giant has bought Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation company, for an undisclosed amount of money.
How Australia's big banks ran into an even bigger fish
Clancy Yeates, David Swan Australia's major banks have long been the biggest fish in the domestic economic pond. But lately, the big four have looked like the minnows in their escalating fight with the biggest companies in the world: US technology behemoths.
Hearing Options Beyond Hearing Aids
By David Swan If you’ve lived with tinnitus or hearing problems for long, you’ve probably tried a number of things to remedy the situation. I recently turned to something that I had never imagined as an option: a personal sound amplification product, or PSAP. I suddenly found myself in the market for a PSAP when both my hearing aids started having trouble about the same time the coronavirus was spreading across the United States.
Losses growing, staff cut: Atlassian's billionaire boss faces his AI test
David Swan Billionaire Atlassian chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes has staked the future of his company on AI, slashing 1600 jobs via email in a move to position the software giant for the wave of disruption tearing through Australia's white-collar workforce.
‘Zero visibility': Atlassian staff lash out after mass job cuts
David Swan Billionaire chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes fired 10 per cent of Atlassian's total headcount over email on Thursday, axing around 1600 workers and prompting confusion and anger among its workforce as the company is upended by AI turbulence . Cannon-Brookes told staff on Thursday morning that AI was changing “the mix of skills we need” and “the number of roles required in certain areas” in the largest restructure in the company's 23-year history.
Telstra's coverage may shrink by an area the size of NSW
David Swan Telstra is on track to lose about 1 million square kilometres of claimed mobile coverage – an area larger than NSW – under a proposed regulatory standard that would force carriers to show only areas where a normal smartphone can reliably make a call.
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