Technology and Security

Cybersecurity is often framed as a technology problem. Andrew Reeves argues it is fundamentally a human one. Dr Miah Hammond-Errey sits down with Dr Andrew Reeves, Deputy Director of UNSW's Institute for Cyber, registered organisational psychologist and cybersecurity leader, to examine what psychology reveals about attack, defence and victimhood in cybersecurity. From the power of cyber deception, to why security awareness training can backfire, to what cognitive load means for the people defending our networks, this is a conversation about the human factors that determine whether cybersecurity actually works.
Andrew and Miah discuss the collaborative research project between UNSW's Institute for Cyber and Strat Futures, mapping the cybersecurity implications of emerging technologies in Australia over the next two to five years. Andrew shares what the data is revealing about the convergence of AI, biotechnology and brain-computer interfaces, why the most critical developments will come from how technologies interact rather than any single breakthrough, and what the tension between sovereign capability and international collaboration means for Australian organisations. They also discuss cyber security lessons from the golden age of piracy, the psychology of leadership under fatigue, and what forest bathing has to do with making better decisions.

On this episode of Technology & Security, Dr Miah Hammond-Errey is joined by Aurélie Jacquet, Chair of Australia's ISO AI Standards Committee, OECD AI expert, and advisor to some of the world's most influential organisations. Deploying AI responsibly takes far more than a good policy and this episode examines what responsible implementation actually demands. This discussion draws on lessons from capital markets, privacy law, international standards work and fortune 500 companies. 
Aurélie brings rare breadth to questions that matter; how organisations can move from AI ethics commitments to genuine controls, why scaling without governance is scaling risk, and what the AI conversation Australia will regret not having had today. Aurélie Jacquet is the CEO of Ethical AI Consulting, Chair of Australia's ISO AI Standards Committee and an OECD AI expert.

In this episode of Technology & Security, Dr. Miah Hammond-Errey is joined by cyber security and governance leader Min Livanidis. They discuss what resilience really means in an AI-enabled environment and how to reframe the conversation: AI risk is often a governance question. From identity and access management to data controls and shared responsibility models, the fundamentals of cyber security remain vital. While new forms of AI introduce probabilistic and agentic risks that require different safety considerations, the scaffolding of resilience—clear governance, structured risk management and technical literacy—has not changed.
The conversation reinforces the need for fundamental security controls during technological acceleration. Most successful cyber incidents still exploit basic weaknesses, not advanced AI capabilities. At the same time, AI is amplifying both defensive tools and human vulnerabilities, particularly through scams, impersonation and disinformation. Great security is not expecting perfect human decision-making but designing systems that reduce cognitive load and embed security by design. Ultimately, resilience depends less on hype and more on discipline: clarity of purpose, investment in people, and the consistent application of fundamentals. Her start in intelligence gave Livanidis insight into elements of leadership including curiosity, diversity and how to create a tech capable workforce. 
Min Livanidis is a cyber security, risk, and governance expert, currently Chief Security Advisor for Public Sector at Microsoft, Chair of the UNSW Institute for Cyber External Advisory Board, Co-Chair of Home Affairs’ Resilience Expert Advisory Group, and a former intelligence officer with experience across government and industry.
Resources mentioned:
Journal Article: Big data, emerging technologies and the characteristics of ‘good intelligence’: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/02684527.2023.2287255 // https://miahhe.com/downloads 
Cognitive Edge podcast: https://share.transistor.fm/s/cfcd90d1

In this episode of Technology & Security, Dr Miah Hammond-Errey is joined by Major General Mick Ryan to examine how emerging technologies are reshaping war, alliances, and societies at a moment of profound global uncertainty. Ryan argues that the post-World War II order has ended, leaving democracies in an interregnum characterised by growing chaos. Against this backdrop, technology—from AI and autonomous systems to information and cognitive warfare—is not removing friction from conflict, but accelerating it, widening its surface area, and increasing the consequences of strategic misjudgement.
Drawing on his recent work, Ryan explores lessons from Ukraine as a laboratory for contemporary conflict, emphasising that the most transformative shift is not drones or AI, but the speed at which societies and institutions can learn and adapt. This episode examines the changing role of alliances, the tension between values and interests, the risks of over-reliance on technology without organisational reform, and the ethical limits of AI in decision-making. The conversation concludes with an assessment of national resilience—economic, cyber, physical, and societal—and the need for clearer public conversations about risk, preparedness, and the responsibilities of citizenship in an increasingly contested world.
Major General Mick Ryan (Ret’d) is a former senior Australian Army commander and leading analyst of war, strategy, and emerging technologies, currently a Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute and Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

In this episode of the Technology & Security podcast, host Dr. Miah Hammond-Errey is joined by Kate Carruthers. Kate is currently the head of data analytics and AI at the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She shares her journey from defending Westfield against state and non-state cyber attacks to leading UNSW's enterprise data, AI, and cybersecurity efforts, including delivering the university's first production AI system in 2019 and re-architecting its cloud data platform for AI and ML. She notes boardrooms are evolving from basic cyber literacy to probing AI risks like models, data, and risk registers. 
 
Carruthers outlines some real-world examples, such as UNSW’s enterprise AI program, including a machine learning model that predicted which students were likely to fail a course, with 95%+ accuracy, so the university could design careful, humane intervention protocols to reduce self-harm risk. She argues that while frontier models like OpenAI and Gemini have a place, their compute costs, water intensity and general-purpose design make them poorly suited to some business problems, and that the future lies in smaller, industry-specific models trained on highly relevant data. The conversation covers the rise of agentic AI coding tools, the risk of deskilling junior developers, and the need for diverse, product-focused teams to translate technical systems into workable human processes.​
 
On security, she prioritizes CIA triad integrity over confidentiality, warning of data alterations in cars, medical devices, and government systems via poisoning or underinvestment in encryption. Carruthers urges Australian AI sovereignty—opting for open-source like Databricks over proprietary stacks—amid US-China model contrasts and outage risks from providers like AWS or CrowdStrike. Throughout, she encourages leaders not just to read about AI but to use multiple systems themselves, understand their limitations as probabilistic tools in deterministic business environments, and ground every deployment in clearly defined problems, ethics, and user needs.​