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Accenture makes largest cybersecurity acquisition with CyberCX

Ana Mary Joseph
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Accenture makes largest cybersecurity acquisition with CyberCX

Accenture has announced plans to acquire CyberCX, a premier cybersecurity provider headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, in a move that marks its largest-ever cybersecurity acquisition.

The bold step to reinforce Accenture’s capabilities throughout Asia Pacific, significantly strengthening its support for both public and private sector clients amid rapidly intensifying cyber threats and regulatory complexities.

CyberCX, founded in 2019, has positioned itself as a leader in the region, with a skilled team of roughly 1,400 professionals. The company’s broad suite of services covers everything from consulting and transformation to managed security services, and is renowned for expertise in areas such as offensive security, cyber-physical security, incident response, threat intelligence, and strategic advisory.

Additionally, CyberCX operates a sophisticated network of security operations centers across Australia and New Zealand, with additional footprints in London and New York, ensuring a blend of local insight and global reach.

Strong reputation

A cornerstone of CyberCX’s value proposition is its portfolio of innovative, AI-driven security platforms, which include managed detection and response, sovereign secure cloud solutions, a dedicated CyberCX Academy for talent development, and proprietary cyber intelligence and testing tools.

Its established ecosystem partnerships with heavyweights like Microsoft, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto Networks underscore its strong reputation, along with a remarkable 2,600+ professional certifications among its personnel.

The timing of Accenture’s acquisition is critical. According to Accenture’s recent State of Cybersecurity Resilience report for 2025, a vast majority—97 per cent—of Australian organisations remain unprepared to safeguard their AI-powered infrastructures, with around 80 per cent falling short in vital data and AI cybersecurity competencies needed to protect evolving digital environments.

Digital threats

Paolo Dal Cin, Global Lead for Accenture Cybersecurity, highlighted the synergy between the two organisations, noting that their combined strengths in agentic AI and deep-rooted market relationships will help turn cybersecurity into a true strategic advantage for clients throughout Asia Pacific.

Peter Burns, the regional head for Accenture Australia and New Zealand, added that as organisations grapple with the expanding scope of digital threats and connected ecosystems, the need for robust and responsible cybersecurity governance is more urgent than ever—especially as AI and quantum technologies mature.

John Paitaridis, CEO of CyberCX, expressed pride in the company’s achievements and excitement about joining Accenture’s global network: This union, he said, creates a force multiplier, enabling the delivery of world-class cybersecurity solutions to even more clients and accelerating growth across the region.

The acquisition is just the latest in Accenture’s campaign to grow its cybersecurity portfolio. Since 2015, the company has snapped up 20 cybersecurity firms—recently including Morphus, MNEMO Mexico, and Innotec Security—demonstrating an ongoing commitment to strengthening its global leadership in digital defense.

The terms of the CyberCX deal remain confidential, and closing of the transaction is subject to standard regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

Apple resumes blood oxygen feature on select watches after legal battle approval

TCN Bureau
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Apple resumes blood oxygen feature on select watches after legal battle approval
  • US Customs gives green light to reintroduce the feature, as long as it’s delivered through a software update rather than pre-installed hardware.

Apple has officially reinstated the blood oxygen measurement feature to several of its smartwatch models following approval from US authorities, ending a drawn-out legal standoff that has shadowed its wearable lineup for years.

Now, users with Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in the United States can monitor their blood oxygen levels using their paired iPhones—thanks to a new software update.

The update comes on the heels of a prolonged dispute with rival medical device company Masimo, which previously accused Apple of poaching employees and misappropriating pulse oximetry technology after initial talks of a partnership went sour.

The legal wrangle escalated to a decisive victory for Masimo at the US International Trade Commission (ITC), resulting in an import ban on Apple’s watches bundled with the contested feature.

Faced with the ruling, Apple removed blood oxygen tracking from its recently shipped smartwatches, a decision that brought widespread attention from both consumers and the tech industry.

However, Apple pressed on, seeking a way forward through the appeals process. In a significant turn, US Customs gave the green light to reintroduce the feature, as long as it’s delivered through a software update rather than pre-installed hardware.

With the latest update, users can initiate a session in the Blood Oxygen app on their Apple Watch; the sensors then collect the relevant data, and the paired iPhone processes and displays the blood oxygen measurement.

The software-based workaround marks the first time since the Series 6 that American users can access this health tool, after its removal during the peak of the ITC dispute.

The contest between Apple and Masimo is still ongoing, with Masimo’s own W1 watch—launched in 2022—competing directly in the health-oriented tech market. Although the legal battle temporarily barred the import and sale of certain Apple models, strategic legal maneuvres allowed Apple to keep its products on shelves intermittently as the appeals played out.

Ultimately, this saga underscores both the complexity of global patent law and the high stakes involved in consumer health technology innovation.

Consumers, for now, can once again use their Apple Watches to track a key health metric, all while tech giants jostle in the legal and innovation arena.

Russia blocks video and voice calls on WhatsApp

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Russia blocks video and voice calls on WhatsApp
  • Officials promote a new state-controlled platform, MAX, that promises “seamless integration with government services.
  • WhatsApp and Telegram had been lifelines for secure conversations — protected by end-to-end encryption that kept prying eyes away.

It was a warm August evening in Moscow when Anna tried to call her brother in St. Petersburg on WhatsApp. The familiar ringing tone never came — instead, just a faint metallic buzz, then silence. She frowned, checked her internet, and tried Telegram instead. No luck.

Across the city, millions were having the same problem. For years, WhatsApp and Telegram had been lifelines for secure conversations — protected by end-to-end encryption that kept prying eyes away. Now, suddenly, voices were going silent.

The official explanation came swiftly:
The government accused these foreign-owned platforms of refusing to share user data with law enforcement — data they said was vital for fighting fraud and terrorism. Until they complied, calls would remain disrupted.

Messages, voice notes, and text chats still worked for now, but video and voice calls were becoming painfully unreliable.

Digital sovereignty

Behind the scenes, though, the situation was bigger than just phone calls. Since the war in Ukraine, Moscow had been building a tighter, more controlled internet — what they called “digital sovereignty.” Facebook and Instagram were gone. YouTube’s speed had been choked to a crawl. Now, the crackdown was hitting messaging apps.

Officials were promoting a new state-controlled platform, MAX, that promised “seamless integration with government services.” Politicians urged citizens to migrate there, touting its convenience. Critics whispered that MAX would track everything users did and said.

In July, surveys showed just how beloved these “foreign” apps still were: 97 million Russians used WhatsApp every month, 90 million used Telegram. The scale of the call restrictions meant virtually every household felt the impact — from friends catching up, to parents calling children abroad.

Rights groups called it deliberate throttling, the latest step in carving out a Russian internet walled off from the rest of the world. Officials called it security. WhatsApp vowed to keep encrypted communication alive “for people everywhere, including Russia.” Telegram insisted it was fighting harmful content daily.

Anna didn’t know about the political statements, or the public data. She just wanted to talk to her brother. That night, after trying in vain once more, she sighed and typed him a message instead:

“Call’s not working again. I’ll try tomorrow.”

Tomorrow might come — but for Russians like Anna, the days of easy, private calling were already fading into the past.

Countries that have blocked WhatsApp

  • China — WhatsApp has been blocked since 2017 as part of the Great Firewall, pushing users to domestic alternatives like WeChat.
  • North Korea — Generally inaccessible due to the country’s heavily restricted internet; major foreign platforms are banned.
  • Iran —Imposed bans and intermittent restrictions, especially during periods of unrest.
  • Syria — Reported as banned/restricted in government-controlled contexts as part of broader censorship.
  • United Arab Emirates — Texting works, but VoIP (voice/video) calls are blocked as a policy; some temporary allowances occurred during events like Expo 2020.
  • Qatar — VoIP calls restricted; messaging still works.
  • Some reports add Saudi Arabia and Egypt as places where WhatsApp voice/video calls have been restricted at times, while texting remains available; enforcement has varied over time and by carrier.

Why HTTP/1.1 still endangers millions of modern websites?

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Why HTTP/1.1 still endangers millions of modern websites?
  • A single manipulated packet can cause a website to mix up user sessions, leak confidential info, or serve poisoned content that infects everyone who visits.
  • After two decades of attempted patches, the protocol remains fundamentally unsafe whenever proxies or shared connections are involved.
  • Until full HTTP/2 support arrives everywhere, organisations need to aggressively sanitise incoming requests and routinely scan for lurking vulnerabilities.

Just because a website uses shiny new security badges on the surface doesn’t mean it’s locked up tight behind the scenes.

Recent research has unveiled a worrying reality under the hood: millions of websites, even those behind cutting-edge proxies and cloud platforms, are silently backsliding to the outdated HTTP/1.1 protocol somewhere along the request chain. This isn’t just a touch of technical debt—it’s a cybercriminal’s dream come true.

How traffic flows

When you click on a website in 2025, your request doesn’t go straight to its destination. It bounces around—from your browser, through content delivery networks, load balancers, proxies, and then finally hits the website’s back-end servers.

Somewhere along this relay, if one component only speaks the old HTTP/1.1, the whole secure foundation can be undermined.

PortSwigger, the well-known application security firm, threw a spotlight on this issue. They found that over 24 million websites—yes, even big corporate ones—still downgrade requests to HTTP/1.1, despite advertising modern security up front. This isn’t just nostalgia for the early 2000s; it’s a recipe for disaster.

The fatal flaw: Request smuggling

So, what makes HTTP/1.1 so risky? In a word: ambiguity. The protocol simply lumps requests together on a TCP connection, with multiple ways to specify where one ends and the next begins. That means hackers can trigger so-called “request smuggling” attacks, slipping malicious requests between legitimate ones.

Suddenly, servers have no idea which data belongs to which user—a perfect opening for session hijacking, data theft, or worse.

Cybersecurity researcher James Kettle, from PortSwigger, revealed all this at Black Hat USA and DEF CON—earning hefty bug bounty rewards in the process. The flaw is so severe that a single manipulated packet can cause a website to mix up user sessions, leak confidential info, or serve poisoned content that infects everyone who visits.

Just imagine: logging in to your favourite online store and landing in another customer’s account instead, or having every page you load laced with credit card-stealing code.

Why are we still using HTTP/1.1?

Alarmingly, the inertia isn’t just on small-time web hosts. Major cloud service providers like Google and Cloudflare still default to HTTP/1.1 internally unless admins painstakingly reconfigure every layer.

The industry’s mainstay front-ends—Nginx, Akamai, Fastly, CloudFront—often lack full upstream HTTP/2 support, making upgrades a real challenge.

Website operators can’t just flip a magic switch and hope for safety. Every component in the chain, from CDN to app server, must support the newer protocols and be configured to reject risky, ambiguous requests. That’s rarely the default, and it requires technical finesse that many organisations lack.

This isn’t theory—attackers have already shown how devastating these flaws can be. Security researchers demonstrated successful request smuggling hacks against giants like PayPal, exposing unencrypted passwords and siphoning off bug bounties for their trouble.

The ease with which such bugs can be exploited is alarming: all it takes is a tiny inconsistency between how two servers interpret an HTTP request.

For example, if a request headers both a “Content-Length” and a “Transfer-Encoding: chunked” flag, different parts of the server chain might read the data differently.

An attacker can send a malformed payload that one server thinks is over—and another server keeps reading. The result? Malicious code gets silently attached to a victim’s request.

Can we fix HTTP/1.1?

Not really, says Kettle. After two decades of attempted patches, the protocol remains fundamentally unsafe whenever proxies or shared connections are involved. “If we want a secure web, HTTP/1.1 must die,” he warns.

While it’s still safe for straight, direct client-server connections, the web is rarely that simple nowadays.

Until full HTTP/2 support arrives everywhere, organisations need to aggressively sanitise incoming requests and routinely scan for lurking vulnerabilities.

PortSwigger’s latest HTTP Request Smuggler tool even automates the search for hidden flaws, but that’s just playing catch-up.

No matter how pretty a website looks or how many security logos it displays, it could still be vulnerable deep in its infrastructure. Any delay just gives hackers more opportunities to slip through the cracks.

India’s Tier 2 and 3 cities to be next data centre powerhouses

Ana Mary Joseph
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India’s Tier 2 and 3 cities to be next data centre powerhouses
  • The days when Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai were solely at the heart of the data economy are fading.

India’s digital backbone is getting a powerful boost from tier 2 and 3 cities. Until now, these smaller urban hubs have only hosted about 6 per cent of the nation’s total data centre capacity—roughly 82MW.

But dramatic change is around the corner: reports predict this figure will vault to between 300 and 400MW by 2030, marking a transformative shift in the data landscape.

As India’s total data centre capacity races past the 4,500MW threshold by 2030, the importance of decentralising digital infrastructure comes into focus. The days when Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai were solely at the heart of the data economy are fading.

New contenders like Kochi, Mohali, Jaipur, and Indore are rapidly climbing the ranks, emerging as key drivers of edge computing, storage, and innovation.

These up-and-coming cities are no longer just supporting cast members in India’s digital play—they’re rewriting the script on what “digital India” means. Behind this wave are pro-business government policies, the need for localised data processing, and a nationwide shift toward decentralisation for greater efficiency and resilience.

Why these cities?

There’s a genuine upside for data players expanding beyond the big metros:

  • Lower operational costs and friendlier business climates
  • Proximity to end-users, slashing latency for local content and services
  • Easier access to land and resources (though not without their own challenges)

But it’s not all smooth sailing. To thrive, these cities need nimble and reliable infrastructure. That’s where modular, pre-engineered data centres come in—especially when you’re dealing with confined space, complex cooling demands, and occasional resource constraints.

Technologies like liquid cooling and AI-driven airflow management are fast becoming the norm in these new data hubs. The move is less about sheer scale, and more about productivity, uptime, and eco-friendliness.

With AI and high-performance computing placing fresh demands on infrastructure, innovations in energy use—such as smart power controls and real-time monitoring—are rising to meet both performance and sustainability targets.

What’s unfolding now is a new chapter in India’s digital tale, where growth and opportunity are not confined to the nation’s largest cities. These regional centres are stitching together a more inclusive and adaptable network, supporting untapped markets and helping bridge the digital divide.

Sluggish growth clouds consumer electronics in 2025

TCN Bureau
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Sluggish growth clouds consumer electronics in 2025
  • Smartphone and notebook shipments in 2025 will be flat or grow by only 1–2% YoY, TV shipments will decline by 1.1%, and the wearables market will contract by 2.8%.
  • smartphones, notebooks, wearables, and TVs are expected to stagnate under the combined pressures of high inflation, a lack of breakthrough innovations, and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty in 2025.
  • Looking ahead to 2026, most consumer product shipments are expected to remain flat or grow only modestly by around 1%, while wearables and automobiles may decline.

As we move into 2025, the landscape for everyday electronics—smartphones, laptops, wearables, and TVs—looks rather flat.

A combination of stubborn inflation, a scarcity of truly breakthrough tech, and the unending tension of global politics is leaving the industry at a standstill. Big names in the market are increasingly cautious, with even the most optimistic projections painting a picture of mere stagnation.

Consolidation looms for 2026

Industry insights suggest that by 2026, this sluggishness will only become more pronounced. Instead of a rebound, what’s coming is a consolidation phase, where growth rates slow even further. For those of us who remember the boom years, this feels like a sharp change of pace—a reality check driven by market saturation and limited innovation.

AI Servers: The lone bright spot

If there is a reason for optimism, it comes from the AI server sector—now the industry’s powerhouse for growth. Surging demand in data centres continues to fuel expansion, and 2025 looks set for another strong year.

TrendForce projects that AI server shipments will leap by more than 20 per cent compared to last year. Major cloud players are pumping funds into top-tier GPUs (think NVIDIA) and tailor-made ASIC chips for their infrastructures, crowding out budgets that otherwise went to run-of-the-mill servers.

Another fascinating trend is how companies are adapting their shipment schedules to deal with US tariffs and turbulent geopolitics. Many sectors are choosing to “front-load” their orders in early 2025, thanks in part to fresh Chinese government subsidies.

Products like servers, tablets, monitors, and vehicles are now expected to be shipped in equal measure in both halves of the year—a break from the usual pattern where the second half sees a spike.

While this might pad first-half revenues (and, let’s be honest, look good on quarterly reports), it comes with a price: the risk of slumping second-half sales and ballooning inventories by Q4.

Remember the buzz around AI-powered consumer gadgets? So far, the sizzle outweighs the steak. Despite splashy announcements, integrating AI into everyday devices is still mostly at the marketing phase. Without those must-have killer apps, most consumers remain unconvinced, and brands have little to show beyond upgraded spec sheets.

Muted numbers across the board

Taking stock for 2025, modest growth is the name of the game:

  • Smartphones and notebooks look set to grow by a mere 1–2% (if at all)
  • TV shipments could actually fall by 1.1%
  • The wearables market is likely to shrink by 2.8%

Looking ahead to 2026, don’t expect fireworks. The best-case scenario for many categories is flat shipments or a minor uptick. Wearables and even automobiles face the possibility of decline. And while AI servers will remain a relative superstar, even their growth will taper, slowed by the challenges of scaling from today’s high base.

Awaiting a catalyst

To kick off the next phase of real growth, the electronics sector needs either a giant leap in technology or a new consumer application that genuinely excites and draws in the masses.

Until that happens, the industry will need to navigate a tougher, low-growth environment—one that rewards resilience, creativity, and perhaps a bit of patience.

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