Technology company Fujitsu and cyber security firm Darktrace have launched a new Australian partnership to lift cyber defence capabilities against new and emerging threats.
This partnership, launched in Canberra last week, combines Fujitsu’s Australian Government and Defence delivery experience, operational context and deep capability with Darktrace’s self-learning AI for visibility, detection, investigation and autonomous response to spot unusual behaviour.
Fujitsu’s Head of Defence for Oceania, Kendy Hau, said the threat landscape was becoming faster, more complex and harder to detect.
“In Australia, we’re seeing constant, targeted pressure from state-sponsored actors particularly against government, Defence, critical infrastructure and supply chains,” she said.
“But we’re also dealing with financially motivated cybercriminals and other malicious actors. What’s really changing the game is AI. It’s lowering barriers to entry by letting adversaries move faster, automate activity, and make attacks more convincing.”
Hau said what really kept security teams up at night was the mix of supply chain compromise, credential misuse and the ‘living-off-the-land’ techniques.
“These attacks can use legitimate tools and trusted access paths, making them difficult for traditional signature-based controls to identify,” she said.
Both Fujitsu and Darktrace are well established in the Australian IT market.
Fujitsu is a Japanese technology company which claims to be one of the largest ICT service providers in the world, with more than 40 years of continuous operation in Australia.
In Australia, Fujitsu Cyber helps organisations understand, strengthen and operate their cyber security, combining strategic advisory, practical implementation and 24/7 protection to reduce risk and build resilience.
“Once we assess the risk, we help them uplift their security, whether that's strengthening cloud controls, securing identities, or running penetration testing. From there, we manage their day-to-day operations with threat hunting, monitoring, and incident response,” Hau said.
Darktrace was founded in 2013 in Cambridge by mathematicians and former members of the UK intelligence community.
Its self-learning AI protects some 10,000 organisations globally including governments, defence organisations and critical infrastructure operators across the Five Eyes nations.
Darktrace Senior Vice President of sales for Asia-Pacific and Japan and Middle East and Africa, Trevor Coetzee, said cyber attacks increasingly operated at machine speed.
“Darktrace's technology detects and responds to threats autonomously, in real time, including novel attacks that signature-based defences cannot see,” he said.
“Across Australia and New Zealand, Darktrace supports hundreds of customers spanning sectors including energy, water, healthcare, critical infrastructure, government, manufacturing and transport.”
Coetzee said most security tools assumed there was reliable cloud connectivity.
“But Darktrace can operate locally inside the isolated network it’s protecting, without relying on continuous cloud connectivity, external signatures or external threat-intelligence feeds,” he said.
“This allows detection, investigation, and autonomous response to continue in disconnected or completely cut-off environments. The capability provides improved network visibility and enables organisations to better mitigate against insider threats.
“There’s also a strong sovereignty element here. We're ensuring this capability operates under the customer's governance, so they retain absolute control of sensitive data. Ultimately, we're bringing infrastructure data and security intelligence together, from headquarters right through to deployed environments.”