Jul 27, 2026 – 5.00amWhen the board of the Commonwealth Bank meets in a fortnight to sign off on its full-year results, cybersecurity will be right at the top of the agenda. That’s where it will be when its major rivals call their own board meetings in coming weeks.How the country’s biggest financial institutions confront the threat that their systems will be compromised by criminals turbocharged with artificial intelligence is no longer a second tier problem. It is becoming the defining challenge of the year ahead.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? James EyersSenior ReporterJames Eyers writes on banking, finance, payments, regulation and emerging technologies. Based in Sydney, he is a former legal and investment banking editor at the AFR and has been a business journalist for more than 20 years.Fetching latest articles
Big bank boards go back to the drawing board on cyberdefence playbook
For decades, the procedures were simple. Guidelines, executive responsibility. Now a crop of fast-moving, AI-powered hackers are forcing a dramatic rethink.
TL;DRAI
Australia's major banks move AI-powered cyberdefence to board priority as criminal threats accelerate. The escalation signals governance must now embed adversarial AI threat modeling into core incident-response frameworks and risk oversight.
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