Hackers leave fingerprints, Australia’s top cyber spy Rachel Noble says. The voluntary but confidential sharing of those tiny little markers that a cybercriminal has broken into a company allows the Australian Signals Directorate to see more attacks coming and stop them in their tracks.

As part of Microsoft’s $5 billion investment in Australia over two years, the ASD has become the first government agency anywhere in the world to integrate its own intelligence platform – Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing (CTIS) – with the US technology giant’s Sentinel threat monitoring software in Australia.