Forward thinkers are aggregating pools of end-to-end 'compute' resources with an advanced set of economics and automated approaches to power a new style of business. [ + ]

Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand is working with Microsoft and Westpac on a predictive analytics platform for chartered accountants. [ + ]

The government has announced a new National Innovation and Science Agenda involving investing $1.1bn over four years to improve Australia's ability to commercialise innovative ideas. [ + ]

Apple and Adobe products topped the October list of the top 20 most vulnerable products in a report from Flexera, but Microsoft had the most products represented in three monthly top 20s due to Flash flaws.

Telstra leaves 26,000 customers' Cisco devices open to attack, BlackBerry to quit Pakistan due to government snooping, and toymaker VTech's customer data stolen. [ + ]

A research study has shown that curiosity plays a hugely important role in personal and professional lives, with respondents identifying that it has helped them achieve great things in both. [ + ]

By educating the workforce on novel ways to identify and use data, CDOs can help their organisations to manage it as a strategic asset. [ + ]

Research from MasterCard suggests that 64% of Australian consumers prefer to use contactless payment to cash for transactions under $100. [ + ]

Dr Lachlan Blackhall, the Australian founder of a company developing the first advanced energy storage control systems capable of trading distributed solar energy, has won ATSE's first Batterham Medal. [ + ]

This week: Solving Rubik's cube in 5 seconds, billion-dollar banking blunder, ACT drivers hit with old fines, and IT blooper forces Irish drivers to re-sit tests. [ + ]

When your website's performance is on the line, it's important to gain the intelligence and visibility needed to optimise traffic routing, performance, costs and availability of your internet assets. [ + ]

The ACS has published a series of recommendations for improving female participation in Australia's ICT workforce, which remains at a level significantly lower than the average for all professions. [ + ]

Internet Australia has expressed a concern that the proposed new telecom sector security reforms amendment could have major unintended consequences if not carefully handled by the government. [ + ]

Tyro Payments, the Australian EFTPOS provider seeking to disrupt the banks with its payment platform, has secured $100m in new investment funding. [ + ]

High-profile incidents of hackers compromising connected devices have given some CIOs pause when it comes to embracing the Internet of Things. [ + ]