IBM’s global job cutting has hit Australia, with several sources indicating local layoffs have already begun. Australian layoffs are rumoured to total 1000. [ + ]

The recent exposure of the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) previously secret electronic surveillance program, PRISM, has triggered a glut of news stories around the globe over the last couple of weeks. Here’s a quick guide to the last week’s events. [ + ]

The bring your own device (BYOD) trend has been making its way into Australian enterprises, with personal smartphones and tablets being used more frequently by employees for professional purposes. The business benefits of BYOD are recognisable - rather than issuing company devices to workers frequently on the go, often through a formal and central procurement process, companies can permit employees to simply bring their own. [ + ]

With ethernet now 40 years old, it would be easy to say that most of the innovation cycle is done and that all we have ahead of us is incremental evolution. But is that true? What will your new network look like? [ + ]

Over the last couple of years, the IT landscape has made significant changes and there are more to come. With mobility, BYOD and cloud services changing the security profile of businesses and greater focus on regulatory compliance by regulators, the nature of managing compliance in IT departments is changing. [ + ]

The Queensland Government will cut at least 1700 public sector IT jobs over the next two years, as part of a cost-cutting strategy that will see the government outsource some of its IT and communications needs to the private sector. [ + ]

Australian telco IF Telecom leaks customer details via a publicly accessible server, and Google is reportedly set to buy social mapping developer Waze for more than US$1 billion. [ + ]

The Asia Cloud Forum, an online media portal, has been created to represent the interests of enterprise users, governments, telcos, vendors, policy makers and others with a stake in the development of cloud computing in Asia.

Microsoft’s latest operating system has been subject to much derision, confusion and rejection. The new tiled interface has received the greatest criticism, but perhaps Microsoft’s game is to take a longer view. [ + ]

Today, Australia is facing disruption on a number of fronts. Our resources boom is cycling down, equity is volatile and investment credit available to business is entering a new era of caution. Many eyes are looking to ICT even as technology itself continues to disrupt key areas of our lives such as health, retail, education, entertainment and even our sense of community and identity. [ + ]

The NBN asbestos debacle has deepened this week, with more dangerous sites continuing to be identified, talk of legal liability, the formation of an asbestos register and the head of one Telstra subcontractor leaving his company following the asbestos revelations. [ + ]

Adding even more ambiguity to the ASIO building blueprint hack story that first surfaced last week, Australian national security officials have denied reports that building plans for ASIO’s new headquarters were stolen by Chinese hackers. [ + ]

Last week during the Ethernet Innovation Summit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the establishment of the CloudEthernet Forum was announced. What is this forum, who’s in it and will it make a difference? [ + ]

The government wants to use an open standard for the common document format to be used by government agencies, loosening the current reliance on formats with Microsoft requirements. All archived documents should be saved in a standard format. [ + ]

The Australian federal government recently claimed that the IT industry accounts for “most” of the 457 visas granted to allow overseas workers to work in the country, and that IT salaries have dropped as a result. But these claims aren’t necessarily supported by official Department of Immigration statistics. [ + ]