A massive migration that has raised concerns.

COMMONBANK’S BIG MOVE

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has completed the migration of its entire data platform and core banking system to Amazon Web Services (AWS), marking one of the largest financial cloud transitions undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere.

In a recent interview, CBA’s group executive for technology, Gavin Munroe, confirmed that the bank’s core banking system – covering the ledgers for deposits, loans and transaction processing – was moved into AWS-managed data centres late last month.

The 18-month project, which replaced CBA’s mainframe infrastructure, makes it the first of Australia’s major retail banks to fully migrate its core to the public cloud.

Boy, oh boy.

According to the bank, the migration of its enterprise data platform began in mid-2024 and involved transferring more than 61,000 data pipelines to AWS in partnership with HCLTech – another third-party offshore tech company.

The project is described as “one of CBA’s most significant technology transformations”.

Terri Sutherland, CBA’s Lead for Data Platforms, said the migration “underpins the bank’s ability to deliver highly personalised services using AI”.

“We’re now making around 55 million AI-driven decisions every day across more than 2,000 models built on 157 billion data points,” she said.

“The cloud platform gives us the flexibility and scale needed to continue that growth.”

55 million decisions are made every day.. by AI?

What an artificial, human-less world we are heading towards.

You think it’s bad not being able to speak to a human when contacting a customer support team now? This proves that even those making the day-to-day decisions on transactions, loans, savings and more.. are also not human.

Outside of cloud migration, CBA has been committing to embedding AI in its operations. In August, it published further details of its internal AI strategy, highlighting a dedicated “AI-Powered Engineering” effort and a strategic partnership with OpenAI.

An offshore corporation involved in the key processes of an Australian giant.

Speaking of just that, the fact that Amazon – another offshore behemoth – will be hosting the entire Commonwealth Bank database is equally troubling.

Although has been determined that all data must still be hosted at Amazon facilities inside of Australia, this has not stopped cyber security experts raising alarm bells.

“Although AWS operates local data centres within Australia, it remains a United States-based corporation,” said Dr. Nalin Arachchilage, Associate Professor in Cyber Security.

“This raises legitimate concerns about jurisdictional control and potential foreign government access. For a bank entrusted with sensitive financial and personal data, ensuring strict contractual, regulatory, and technical safeguards is essential to uphold data sovereignty and consumer privacy.”

Concerns with CBA moving its core banking system to AWS also include potential single points of failure and reliance on a third-party provider, and the risk of security vulnerabilities that could be exploited, although CBA “aims to mitigate this”.

Sure, we trust you.

If I was a member of Commonwealth Bank, I would be very alarmed by where this is going, especially considering the amount of breaches and hacks in recent years.

And, as I will prove to you in a moment – the COVID period already taught us that Amazon Web Services are indeed not immune to U.S government requests.

DATA ACCESSED BY THE U.S?

The potential for foreign interference, as Dr. Nalin Arachchilage raises, is very real.

However, as soon as I heard the name Amazon Web Services, I was instantly reminded of an article I wrote throughout the COVID period on exactly this subject.

If you remember, Australian authorities awarded Amazon a storage contract for the COVIDSafe tracing app, sending the data of millions to their clouds.

The federal government defended its decision to allow the application’s data-storage capabilities to be turned over to Amazon in similar fashion to what we are seeing now.

Digital Transformation Agency Chief, Randall Brugeaud, told a Senate Inquiry into the government’s COVID-19 response that the hyperscale cloud provider was chosen due to “…the extent of services offered, which extends beyond hosting”.

The contract, which set the government back $710,000 between April and October of 2020, was for “a combination of hosting, development and operational services”.

Amazon to host COVIDSafe app data
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Here is where things get interesting though.

At the time, there was major discussion surrounding the CLOUD Act, which is a 2018 U.S law that requires American cloud services to produce, under subpoena, data held by them directly to United States authorities.

Now, traditionally, companies and individuals who have had their data handed over to U.S authorities can go through an appeals process to retain their information.

Australia’s peak legal body, the Law Council, says that under current arrangements, the appeal avenues under the CLOUD Act “would not have application” in Australia.

So, why would this not be the same with Commonwealth Bank?

Could Australian citizens, under the CLOUD Act, have their personal data handed over to the United States government via Amazon?

Why are we even discussing this regarding something as important as banking?

Have they lost their minds?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, this has been part of their plan all along.

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