Author: Chris Anu

AI is everywhere, but most teams don’t want more tools. They want their existing ones to work harder. That’s the promise of Atlassian Intelligence, and the focus of a live, 45-minute webinar hosted by Obsidian Systems, designed specifically for South African IT leaders, product managers and delivery teams looking for practical gains in productivity. Instead of another high-level AI pitch, the session will offer a realistic look at how Atlassian’s built-in intelligence features are being used inside Jira, Confluence and Jira Service Management. The goal is to help teams move faster, reduce repetitive work and make better use of the…

AI-created actors flatten storytelling as they lack lived experience. (Image: Nicola Mawson | Freepik) Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) characters are increasingly becoming celebrities, a trend that risks eroding humanity’s creative foundations and cultural identity, Hollywood warns.The rise of AI-generated personalities − such as actress Tilly Norwood, performer Lil Miquela, models Shudu and Imma, as well as the resurrection of Peter Cushing in Rogue One − also makes it harder for the public, regulators and courts to hold anyone accountable for harm.Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, says…

By paying ransomware, organisations are leaving themselves open to repeat attacks and long-term business disruption, according to Lloyd Timcke, regional director for Africa and Israel at cybersecurity firm Rubrik. At a cybersecurity event in Johannesburg last week, the company said attackers are increasingly exploiting identity systems such as Active Directory and cloud identity providers, allowing them to shut down entire businesses rather than only encrypting files. “Traditionally, organisations have focused on protecting data on-premises, but the environment has fundamentally changed,” Timcke told TechCentral in an interview. “Now you have cloud, applications, identity and unstructured data all converging. If you don’t…

Kerissa Varma, president of Women in Cybersecurity Southern Africa. Kerissa Varma, president of Women in Cybersecurity Southern Africa, will lead a fireside chat at the ITWeb Security Summit Cape Town 2026 on 26 May. The session will focus on the realities CISOs face when engaging with fellow board members.Varma will be joined by a panel of CISOs, including Chris Vermeulen, group information security officer at Sanlam. They will discuss challenges unique to their role that other security practitioners seldom encounter. Challenges to be explored include:Communicating risk levels to the board.Techniques for negotiating budget.Demonstrating the ROI and tangible benefits of major security…

The State IT Agency (Sita) has lashed out at the City of Tshwane after electricity was cut to one of its facilities in Pretoria, accusing the municipality of acting without due diligence and wrongly blaming the agency for unpaid electricity bills. In a strongly worded statement on Friday, Sita said claims circulating on social media – some amplified by municipal officials – that it owes Tshwane money for electricity are “factually incorrect” and amount to a misrepresentation of the circumstances that led to the disconnection. At the heart of the dispute is who holds the electricity account for the affected…

The Competition Commission has greenlit Stanlib to acquire Africa Data Centres without conditions. (Image source: 123RF, created via GenAI) The Competition Commission (CompCom) has recommended the Competition Tribunal approve the proposed transaction, whereby Stanlib intends to acquire Africa Data Centres (ADC), without conditions.Data centre operator ADC is a business unit of Pan-African technology group Cassava Technologies. In a statement issued yesterday, the competition watchdog says the primary acquiring firm is the Stanlib Infrastructure Fund II (Stanlib Fund II), an investment vehicle that focuses on renewable energy, digital infrastructure and logistics. The Stanlib Fund II, the firms it controls and its…

Image: Reuters TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, has finalised a deal to establish a majority American-owned joint venture that will secure US data, to avoid a US ban on the short video app used by over 200 million Americans. The deal is a milestone for the social media firm after years of battles that began in August 2020 when President Donald Trump tried to ban the app over national security concerns. Trump later opted not to enforce a law passed in April 2024 requiring ByteDance to sell its US assets by the following January or face a ban — a measure…

Petter Sveum, EMEA CTO, Cohesity. Data management firm Cohesity is hosting a webinar on 28 January at 10am, in collaboration with ITWeb, to discuss its Direct I/O architecture.Designed for NetBackup environments, Direct I/O aims to eliminate common bottlenecks to deliver fast, resilient backup and recovery during system failures or ransomware attacks. Moderated by writer and ITWeb Brainstorm contributor James Francis, the session will examine how the architecture affects performance, scale and operational efficiency.Petter Sveum, EMEA CTO at Cohesity, will explain how the technology helps companies minimise downtime and accelerate recovery after outages or cyber incidents. He will also explain why this storage…

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Laure Andrillon/Reuters Intel said it is struggling to satisfy demand for its server chips used in AI data centres, and forecast quarterly revenue and profit below market estimates, sending shares down 13% in after-hours trading on Thursday. The forecast underscores the difficulties faced by Intel in predicting global chip markets, where the company’s current products are the result of decisions made years ago. The company, whose shares have risen 40% in the past month, recently launched a long-awaited laptop chip designed to reclaim its lead in PCs just as a memory chip crunch is expected to…

HUMAIN and the National Infrastructure Fund (“Infra”) announced on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos, Switzerland, a Strategic Financing Framework Agreement of up to $1.2 billion to support the expansion of AI and digital infrastructure projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Framework Agreement outlines non-binding financing terms for HUMAIN’s development of up to 250 MW of hyperscale AI data center capacity. These data centers will deploy leading edge GPUs for AI training and inference and support HUMAIN’s local, regional and global customers. In addition, Infra and HUMAIN have agreed to explore…