Australian cybersecurity firm CyberCX has acquired Brisbane AI security startup Avertly in an AUD 120 million deal, expanding its AI threat detection capabilities for enterprise and government clients.
Tech & Ideas Desk is a contributing writer covering tech and public affairs for The Sydney Times.
Australian cybersecurity firm CyberCX has acquired Brisbane AI security startup Avertly in an AUD 120 million deal, expanding its AI threat detection capabilities for enterprise and government clients. The acquisition is the largest in Australian cybersecurity since the sector consolidated around CyberCX, Tider, and Secure Logic in 2024 and 2025, and it signals that AI-powered threat detection is becoming a competitive requirement rather than a differentiator in the enterprise security market. Avertly's technology uses machine learning models trained on Australian network traffic patterns to detect threats that generic security tools miss, including insider threats, supply chain attacks, and AI-generated phishing content.
The acquisition price reflects the strategic value of Avertly's Australian training data rather than its revenue. The startup had annual revenue of roughly AUD 8 million at the time of the acquisition, with most of that revenue coming from government contracts with the Australian Cyber Security Centre and state government agencies. The price-to-revenue multiple of 15 times is high for the cybersecurity sector, but CyberCX is paying for the data moat that Avertly has built through its government partnerships, as well as the team of machine learning engineers who developed the threat detection models. The data moat is valuable because threat detection models require large volumes of labelled network traffic to train effectively, and Avertly's access to Australian government network data gives it a training advantage that competitors cannot easily replicate.
Avertly's primary product is an AI-powered email and messaging security platform that detects phishing, business email compromise, and social engineering attacks that bypass traditional rule-based filters. The platform analyses message content, sender behaviour, and network context to identify suspicious communications, and it uses machine learning to adapt to new attack patterns without requiring manual rule updates. The adaptive capability is important because phishing attacks are becoming more sophisticated, with AI-generated content that is grammatically perfect, contextually relevant, and visually indistinguishable from legitimate communications.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre reported in its 2026 threat report that AI-generated phishing attacks increased by 300 percent over the past year, with the majority of attacks targeting Australian financial services and government agencies. The report noted that traditional email security filters are detecting AI-generated phishing at roughly half the rate of human-written phishing, because the AI-generated content does not contain the spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and awkward phrasing that rule-based filters use as signals. Avertly's machine learning models are trained on a dataset that includes both human-written and AI-generated phishing examples, which gives them the ability to detect attacks that bypass traditional filters.
CyberCX's acquisition of Avertly gives the combined company a stronger position in the Australian government cybersecurity market, where both companies already have significant market share. CyberCX provides managed security services to most federal government agencies, while Avertly provides AI threat detection tools to the Australian Cyber Security Centre and several state government agencies. The combined offering allows CyberCX to sell a more comprehensive security stack that includes both managed services and AI-powered threat detection, which is attractive to government agencies that prefer to work with a single security provider rather than multiple vendors.
The enterprise market is also a growth opportunity, with Australian enterprises facing increasing pressure from regulators and cyber insurers to implement AI-powered threat detection capabilities. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has indicated that it expects regulated institutions to implement advanced threat detection systems that can identify sophisticated attacks including AI-generated phishing and supply chain compromises. CyberCX's acquisition of Avertly gives the company a product that meets that expectation, and it positions the combined company to win enterprise security contracts that require AI capabilities as a mandatory selection criterion.
The Australian cybersecurity market is consolidating around a small number of large providers that can offer comprehensive security stacks including managed detection and response, threat intelligence, and AI-powered detection. CyberCX is the largest pure-play Australian cybersecurity firm, with annual revenue estimated at AUD 400 million and a client base that includes most federal government agencies and many large enterprises. The acquisition of Avertly strengthens CyberCX's position relative to its main competitors, including Tider, which acquired AI security startup Darktrace's Australian operations in 2025, and the Australian operations of global firms including Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike.
The consolidation trend is driven by enterprise buyers that prefer to work with a single security provider that can deliver the full range of security services, rather than managing multiple point solutions. The trend is reinforced by cyber insurers that are requiring policyholders to implement specific security controls before issuing or renewing policies, and AI-powered threat detection is increasingly on the list of required controls. The market structure favours large providers that can offer comprehensive solutions backed by professional services and support, which is why CyberCX and its competitors are acquiring AI security startups rather than building the capabilities internally. Explore more cybersecurity analysis at the Tech & Ideas hub
For CyberCX's acquisition announcement, see CyberCX news. Avertly's product documentation is at Avertly. The Australian Cyber Security Centre's 2026 threat report is published at ACSC.
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