Australian Military Bank strengthens resilience and agility with Microsoft Azure and CBS

For Australian Military Bank, technology investment has always come back to one priority: delivering reliable, secure banking for its members. Many Australian Military Bank members serve in the Australian Defence Force and may be deployed, relocated or based far from home. That makes reliable, secure access to banking services essential, wherever they happen to be.

That same need for agility was increasingly difficult to support with Australian Military Bank’s ageing infrastructure and existing managed services model. “We were trying to evolve quicker than they could supply the infrastructure to us,” says Rizwan Dean, Head of Information Technology Operations & Security, Australian Military Bank. “It started holding us up in terms of our own evolution as a bank.”

Australian Military Bank needed a technology environment that could keep pace with its digital ambitions, strengthen security and resilience, support regulatory requirements and give staff greater flexibility.

More than an IT upgrade, the project ensured banking services remained reliable, secure and accessible under changing conditions. The Bank partnered with Canon Business Services ANZ (CBS), to build a modern cloud foundation based on Microsoft Azure.

Australian Military Bank had already demonstrated its appetite for digital transformation. The Bank was investing in automation and had moved to a modern cloud-based core banking platform.

Its underlying IT environment, however, was becoming a constraint.

Legacy and end-of-life infrastructure was harder to maintain, and the existing service model lacked the agility and resources Australian Military Bank needed to implement new initiatives quickly.

Then COVID-19 introduced another dimension.

As lockdowns began overseas, Australian Military Bank recognised that its existing remote access, telephony and collaboration arrangements could become a serious business continuity problem.

“We started looking at it and said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to maintain or manage the environment if we go into lockdown’,” Rizwan recalls. “How are we going to meet the requirements of users?”

Traditional office telephony was one obvious limitation. Staff relied on physical handsets, while the existing virtual desktop environment also needed to be adapted rapidly for large-scale remote access.

At the same time, Australian Military Bank couldn’t compromise on security or compliance. Any cloud environment had to satisfy the regulatory obligations that come with operating a financial institution.

“We said, if we’re going to move, we’re not going to move to another bricks-and-mortar based environment,” says Rizwan. “We’re going to move straight into cloud.” For Australian Military Bank, the business continuity challenge went beyond keeping employees productive. Members needed uninterrupted access to banking services regardless of what was happening around them. That made resilience a business and member service priority, not just an infrastructure concern.

CBS worked closely with Australian Military Bank to transition infrastructure from the incumbent provider and establish a Microsoft Azure environment designed around the Bank’s longer-term requirements.

The program went well beyond moving servers from one location to another. It included:

The migration itself used staged cutovers, parallel operations and user acceptance testing to minimise disruption.

CBS also worked directly with Australian Military Bank’s incumbent provider where appropriate, allowing the Bank’s technology leaders to concentrate on building the new environment.

“CBS' technical resources were good enough that we could let them talk to the previous provider about the things they needed for disengagement while we focused on building the environment,” says Rizwan.

That division of responsibilities proved important when time was at a premium.

Despite the scale of the change, Australian Military Bank deliberately kept the experience straightforward for employees.

Rather than asking staff to learn an entirely new way of working, the team maintained a familiar desktop experience while changing the technology underneath it.

“There was little to no training required,” Rizwan explains. “We simply gave our people a new login, and everything worked intuitively from there.”

A short user acceptance testing period allowed staff to identify issues, with Australian Military Bank and CBS resolving them as they arose.

The result became even more valuable as COVID restrictions continued.

“When lockdown two happened, it was smooth sailing for everyone,” says Rizwan. “Our support teams could remotely troubleshoot users. We could deploy hardware when new staff joined, and they could log in and start working straight away.”

For Australian Military Bank however, remote access was only useful if it remained secure.

The new architecture strengthened identity and access controls, endpoint protection, network security, patching, monitoring and backup while supporting alignment with the Bank’s regulatory obligations.

“We could give our staff remote access while still leveraging the security that came with Microsoft Azure,” says Rizwan. “With CBS’s help, supporting remote work was easy while meeting the requirements around managing a secure cloud environment.”

Business continuity was a strategic priority from the outset, reflecting Australian Military Bank’s responsibility to keep critical banking services available to members and staff during outages or disruptive events. The team designed business continuity into the environment rather than treating it as an add-on.

Azure Site Recovery replicated between Azure regions, while geo-redundant backups, high-availability file services, and diverse network paths reduced reliance on any single environment. Failover testing, disaster recovery runbooks and documented recovery processes gave Australian Military Bank a more structured and repeatable approach to resilience.

CBS and Australian Military Bank also developed disaster recovery runbooks and tested recovery processes, giving both organisations clear responsibilities if an incident occurred.

That collaboration continues today.

More recently, Australian Military Bank invited CBS to participate alongside the Australian Signals Directorate in a cyber war-game exercise.

“We invited CBS because they’re a key partner,” says Rizwan. “In the event of a cyberattack, they need to know what we expect from them, and we need to know what they expect from us.”

By working through the simulated incident together, both teams tested their runbooks, roles and responsibilities before a real event required them.

“It worked really well,” he says. “We’ve always ensured CBS is part of everything we do where possible. They’ll continue to be a key stakeholder.”

The initial migration solved an immediate problem, but its greater value has been the foundation it created.

Australian Military Bank now operates on a scalable cloud environment that allows its technology team to respond more quickly to changing business and member needs. “Even now, we’re still feeling the benefits every day,” says Rizwan. “The things my team can work through and the solutions they’re able to quickly deliver to the business when required are impressive.”

The move also created a more integrated Microsoft environment. Microsoft Teams reduced reliance on traditional telephony, Azure Virtual Desktop provided secure access for remote staff, and Power BI gave the Bank stronger reporting and analytical capability to support better decision-making.

For Australian Military Bank, that agility ultimately comes back to its members.

“Everything we do at the end of the day is about delivering something that helps our members,” Rizwan says. “They can be deployed all across the world, so we need to give them solutions that let them access their funds and send money to their families when they need to. And we have to do it securely.”

The original cloud transformation has evolved into a much broader relationship spanning managed services, infrastructure, security and strategic technology planning.

In June 2026, Australian Military Bank renewed its agreement with Canon Business Services ANZ for another five years, covering Cloud, Managed Services and SD-WAN. The length of that renewal is significant.

“Normally, under our internal policy, we re-sign for three years,” says Rizwan. “But because the performance has been so good, we went to the Board and said, ‘Let’s do five. It’s worth it."

That trust has developed through years of working together on both day-to-day operations and increasingly sophisticated technology and security initiatives.

Australian Military Bank describes CBS as a strategic partner that understands its business objectives, regulatory requirements and security obligations, while providing the expertise needed to make informed technology decisions.

The relationship has evolved well beyond the original migration. CBS now supports Australian Military Bank across cloud, managed services, networking, security and strategic planning, giving the Bank access to expertise as its technology requirements continue to evolve.

With the core cloud foundation now established, Australian Military Bank is focusing on using it to improve security, employee experience and digital services for members.

Its roadmap includes broader use of AI and Microsoft Copilot, continued robotic process automation, further cloud and network security uplift, and potential modernisation of its data warehouse into a more dynamic Microsoft Azure-based data platform.

The Bank has also implemented Microsoft Data Loss Prevention controls and access-management capabilities for third-party providers as part of its continuing cybersecurity program.

For Rizwan, one of the partnership’s advantages is that CBS can evolve alongside that ambition.

“CBS has been with us every step of the way,” he says. “We’ll keep leveraging them where we need them.”

For other financial institutions considering cloud transformation, Australian Military Bank’s experience also carries an important lesson: start with the business’ risk and regulatory outcomes rather than viewing migration as a simple infrastructure exercise.

The technology matters. But resilience, security, governance and user adoption matter just as much. For Australian Military Bank, choosing a partner capable of supporting all those priorities and evolving with the Bank over time, has been central to the outcome.

Build a more resilient, agile cloud environment with CBS

Canon Business Services ANZ helps financial institutions modernise critical infrastructure while balancing security, compliance, resilience and operational performance.

From cloud transformation and managed IT services to secure networking, disaster recovery and cybersecurity, we bring the expertise needed to modernise with confidence - and keep evolving after go-live.

Talk to Canon Business Services ANZ about your cloud transformation strategy.