Founder & CTO, Sovrata · Founder of SureDrop

Rob Linton

I build data infrastructure that keeps secrets. Thirty years of it: a systems-integration CTO in the 2000s, one of the first AWS practitioner books in 2011, an encrypted file-sharing company that Senetas acquired, and now Sovrata, the AI data-governance venture out of Senetas, whose platform governs what AI is allowed to read.

If you are not cleared to open a document, neither is your AI assistant.

The record →About →Writing →
Rob Linton: studio portrait, arms crossed, black t-shirt and glasses
  • AWS Community Hero, 2015
  • Two-time Australian iAwards winner
  • Packt AWS author, 2011
  • Patent pending, sole inventor
  • Australian land-speed record holder
  • every claim cited →

The Data Pressure Index

the metrics →

A single daily number for the pressure AI is putting on enterprise data, net of how fast governance is catching up. Built from public, hard sources; an argument, not a prediction.

+0.91standard deviations · Building band · collecting daily since 14 August 2026open the index →
Higher is worse: more pressure on data, governance further behind.
2.1-0.24-2.5live data from 14 Aug 2026Jan '24Feb '25Mar '26Sep '26
Index level in standard deviations since 2024. Higher means more pressure on enterprise data: AI capability, adoption and threat activity running ahead of governance. Zero is the index's own long-run middle; below zero, governance is ahead. History to the left of today is reconstructed; the live archive builds forward.

The AI Governance Registry

the registry →

A curated, referenced list of official AI-governance publications, each a real linked document you can open. Its growth is the index's governance counterweight, and a source of truth in its own right.

  • 2026-09-11Agentic AI harnessesAustralian Signals Directorate, Australian Cyber Security Centre
  • 2026-09-10ASD releases new guidance on the agentic AI harnessesAustralian Signals Directorate, Australian Cyber Security Centre
  • 2026-09-03Information Security Manual, September 2026 release: new agentic AI controls (ISM-2133 to ISM-2135, ISM-2156 to ISM-2159)Australian Signals Directorate, Australian Cyber Security Centre
  • 2026-08-31Privacy Reform: exposure draft Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026 (fair and reasonable test; AI-derived information as a collection; 72-hour breach notification)Attorney-General's Department (Australia)
open the full registry →

Latest writing

all essays →

Sovereign data ·

Data custody: Taiwan asked where home is five years early

Where is home? A Taiwanese utility put SureDrop on premises as the world moved to cloud. Now the CLOUD Act, EU law, hyperscalers and AI vendors ask the same.

Governed AI data ·

The government just told CISOs to govern their AI's data

ASD's ACSC and three Five Eyes partners published AI adoption guidance in May. The real instruction is buried in the governance sections. A close read.

Governed AI data ·

What HAOS is: a governed AI data platform

HAOS is a governed AI data platform: one encrypted copy of your files, tables and vector data, and every read, person or AI agent, checked by one policy engine.

Building ·

You can't contain a blast radius you haven't measured

I built blast-radius, an open-source tool that maps everything a set of AWS credentials can reach, then draws it. Why measurement comes before containment.

From the notes

all notes →

Privacy reform: the draft 'fair and reasonable' test reaches what your AI reads · · re: Privacy Reform: Consultation on Exposure Draft legislation (Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026)

Short takes on the day's news: one cited source, one opinion, most days.