Many encryption methods depend on very strict time synchronisation to confirm real vs malicious traffic.NTP is also used in banking, where rapid trading and processing funds transfers rely on pinpoint, millisecond network accuracy.Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady said she was "deeply sorry" for the failure."Telstra let Australians down Telstra has a critical role in the system, and we take that responsibility extremely seriously."No one should be left wondering whether a call for emergency help will get through."Gerard Tracey, the executive responsible for end-to-end service performance, said the supplier first warned about the impending issue in the SSU 2000 server, a 15-year-old piece of tech that costs about $30,000, in November 2020.The issue resulted in the timing server being reset to 2006, causing invalid authentication certificates to spread across the network and preventing customers from making calls and accessing data.Inquiry chair Sarah Hanson-Young questioned why the repeated warnings hadn't been acted on."This doesn't seem like a hardware matter