The ABS announced the census was back online days after its official date. Meanwhile Senator Nick Xenophon has said taxpayers should ask IBM for their money back. Even Treasurer Scott Morrison has raised the possibility of legal action. "If there are issues relating to the service provider in this case, then you could expect us to pursue that to the nth degree," Mr Morrison told ABC radio on Friday morning. Last night an IBM spokeswoman finally came out publicly to say the Australian Signals Directorate [ASD] confirmed no data was compromised and it "regret[s] the inconvenience that has occurred".

IBM relies on government contracts in Australia for millions of dollars of income. Credit:AP Photo/IBM "IBM's priority over the last two days was to work with the ABS to restore the census site. We are committed to our role in the delivery of this project...Our cyber-security experts are partnering with national intelligence agencies to ensure the ongoing integrity of the site," the spokeswoman said. 'Beggars belief' Yet it's too early to blame IBM for the bungle, says Kevin Noonan, lead analyst of government sector at IT consultancy firm Ovum. Eventually heads will roll because "this is a problem of such size that somebody needs to be held accountable," he said. These would likely be someone at the Bureau of Statistics or a government minister, he added.

"The detail of exactly what happened has not yet been independently reviewed. And as we saw in other stuff-ups, such as Queensland Health, when it was independently reviewed the blame was shared around quite a lot," Mr Noonan said. The attack was either a foreign or locally planned denial of service, or just a "large load" that appeared to be a denial of service but was in fact people trying to fill out the Census, he said. It "beggars belief" IBM's data centre could not handle a denial of service attack, he added. Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne on Friday contradicted previous government suggestions the census was attacked from overseas, stating the interference came from "elements here in Australia". The Prime Minister's office said the investigation continued, with the source of the trouble still unknown. IBM's Baulkam Hills data centre is connected by NextGen Networks and it would be easy to block denial of service attacks by adding layers of protection, according to NextGen's former managing director, Phil Sykes. "There are routers and router configurations that can be implemented that can begin to notice huge amounts of traffic, and then know that traffic can be blocked and discarded so the network does not get congested...its standard operating procedure," Mr Sykes said. Dedicated denial of service attacks are very common, he added.

"The sad part here is that the application owner [ABS] was probably not fully briefed on the likelihood of those circumstances occurring." Body blows Meanwhile, IBM's reputation has been taking body blows this week as the public looks for someone to blame for the inconvenience and incompetence. Director at communications and crisis management firm Sefiani, Nick Owens, said IBM has been too quiet this week, despite last night's statement. However, he would advise the company stick to written statements for now, rather than letting senior management speak freely. "I would imagine that their [US] head office is being kept abreast of it and is having a big say in how it is being handled [here] and certainly keeping a close eye on how the situation is unfolding. Because the reputation damage could spill over into some of their international operations as well and their large government clients in other countries. Absolutely, it would be a big issue for them globally," Mr Owens told Fairfax Media.

The company's lawyers would be closely monitoring whatever public statements IBM makes to ensure it doesn't complicate any potential litigation. "Lawyers always seem to want you to say less than what communications staff might," Mr Owens explained. "But at some point they may want to explain what has happened to their customers and, more importantly, to explain what they have done to ensure it doesn't happen again." IBM will have to do a lot to restore its reputation, particularly with government agencies that provide millions of dollars of work for the company every year. The ABS has paid IBM another $2.1 million over the past two and a half years, including $1.3 million to upgrade its backup and recovery systems in a project that will last until 2018. Federal Government departments have awarded a total of $1.35 billion in contracts to IBM since 2014, the AusTender website shows.

IBM was also involved in the 2010 payroll meltdown at Queensland Health which resulted in some78,000 workers being paid incorrectly or not at all. The government took IBM to court over its role in the systems upgrade mishap, which ended in April with Brisbane's Supreme Court dismissing the state's case and ordering it to cover IBM's costs. But Mr Noonan said the government's own review of the Queensland Health episode was critical of departmental failures too. 'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM?' Amy Burton-Bradley, consulting director at Julian Midwinter & Associates, which specialises in tenders in government, IT and financial services, said governments tender projects to outsource financial and political risks.