CISO Brisbane schedule

During this 5-minute networking session, participants can build their network. Have fun!  

• Aligning security initiatives with business objectives and board priorities.
• Defining measurable outcomes to demonstrate the effectiveness of cyber programs.
• Embedding a culture of resilience: Driving accountability, visibility, and proactive risk management across the enterprise.
• Preparing for emerging technologies, regulatory pressures, and increasingly sophisticated threats for a future-ready leader.

Panellists

Mick McHugh Group Chief Information Security Officer Virgin Australia

Martin Holzworth CISO UnitingCare Queensland 

• Unpack the challenges of scaling innovation across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
• Showcase strategies for maintaining security and compliance while accelerating deployment.
• Demonstrate how automation and orchestration can simplify complexity without introducing risk.
• Highlight real-world examples of organisations achieving agility and resilience in cloud ecosystems.

•  Boards expect security to enable innovation not just prevent breaches. How must CISO adapt to lead this shift? 
  
• Showcase how cyber resilience can move beyond compliance to become a strategic advantage.
• Explain the link between resilience, customer trust, and competitive positioning.
• Demonstrate practical steps for embedding resilience into business growth strategies.

In an era of escalating vulnerabilities, building cyber resilience has become a cornerstone of sustainable business growth. This session highlights how intelligent security architecture—integrating automation, zero‑trust principles, and unified visibility—enables organisations to transform risk into long‑term trust.

As organisations race to innovate, security often lags behind, creating friction and risk. This panel asks the critical question: can security truly keep pace with business demands? Join industry leaders as they share strategies for integrating security seamlessly into operations, leveraging automation responsibly, and measuring success in terms that matter to the business.

• Examine why traditional security models struggle in fast-moving business environments.
• Discuss practical strategies for embedding security into agile workflows.
• Evaluate how automation and AI can accelerate security without increasing risk.
• Define metrics that demonstrate security’s impact on business resilience and speed.

Speakers

Nikki Peever Director Cyber Security CAUDIT

Darron Richardson Director, Digital Resilience and Operations (CISO) Southern Cross University

Senior Representative Rubrik

• Explore how autonomous agents are transforming enterprise intelligence and decision-making.
• Explain why strategic alignment is critical to harness AI without creating chaos.
• Showcase practical use cases where agent-driven automation accelerates business outcomes.
• Highlight governance frameworks that ensure scalability, security, and ethical AI adoption.

Employees increasingly rely on AI to manage workloads, often outside approved channels. Sensitive data is pasted into prompts, shadow tools appear, and new exfiltration paths emerge. How should we focus on enabling safe adoption while maintaining trust and protecting business-critical data?

• Identify role-specific AI risks by mapping how each team uses data, handles sensitive information, and interacts with AI tools.

• Design tiered access models that balance productivity with risk tolerance across functions with different regulatory and data sensitivities.
• Embed practical micro-training so employees understand safe AI use within the context of their day-to-day tasks.
• Monitor usage patterns to catch early signs of unsafe behaviour or shadow AI adoption before it creates broader business exposure.

Speakers

James Court Chief Security Officer Cleanaway Waste Management

Jane Hogan France Senior Manager Cyber Security Allianz Australia

Senior Representative Airlock

As organisations accelerate their digital transformation, the cyber threat landscape is evolving at unprecedented speed. This keynote explores how AI‑powered security capabilities are reshaping threat detection, response, and prevention—empowering businesses to stay ahead of sophisticated attacks.

• Unpack why traditional awareness programs fail to deliver measurable impact.
• Showcase practical frameworks that embed security awareness into daily workflows.
• Demonstrate how to tailor awareness initiatives to different roles and risk profiles.
• Highlight metrics and methods for tracking behavioural change and reducing human risk.

Effective cyber governance goes hand-in-hand with robust cyber hygiene. This panel brings together senior CISOs and governance experts to discuss how organisations can embed accountability, oversight, and practical security practices into daily operations. Communicating cyber risks, hygiene gaps, and compliance readiness at the leadership level. Lastly, discussing metrics to track both governance effectiveness and hygiene adherence across teams by translating policies into daily practices that prevent breaches and minimise human error.

Speakers

Halilu Makintami Principal Information Security Advisor Corporate Services, Department of Customer Service, Open Data and Small and Family Business (CDSB)

Paul Bilic Group Head of Cyber Operations  Domino’s

• Analyse the security implications of AI-driven automation in high-pressure environments.
• Develop robust frameworks to safeguard automated workflows against emerging threats.
• Integrate governance and compliance controls into AI-powered operational models.
• Implement continuous monitoring and adaptive response strategies for resilient automation.

• Expose the hidden risks in multi-cloud and API-driven architectures that attackers exploit.
• Explain why traditional security models fail to address API sprawl and cloud complexity.
• Demonstrate practical strategies for securing APIs and reducing blind spots in cloud ecosystems.
• Highlight governance and automation techniques that enable visibility and resilience at scale.

• Developing actionable strategies to combat hyper-personalised and sophisticated attacks.
• Understanding the wide-reaching impact of AI in the proliferation of social engineering.
• Establishing a clear protocol for addressing breaches that result from social engineering. 

• Demonstrate how SOCI compliance strengthens cyber and operational resilience.
• Explain the collaborative approach to integrating IT, OT, and business teams through development, implementation and ongoing management of the CIRMP.
• Highlight lessons learned from embedding cyber and the CIRMP into broader enterprise risk management.
• Showcase practical steps for continuous improvement of the CIRMP and using Essential Eight adoption as the base control framework.

In the modern enterprise responding to cyber threats is harder than ever. Even the largest businesses with vast resources are getting breached.

In this session we'll discuss a new approach to detect and respond faster, to help keep enterprises running even when a breach occurs, and how we can stay one step ahead of the most advanced threat actors.

Modern organisations depend on deep, interconnected SaaS and cloud ecosystems that few fully understand. Most security programs still overlook the components inside vendor products, the AI tools staff use daily, and the opaque fourth-party services that create silent exposure. This panel unpacks how to build visibility and reduce blast radius when suppliers fail.

Speakers

Gabriela Guiu-Sorsa Information Security Principal Advisor Cyber Security Champions of Tomorrow

Stuart Low Business Information Security Advisor Telstra

• Adapting security strategies for cloud, hybrid, and remote environments.
• Ensuring perimeter security policies are enforced and measurable.
• Integrating firewalls, zero-trust approaches, and network segmentation to reduce risk.
• Preparing for emerging threats, IoT risks, and cross-border attack vectors.

• Safety vs. Security considerations amongst critical infrastructure.
• Secure by Design for OT systems and managing enterprise risk.
• Integration of service providers into the cyber operations ecosystem.
• Scalable incident response and enabling crisis management.

• Navigating the rapid rise of AI-driven attacks and sophisticated cyber threats.
• Building agile cyber security strategies while fostering team resilience in times of uncertainty.
• Balancing risk management with innovation to drive organizational growth and trust.

A quick 5-minute dive into how Cythera leverages security automation to dramatically reduce response times and eliminate noise, enabling our security operations team to focus on what truly matters—real threats and meaningful customer engagement.

• Explain why threat intelligence is critical for proactive defense in today’s dynamic threat landscape.
• Showcase how organisations can integrate threat intelligence into decision-making and incident response.
• Demonstrate practical use cases for automation and AI in accelerating threat analysis.
• Highlight strategies for prioritising intelligence to focus on the most exploitable vulnerabilities. 

Get ready for a high‑energy look into the future of cyber. This session brings sharp, uncompromising forecasts on how AI‑driven threats, identity attacks, OT‑IT convergence risks, and global regulatory shifts will reshape the security landscape in 2026. Our experts will reveal the disruptions no one is prepared for, challenge industry assumptions, and help CISOs walk away with actionable foresight to strengthen resilience in the year ahead.

Facilitators

Prof. Dan Haagman CEO Chaleit