Melbourne CIO Executive Summit

Exclusive to community members, this "open house" style reception is a can’t-miss opportunity to connect with your peers prior to tomorrow’s Executive Summit. Please join your colleagues for an evening of good food, wine, and lively networking.

Over the past year, we partnered with more than 100 organisations to defeat ransomware attacks. Join our session to find out what strategies worked for these CISOs, and how you can build on their experience to secure your network. Ransomware attacks have evolved, but if you identify the threat early on, technologies already in place can eliminate it with no need for additional spend.

Join us and discover:

• Real-world case study: The anatomy of a heavyweight ransomware attack
• Key pitfalls commonly overlooked by security teams
• Quick wins for preventing ransomware attacks without investing in additional technologies

Transformation is critical for any organisation to succeed, and technology-enabled change has become a widespread means of improving responsiveness to competition and customer satisfaction. In the current climate of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, every IT leader has had to up their change game. To strategically transform, leaders need to deliver tech at speed, innovate at scale and put humans at the centre by effectively managing the changes associated with both people and processes.

In this session Mary Beth, CIO, Pointsbet will cover:

• The quickly changing technology landscape and what is the greatest potential impact on your organisation or industry
• How to continuously renew ways of working and reinvigorate approaches to talent to match the pace of market change
• What it takes to deliver in a world where technology never stands still and leaders must know how to be a more engaged, dynamic, and active

The digital age may be upon us but technology quality is stuck in the industrial era posing risk to effective digital transformation. To succeed, IT and security leads must reimagine the role of quality in their organisations by shifting focus from inspection, cost and control to a mindset aligned to vision, customer experience, business outcomes, and IT implementation.

Join this session to discuss:

• Identifying and aligning customer needs and digital transformation initiatives to drive business outcomes
• Integrating customer-centric technologies as part of IT operating models
• Improving technology quality for enhanced customer experience through applications

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to CxOs).

Digital transformation is a powerful business enabler that is compelling leaders to fundamentally change their technology ecosystems. The potential of technology to unlock value and drive progress has never been greater and the imperative to transform your business, securely, has never been more urgent. With data, users, and devices everywhere, how can technology leaders reimagine cybersecurity in a world without boundaries?

Join this keynote to hear strategies on:

• Accelerating transformation with innovative security services, and communicating their value to the business
• Scaling and simplifying security across the organisation, minimizing risk, and gaining agility
• Protecting today's cloud-first, hybrid workforce with a proactive, intelligent, and radically simple security architecture

What are the keys to security failure? Join this session to hear from Stephen Moore the Vice President and the Chief Security Strategist at Exabeam. He will discuss why security teams, specifically the SOC, fail when not aligned to adversary capabilities, leadership, and internal politics. Then, learn how to make your team more resilient using a simple model based on outcomes and use cases formed during breach response.

The session will also cover: 

• How to use available observations and outcomes to preempt failure
• How to avoid making decisions in a vacuum of experience
• A review of common shortcomings and observations
• A take-home exercise for security leadership and SOC capability (tabletop and thought experiment)

In an era where data is widely regarded as ‘the new oil’, AI and machine learning are rapidly emerging as the primary drivers that fuel the broader digital economy. As organisations adapt, becoming more AI-powered, technology leaders must take a step back and consider the ethical responsibilities this entails. Perennial questions remain about how emerging tech will affect the skill needs of the future, what career paths will look like alongside the rise of augmented human AI, and where the concomitant risks lie. All these questions must be addressed if technology leaders hope to employ an ethical, scalable AI model.

Join this boardroom with Annie South, Chief Data and AI officer, Telstra, as we consider:

• How can you build an ethical, scalable model for an AI-powered organisation?
• What role does data play in the adoption of AI?
• How is emerging tech going to affect the skills of the future?

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to CxOs).

Passwords are the keys to our digital kingdom. They allow employees, partners, and sometimes customers to access a broad range of tools and systems that enable them to work, collaborate, and transact. Passwords are also notoriously weak as a security tool, and their problems remain at an all-time high unless we take the proper steps to manage and protect them adequately. Statistics from reports such as the 2022 annual Verizon DBIR show that approximately 80% of breaches are related to credential theft. Against this backdrop, a pertinent question is how do you manage your passwords and reduce human behaviour risk, given that humans are the weakest link?

The session covers:

• How does password management fit into your cybersecurity strategy?
• How can businesses reduce the risk of human behaviours?
• Why going beyond SSO and MFA will help enhance your cybersecurity posture and productivity
• How business can accelerate Passwordless authentication

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to CxOs).

Connect with like-minded peers in a one-on-one setting through Evanta’s Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

Across the board, security leaders are realising that it's no longer effective to focus purely on skills and experience when hiring an ideal security team. There's been increased pressure to get creative and think outside the box when attracting and retaining emerging security leaders.

Join this session to discuss:

• Implementing proactive strategies to hire emerging security leaders
• Looking beyond the surface for competencies to creatively upskill and align employees with appropriate roles
• Executing immediate retention practices to maintain your team

Around the world, there’s a heightened awareness of the value and risks associated with data in the digital age. From high-visibility data breaches to increased regulation, the debate about what’s at stake and what to do about it rages on. There is no shortage of data available to the security function, but insights – the signals of a real threat that demands action — are a different story. Technology leaders who can derive meaningful findings from their environments can better detect threats with fewer resources — a difficult, ongoing challenge as organisations become increasingly digital and complex.

Join this boardroom to discuss

• How to improve your data security posture management by accelerating visibility, classification, and actionable insight across all types of enterprise data
• Why organisations need to make privacy more central to how they deliver customer value
• How to effectively respond to a third-party data breach

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to CxOs).

The role of the CIO today looks very different from what it did just a year ago, with opportunities to contribute well beyond the traditional IT function. CIOs can actively contribute as chief digital officers, lead major digital initiatives, be more active in strategy development, and enable other executives to contribute to the digital agenda.

So, how will the CIO role evolve to continue to drive digital growth, transformation, and acceleration?

Join this session to discuss:

• Understanding the inhibitors of enabling digital acceleration and how you can advance the CIO role to match organisational needs
• Building an IT organisation around you to drive digital business acceleration while also managing the looming cyber risk posed by digitalisation
• What new skills do CIOs need to expand their digital ambitions, build and operate a successful digital enterprise

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to CxOs).

At the very top of the world, as in the business world, constant change means we’re all navigating new terrain. Come together and bounce back from the greatest disruptive event of our generation, while being inspired by 3x world record-breaking adventurer Daniel Bull. He shares powerful and practical strategies learnt from Everest to Antarctica and beyond while empowering you to defy limits, grasp opportunities, and conquer your own mountains – in work and in life.

Daniel will share:

• Proven strategies for dealing with unrelenting change
• Powerful insights on courageous leadership in the face of ongoing uncertainty
• What it takes to reach the top – adopting a growth mindset and boosting resilience despite epic challenges