Former CTO of Lonely Planet, Gus has since held advisory Board roles for initiatives like travel-data analysis service Volantino, and pre-paid data roaming provider DataGO. Today he’s Director of management consultancy The Roshambo Group, helping businesses grow and innovate, and co-founder of Sneaky Surf, an app that helps surfers surf more.
Pete is CEO of Avalanche Technology Group and a Venture Partner at Giant Leap Fund, Australia's first VC fund dedicated to investing into “impact businesses”. He is an active angel investor with over 15 investments in early stage businesses and venture funds. Pete previously founded, owned and was CEO of the APAC business for AVG Technologies, which he exited in 2012.
Debra is a Consultant CTO and Scale Up Strategist. As CTO of Dimension Data Group Australia previously, Debra lead the strategy for the group regarding future technologies, offerings and partnerships. She was previously at Hewlett Packard, as their Chief Technologist, Innovation Leader for the APJ office of the CTO, and Leader – Innovation and Industry Initiatives for HP’s Enterprise Services division.
Vaughan is the Founder of CYDARM, a platform that enables cybersecurity operations teams to perform at their best. Vaughan was previously a Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir Technologies, and prior to that spent almost a decade working in the Australian Department of Defence. Vaughan holds a PhD in Computer Science, specialising in high scale machine learning.
Dr Silvio Cesare has worked in technical roles and been involved in computer security for over 20 years. He has worked commercially in both defensive and offensive roles within engineering. He is now the Director for Education and Training at UNSW Canberra Cyber. He also the co-founder of BSides Canberra - Australia's largest cyber security conference, and is a co-founder of InfoSect - a security hackerspace in Canberra. He has a Ph.D. from Deakin University.
Rachael is the Chief Executive Officer of the Cyber Security Research Centre Limited (Cyber CRC). The Cyber CRC is a not-for-profit company that will deliver innovative research and solutions with an Australia-wide approach in response to the ever changing cyber threat landscape. Rachael has held several senior roles in cyber security both at Telstra and in other industries. Prior to making the move into cyber security, Rachael practiced as a lawyer for fifteen years.
Terrie Anderson is the VP (APAC) for RiskIQ. Previously she was the Regional Director for Asia Pacific Region for Venafi, the Machine Identity Protection company. Terrie has over 20 years of experience in the cyber security industry and is considered a trusted adviser to many CIO's, board members and digital leaders. Prior to joining Venafi, she has held senior commercial positions at Cyber Sec vendors Entrust, Symantec, and RSA Security.
If you think Alfred looks familiar, that’s probably because he was named one of Australia’s Top 50 startup influencers by Startup Daily. A longtime Startmate mentor, he has been the Investor-in-Residence at deep technology incubator Cicada Innovations, co-founded and led Singtel Innov8’s investment activities as Optus-Innov8 in Australia, and been the Head of AMP New Ventures.
Three-time CEO Adrian cofounded and lead AngelCube, Australia’s first venture accelerator, which made investments in 31 local startups. Today he’s Founding Chairman of Investors’ Organisation, Australia’s leading forum for investors focused on tech startups.
Fresh from a four-year stint as Vice President of Accel Partners in London, James is a Partner at AirTree Ventures, which has raised more than $306 million to find growth and scale-up-stage software companies. His focus is on enterprise software and cybersecurity, and before joining Airtree he covered Israel for Accel and worked with several of their cybersecurity investments including Forgerock, Aorato, Demisto and Crowdstrike. James is also the founder of Bipsync - a West Coast based and venture backed fintech startup.
Nick is the Global Head of Strategy, Consulting & Professional Services at Trustwave. He was previously the co-Founder of Hivint and cybersecurity collaboration portal Security Colony, as well as an Advisor to Bugcrowd. Before that Nick was co-founder of cyber-security firms SIFT and Stratsec, sold to BAE Systems in 2010, followed by a stint as a corporate adviser focused on the cybersecurity industry. He has served on boards and forums including the Internet Industry Association, the NATA AAC for Software Testing, UNSW Advisory Boards, and the APEC TEL Security & Prosperity Steering Group.
Craig is the Director, Consulting & Professional Services (Pacific) at Trustwave. Prior to that he was the Chief Apiarist and Co-Founder of Hivint and cybersecurity collaboration portal Security Colony. Before that Craig ran the cybersecurity division in APAC for BAE Systems Applied Intelligence and was the Chief Operating Officer for Stratsec. A self-professed “security nerd” Craig has presented at tech-focussed security conferences in the US, Asia and Australia, and has been a member of a number of benchmark development teams for the Centre for Internet Security (CIS).
Ulric is the Principal at King River Capital. Previously he was on the investment team at Right Click Capital, a VC fund that invests in technology businesses with global ambitions. He has deep product expertise in cybersecurity and algorithms, and has done product development at a number of startups. He did his Ph.D. in Computer Science at MIT in Boston and is an alumni of BCG. For kicks, he has a few patents and loves coming up with creative tests for product/market fit
Damien is the Chairperson of AISA (Australian Information Security Association). Previously he was the Director of Deakin's Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation (CSRI). With more than 20 years of experience in senior roles at Symantec, NAB, RSA, Telstra and Melbourne IT, he specialises in cyber security, business governance, compliance and risk management.
Dr. Daniel Potts is a security professional and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the design, implementation, and delivery of embedded and secure systems. Daniel has held technical and executive positions at commercial, startups, and major defence organizations including National ICT Australia, Open Kernel Labs, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. Daniel received his Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales through research into improving the performance of Distributed Systems. Daniel is currently the Director of Engineering of Ghost Australia.
Dr Omaru Maruatona is the CEO at Aiculus, a Cyber-AI company which helps organisations embrace new technology without adding to their risk profile. Omaru is a Cyber security and Machine Learning practitioner with deep industry and research experience. Before founding Aiculus, Omaru worked with Westpac, Computershare and PwC Australia in Machine Learning, Cyber security architecture and strategy. Omaru is a thought leader in the area of Cyber-AI and regularly publishes and speaks at various academic and industry conferences.
Hamish Hawthorn is currently the VP of Corporate Development at Propeller Aero, the global leader in drone-mapping and analytics solutions. He was previously UpGuard’s Chief Operating Officer, driving operations and corporate development activities, and overseeing partnerships with the cyber insurance sector. Hamish has been involved in the commercialisation of new technologies for over twenty 20 years, and his experience spans the software, biotechnology and advanced manufacturing sectors. UpGuard is the world’s first cyber resilience platform, designed to proactively assess cyber risk for every organization. UpGuard monitors the digital footprints of millions of organizations, automates assessment questionnaires, and synthesizes those factors into the most accurate cyber risk score.
Carolyn is a creative and strategic communications and engagement marketing expert. She is passionate about helping clever people and companies to build authentic brands and develop effective strategies to accelerate growth and success. Carolyn's extensive experience includes leadership positions in the media, federal politics, public companies and a world-leading Australian tech startup as well as running her own consulting business. She was previously the Head of Marketing for Nuix and CMO of Devicie.
Start-up advisor, investor and mentor since 2000. Was the Global Director & Chief Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as well as led the strategy and development of HP's Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) platform and the generation of horizontal and vertical solutions on that platform. Distinguished Technologist & Chief Technologist-Cloud Security for HP from 2007 - 2013. Archie is currently the Co-Founder / Advisor in Incyzr, the Augmented Consulting Platform.
Eddie is a tech entrepreneur, investor and non-executive director with a significant interest in early stage technology companies. From 2006 - 2017 he was co-founder and CEO of Nuix, taking the Australian tech start-up from an R&D venture with two developers to build a profitable $100M+ global business. Eddie is passionate about ensuring founders retain control of their business as it grows.
Wes has been the co-founder and CEO of two cyber security startups in the United States, selling one (QuadMetrics) to US public company FICO. He has over 20 years of startup experience and serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Queensland University of Technology. He advises startups, investors, and corporates globally.
An experienced finance leader with a 20+ year track record across a wide spectrum of services, ranging from investment banking to heading up finance for corporations across Asia Pacific. As CFO, Cornell focusses on finance leadership within the technology sector with a particular emphasis on high growth businesses across Australia and Asia.
Gilad is a hacker. Over 20 years of experience in securing and breaking the security of anything from OSs and browsers to embedded systems and hardware micro-controllers. Gilad has a rare, hands-on experience with the bare-metals of the Cyber industry. An entrepreneur and investor with significant financial and technological successes behind him, both in the governmental and private sectors, and a board member at MazeBolt Security, Gilad is passionate about new technologies and helping young Cyber startups create the future.
Current cofounder and CEO of Darwinium. Owner of global fraud and identity commercial markets and strategy for LexisNexis Risk Solutions Business Services. Co-Founder and VP product management and product marketing, and patent holder for ThreatMetrix the leading Digital Identity company acquired by LexisNexis a global leader in identity, fraud, financial crime and credit risk solutions.
A well-regarded cybersecurity industry executive with over 30 years of broad operational, strategy and P&L experience. He served as a member of the distinguished corporate or cybersecurity business unit leadership teams at premier Fortune 500 technology companies Microsoft, Symantec, and CA Technologies, and as CTO of Finjan Software, a first-generation advanced persistent threat start-up, known today as Singtel’s Secure Web Gateway. Most recently, Ron was the CEO of Israeli start-up, BioCatch, an innovator in cognitive biometrics and continuous authentication.
Director at Penten. A technology executive with 20 years experience in leadership positions within Government and Commercial industries, having held senior roles working with highly qualified and experienced people in the US DoD, NATO, the Australian DoD and Australian Industry. Kristian has a proven record of technical, interpersonal and engagement skills, successfully guiding teams to accomplish complex modernisation tasks in challenging environments.
Ben is a cyber security entrepreneur and engineer. After a career in the military, Ben worked as a consultant in a number of Australian government and commercial cyber incident response teams. He co-founded several companies, including M5 Network Security. Now with his new venture, Penten, he is working to create the next generations of cyber deceptions to help protect business data and detect and track intruders.
Matthew is a founder and CEO of cyber engineering firm Penten which was named 2018 Australian Business of the Year and awarded 2018 Australian Platforms and Infrastructure Innovation of the Year. A successful technology entrepreneur with experience in development and commercialisation of software, hardware, cyber security and communications technologies. Matthew led the team that successfully built and sold award winning cyber security firm M5 Network Security to US defense contractor Northrop Grumman and build and sold an IP communications firm to US business communications provider ShoreTel, Inc (now Mitel).
Daniel is the co-founder and CTO of Airlock Digital, an application whitelisting software solution. Before Airlock, as the lead technical expert for cyber security specialist vendors, he successfully introduced many new solutions into the Asia-Pacific market over a 15-year period.
Kylie is the managing director of Infosect, as well as a former Technical Director at ASD. She is also the cofounder of BSides Canberra.
Former head of ecosystem development for Austcyber, Prerana is an executive level international trade and investment professional with 18 years experience across Asia and the Pacific, most recently as Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner in Singapore. Prerana is now the Head of Global Growth in CSIRO, Australia's national science agency.
Paul is the founder of SecureStack, a platform that helps companies assess their DevSecOps maturity and helps accelerate their DevSecOps success. Paul was born to be a founder having started his first company in 1996 which he bootstrapped and sold in the early 2000’s. Paul raised a pre-seed round in 2020 and enjoys mentoring other founders and helping them not make the mistakes he made.
Ryan is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Retrospect Labs. Before joining Retrospect Labs, Ryan spent several years working at the Australian Cyber Security Centre, leading the Australian Government's response to a number of high profile national cyber security incidents. Ryan has also spent some time in the private sector, heading up Incident Response and Threat Intelligence for a major energy provider.
Ian is the Founder and CEO of Avertro, the cyber-why company. Avertro is a venture-backed cybersecurity software company based out of Sydney, Australia. He has two decades of cybersecurity experience in a variety of leadership, advisory, strategy, sales, marketing, product management and technical roles across Asia Pacific and Europe in some of the world’s leading companies including McAfee, Ernst & Young, and IBM.
Tracie Thompson is the CEO of HackHunter, and is responsible for the commercialisation of the HackHunter technology. Previously Tracie was co-owner and COO of a security consulting and software company with over 200 customers including Medibank, Centrelink, HostPlus, Village Roadshow and Allianz Insurance. She has over 15 years of experience in information security, cyber security and business management, including leading two successful business exits. She is also an industry and start-up mentor, championing women in tech.
Susie is the Co-founder and CEO of small-business cyber fitness company, Cynch Security. Prior to Cynch she built her expertise in insurance and risk management before applying this in the cyber industry. She’s a master translator of technical to non-technical language, and fascinated by the people and process side of cyber risk.
Martin is a cybersecurity leader with more than 25 years’ experience helping organisations to scope and build technology solutions that provide protection and operational efficiencies. Martin has extensive experience in security and data protection, having worked as a systems engineer, architect and consultant across varying high-risk industries including banking, insurance, government, and wagering. In 2018 Martin co-founded Australian MSSP, Secure Measure, and then in 2019, Devicie - both with software engineering at their core. His mission is to use automation to improve the wellbeing of human lives, advocate privacy, and prevent negative outcomes for society.
Ross is currently a head of product at LimaCharlie, and is also sharing his expertise an an advisor to cybersecurity startups and investors worldwide. His areas of expertise include go-to-market and product strategy, B2B product-led growth, strategic positioning, product-market fit expansion, and growth.