Program

14-16 October 2026
Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre

Browse the program and start planning your CyberCon 2026 experience across three days of keynotes, panels, workshops, and more.

Format
Location
Audience Level
Themes & Topics
Building Secure Technology
Hacking, Red Teaming
Law, Policy and Global Power
Leadership, Governance and Accountability
People, Culture and Workforce
Running Secure Operations
Breakout

Cyber warfare 0.0: Analysing geopolitical flash points and the evolution of the global cyber threat landscape

Davyn Baumann
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 208
Law, Policy and Global Power
National Security, Geopolitics and Cyber Conflict

Using the 2026 Iran-US/Israel conflict as a case study, this session quantifies why organisations once considered non-combatants now carry real cyber risk.

26101510552208
General
Breakout

AI in the wild: Preparing for the AI driven attack era

Simon Goodall & Dylan Wondal
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 209
Running Secure Operations
Threat Intelligence, Detection and Adversary Behaviour

A real AI-generated command-and-control sample shows how identity-based attacks now blend into legitimate activity, and what SOC teams need to change.

26101510552209
General
Breakout

Responding to attacks targeting Cloud Identity solutions

Thirumalai Natarajan Muthiah
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 210
Running Secure Operations
Incident Response, Crisis Coordination and Recovery

Cloud identity and access management attacks demand a specialised incident response approach distinct from traditional on-premises investigations.

26101510552210
Intermediate
Breakout

What SOC leaves behind: The evidence DFIR needs

Ryan Betts
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 211
Running Secure Operations
Incident Response, Crisis Coordination and Recovery

Triage decisions made during SOC escalation can destroy the forensic evidence DFIR investigators need, and this session closes that handover gap.

26101510552211
Intermediate
Breakout

Developing detection models through real world applications of threat intelligence & threat hunting

Ope Ajibola & Rob Edmonds
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 212/213
Running Secure Operations
Threat Intelligence, Detection and Adversary Behaviour

A structured sprint cycle turns threat intelligence into validated detection coverage, hypothesis-driven hunts, and detection models that compound over time.

26101510552212
Intermediate
Breakout

Petrov's loop: What good decisions look like when the machine is in the room (v2)

Vik Soni
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 216
Leadership, Governance and Accountability
Executive Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Stanislav Petrov's refusal to trust a flawed 1983 early-warning system offers a model for how security-critical AI decisions should be second-guessed.

26101510552216
Intermediate
Breakout

Ship fast, regret later: A year of breaking AI applications

Carter Smith
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 217
Hacking, Red Teaming
AI/ML and Emerging Attack Surfaces

A year of penetration testing AI-enabled applications exposes recurring failures in prompt handling, tool permissions and data leakage security teams miss.

26101510552217
General
Breakout

Your agent works for me now

David Stocks & Victoria Young
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 218
Hacking, Red Teaming
AI/ML and Emerging Attack Surfaces

A working proof of concept shows how a fake compliance website can trick AI agents into leaking secrets and suppressing vulnerability remediation.

26101510552218
Intermediate
Breakout

The AI policy paradox: Why enterprises are stuck in governance gridlock

Andrew Longhorn
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Room 219/220
Leadership, Governance and Accountability
Governing Autonomous and AI-Driven Systems

Most organisations deploy AI but few govern it, and this session offers a three-step framework to unblock the compliance gridlock stalling AI oversight.

26101510552219
General
Think Tank

When you are the SOC: The first 60 minutes of incident response

George Ferres
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Think Tank 1
Running Secure Operations
Incident Response, Crisis Coordination and Recovery

Solo IT responders without a SOC need a simple confirm, contain, preserve, communicate loop to manage the first hour of an incident without destroying evidence.

26101510553010
General
Think Tank

When legal meets AI: Navigating eDiscovery, Privilege, and AI-Assisted review in the modern enterprise

Jackie Orchard
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Think Tank 2
Law, Policy and Global Power
Public Policy, Regulatory Reform and Enforcement

AI tools touching privileged legal communications create governance risks most organisations haven't addressed, and this session sets out the controls to own.

26101510553020
Intermediate
Think Tank

The fatigued engineer: The modern day DevSecOps human risk stack

Trevor Lau
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Think Tank 3
People, Culture and Workforce
Human Risk, Judgement and Decision-Making Under Pressure

Human risk in DevSecOps now extends beyond phishing to fatigue, psychological safety and blind trust in AI overrides, needing teams designed for pressure.

26101510553030
General
Think Tank

Sydney to Seoul: An Aussie lass has a wild ride in K-Cyber, Soju, and Survival

Yvette Lejins
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
11:35 am
Think Tank 4
Law, Policy and Global Power
International Norms, Standards and Cooperation

Two years defending a Fortune 120 Korean e-commerce giant reveal what cyber security looks like on a frontline shaped by geopolitics and language barriers.

26101510553040
General
Workshop

Designing and implementing an effective cyber insurance program for SMEs: Practical risk transfer that actually works

Tom Hosking & Riddhima Dabhowale
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
12:25 pm
Workshop Room 1 - Room 111
Leadership, Governance and Accountability
Aligning Cyber Investment to Organisational Outcomes

This tutorial gives SMEs a practical framework for selecting cyber insurance, preparing for underwriting, and staying claims-ready when an incident hits.

26101510555010
General
Workshop

Decoding AI threats: Interactive threat modelling techniques with Maestro AI

Deepak Guleria & Fadzayi Moyo
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Workshop Room 2 - Room 109
Running Secure Operations
Threat Intelligence, Detection and Adversary Behaviour

The MAESTRO framework applies threat modelling to agentic AI, helping practitioners identify threat vectors and co-create tailored countermeasures.

26101510555020
General
Workshop

Intentional inclusion: Strategies for high-impact cyber teams

Susan McGinty
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Workshop Room 3 - Room 110
People, Culture and Workforce
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

An inclusive culture systems framework gives cyber leaders practical steps to build unity, collaboration, and sustained high performance in their teams.

26101510555030
General
Workshop

OffSec Workshop - OT war games using Kali Purple

Malcolm Shore
Thu
 
15 Oct
10:55 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Workshop Room 4 - Room 101
Building Secure Technology
Running Secure Operations
Hacking, Red Teaming

A hands-on workshop hunts threats across a simulated OT environment using Kali Purple, detecting and mitigating attacks on SCADA, PLCs and industrial networks.

26101510555040
Intermediate
Featured

Featured speaker with Kath Koschel

Kath Koschel
Thu
 
15 Oct
11:45 am
 - 
12:25 pm
Plenary Theatre

A former professional cricketer told she would never walk again, Kath Koschel taught herself to walk three times and founded The Kindness Factory.

26101511451000
Panel

Response reality: Lessons from cyber incidents

Shane Bell, Grace Coleman, Nicole Gabryk & Thomas Tracey
Thu
 
15 Oct
11:45 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Melbourne Room 1
Running Secure Operations
Incident Response, Crisis Coordination and Recovery

Incident response and cyber insurance practitioners unpack why outcomes depend less on having a response plan than on executing it under real pressure.

26101511451010
General
Breakout

AI on Kubernetes is a hidden attack surface

Rob Kenefeck
Thu
 
15 Oct
11:45 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Room 103
Building Secure Technology
Autonomous and AI-Enabled Systems Security

Hands-on findings on GPU container escapes, model-weight side channels, and agent trust failures that traditional cloud native tooling misses entirely.

26101511452103
Intermediate
Breakout

The digital detective: How an internal OSINT challenge sparked organisation-wide engagement

Ben Cooper
Thu
 
15 Oct
11:45 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Room 105
People, Culture and Workforce
Security Culture and Behavioural Change

An internal OSINT challenge covering 94 tasks showed staff across a power network how everyday online activity can expose far more than they realise.

26101511452105
General
Breakout

From outreach to early career: What works in building sustainable cyber security pathways

Mary George & Leanne Ngo
Thu
 
15 Oct
11:45 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Room 203
People, Culture and Workforce
Workforce Pathways, Skills and Career Sustainability

National research across school outreach, university and workforce entry reveals a pathway continuity problem, not a talent shortage, and how to fix it.

26101511452203
General
Breakout

Stopping the tank: Centre of gravity analysis for cyber threat prioritisation

Alexander Gould & Yury Sergeev
Thu
 
15 Oct
11:45 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Room 204
Leadership, Governance and Accountability
Aligning Cyber Investment to Organisational Outcomes

Borrowed from military doctrine, centre of gravity analysis identifies the one dependency an attack would need to disrupt, making prioritisation defensible.

26101511452204
Intermediate
Breakout

Cyber warfare: Uncomfortable truths about cyber munitions from the first quarter of the 21st century

Elliot Dellys
Thu
 
15 Oct
11:45 am
 - 
12:55 pm
Room 207
Law, Policy and Global Power
National Security, Geopolitics and Cyber Conflict

From Stuxnet to NotPetya to a 2026 wiper attack on Stryker, this session tracks how state-built cyber weapons keep spilling over onto ordinary enterprises.

26101511452207
General

Secure your place at cybercon 2026

Register now and save! Discount ends Wednesday 30 September 2026.

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