David Ormrod

Dr Dave Ormrod is the CTO at Cygence. He has over 25 years of experience securing organisations from advanced persistent threats, managing blue and red security teams, conducting cyber threat intelligence assessments, and enhancing the resilience of federal government agencies and commercial organisations. Dave is an experienced cyber security program manager, threat hunter, incident responder and information systems assessor.

Dave is an Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) endorsed Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) trainer and professional; he also holds Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Auditor (CISA), and Open FAIR accreditations. Dave is an ISO27001 Senior Lead Auditor and a Certified Australian Company Director (GAICD).

In addition to his practical experience from the military and industry, Dave has a Doctorate (PhD) in Computer Science (Cyber Security) and is a graduate of both the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Program and the US Joint Staff College, Joint Information Operations Planning Course (JIOPC).Dave is actively involved in the cyber security community. He is a member of the VulnCon program committee, was the founding chair of BSides Adelaide in 2023 and 2024, and has run competitions at DEFCON USA for multiple years. Dave has presented at multiple CyberCons. Dave is also the local host for DEATHCON 2026 in Melbourne, the first time the event has been run in Australia.