Event Agenda

As the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act develops and shapes the Australian regulatory landscape, the focus for asset owners has shifted from high-level compliance to granular, operational resilience. In this panel session, we explore the future of OT security within this enhanced legislative framework. As the Act develops to include more critical assets, along with changes to how high-risk assets demonstrate their cyber maturity, we want to give today’s OT leaders the tools they need to understand and stay compliant.
● How do we navigate the specific requirements of the SOCI Act and its impact on long-term OT investment and architecture?
● With the 2026 enhancements to the CIRMP rules, how are we moving from ‘check-box’ compliance to demonstrating verifiable maturity in legacy OT environments?
● Does SOCI’s focus on ‘Foreign Ownership, Control, and Influence’ fundamentally change how we procure OT hardware and software in Australia?
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– Moderator: Lauren Veenstra, CSO, Iberdrola Australia
– Ryan Walker, OT/ICS Manager, Ventia
– Dennis Moncrieff, IT Superintendent, Tomago Aluminium
– Peter Davidoff, Head of Cyber Security Architecture and Assurance, Department of Defence

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Your attack surface is full of computers nobody calls computers: IP cameras, printers, HVAC controllers, PLCs. These 65 billion devices in xOT environments outnumber traditional endpoints 11 to 1, a gap projected to widen to 31x by 2030. They run capable operating systems but are rarely patched, hardened, or monitored, and EDR often can’t be installed. Ransomware operators have noticed: this session reconstructs how an Akira affiliate bypassed EDR entirely by encrypting a network from an unmanaged IP camera. Attendees will leave with practical mitigations for discovering, hardening, and lifecycle-managing the devices they’ve forgotten.
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– Alex Nehmy, Field CTO, APAC, Dragos
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For OT teams, uptime and safety are non-negotiable. To an engineer on the plant floor, IT-driven cyber security protocols can feel like a bureaucratic roadblock—patches that threaten stability or passwords that delay emergency response. To bridge this cultural chasm, cyber professionals must stop treating security as an IT compliance exercise and start speaking the native language of industrial operations: Risk Management. In this session, we explore how to build a collaborative “Risk Mindset” that empowers OT teams to champion security.
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• Reframe cyber security as a component of functional safety rather than an IT overhead
• Introduce patching and vulnerability management without risking 100% uptime
• Create successful ‘Quick Wins’ for creating a unified response team
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– Alfredo Urdaneta,Control System and SCADA Specialist Engineer – Utilities, Rio Tinto
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Security policy is often written in a boardroom, but it’s executed on the factory floor. In this session, we move beyond high-level strategy to provide an actionable playbook for embedding cyber security into daily maintenance, vendor management, and control system operations. Learn practical tools for managing contractor access, securing removable media, triaging low-level incidents, and building a strong, security-aware culture within your technical teams. Empower your front line to become the first and most effective layer of defence.
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• Translate high-level security policies into practical, documented work instructions for maintenance crews
• Implement robust processes for managing contractor access, temporary credentials, and USB/removable media usage
• Develop effective, role-specific training programs to establish a proactive, cyber-resilient operations team
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– David Petzer, Senior Operational Technology Engineer, Glencore Coal
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As industrial environments grow in complexity, traditional signature-based detection is no longer sufficient to stop sophisticated actors. This session explores the transition to Digital Twin-enhanced monitoring. We will discuss how, by comparing real-time SCADA data against the expected behaviour of a digital twin, operators can identify subtle, non-linear deviations that indicate a cyber-attack or mechanical compromise.
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• Hear practical steps to integrate high-fidelity process data into your security stack
• Enable a proactive defence posture that identifies threats before they result in physical damage or operational downtime
• Align engineering maintenance data with security monitoring to reduce false positives and improve incident response triage
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– Amish Patel, Former Director for OT Security, Transport for NSW
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AI is changing the cyber threat landscape not necessarily by creating new vulnerabilities, but by making existing ones easier and faster to discover, understand and exploit.
In OT environments, where legacy systems, long remediation cycles and operational constraints are common, this acceleration creates a significant challenge. Our own Mythos program has demonstrated how automation and AI-assisted approaches can accelerate vulnerability discovery and analysis. The same capabilities, however, are increasingly available to attackers.
This session explores how AI is shifting the balance between attacker and defender, and more importantly, what organisations can do about it. It will provide practical guidance on reducing exposure, prioritising vulnerabilities, strengthening segmentation and access controls, and using AI defensively to improve detection, vulnerability analysis and response.
The question is no longer just whether you can find and fix the vulnerability — but whether you can do it before an AI-assisted attacker does.
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– Gursimran Tiwana, Head of Cyber Security, Lumus Imaging
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Managing cyber security across different eras of infrastructure is a high-stakes balancing act. In this session, our expert speaker explores the realities of parallel-tracking OT security across generations of technology, delving into the challenges of maintaining OT security at a 30-year-old brownfield site, while preparing to launch a brand-new greenfield site fit with the latest tech. We will discuss practical strategies for retrofitting legacy systems, alongside the unique opportunities of baking robust cyber resilience into a modern asset from day one.
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• Balance legacy asset preservation with cutting-edge greenfield security design
• Implement pragmatic security controls on 1990s hardware without disrupting uptime
• Learn the lessons of preparing operations for a state-of-the-art launch
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– Ryan Walker, OT/ICS Manager, Ventia
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The disconnect between IT Operations (uptime) and Security (risk) often creates friction, delays, and critical vulnerabilities. In this session, our speaker offers a practical blueprint for transforming security into an integrated, shared responsibility across your organisation. We explore how to dismantle silos and implement a true SecOps culture.
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• How do we establish unified communication and collaborative workflows, and align KPIs so both teams own cyber risk and efficiency?
• What methods have you found to integrate security testing and response directly into IT deployment pipelines?
• How can we train IT staff on security principles and SecOps staff on operational constraints?
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– Pratik Waghela, BISO, Ventia
– Sanja Petrovic, General Manager, Cyber Security & Governance, HUB24
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