AISA National Conference - Day 1

Day 1 of the Australian Information Security Conference is now history and it's been a pretty hectic day with great speakers, sponsors and most of all, it remains a member focused conference. The 2 day format seems to be working with presentations spread evenly during the two days without having to cram into one.

Major General Stephen Day kicked off the conference with some interesting stats showing nation state adversaries account for 48% of Australian Signals Directorate's threat environment. The big question mark was the 40% of "unknown". Brad Arkin, Adobe's Chief Information Security Officer followed up with a phenomenal insight into Adobe's security practices and what it takes to plug the vulnerabilities in Reader, Flash etc.

The panel sessions were lively and CISO panel at the end of the day featuring the CISO's of the Big 4 Banks - Dave Powell from NAB, Ben Heyes from CBA, Steven Glynn from ANZ and Richard Johnson from Westpac, the pick of the day. Some honest and candid discussion about compliance, new threats and challenges they faced. One thing that would be good to add next year's lineup would be a panel of SMB/Medium sized organisations and what their experience is from a security perspective. AISA's members stretch from small/medium business right to the top echelon of enterprises.

Day 2 promises to be as action packed with Jodie Siganto opening up with some research she's done with AISA this year followed up by Greg Clark from Bluecoat on the future of Security. Kevin Mandia opens up after lunch with what promises to be a thought provoking session where he'll talk about why layered defence in depth is now out of date and speed in terms of detection is what the focus needs to be on. Timothy Pilgrim Australia's Privacy Commissioner and Corporal Ben Roberts round out the conference.