half-day Forum: Building the Trusted Workforce

Day 2, Thursday, 30 October 1400 - 1700

Overview

Drawing on insights from the Summit and the expertise of invited practitioners, the Safeguarding Australia Forum will explore how to empower our critical industries and infrastructure by developing and sustaining a truly trusted workforce. Through a combination of plenary sessions and hands-on workshops, we’ll examine people, processes and technologies that underpin national security and national resilience.

Forum Theme

Building the Trusted Workforce — empowering critical industries and infrastructure, and developing national capability through our people and technology.

Objectives

  • Surface best-practice approaches to insider risk management

  • Identify how convergent technologies can both enable and challenge security

  • Strengthen trust across third-party providers and supply chains

  • Generate actionable recommendations for future security standards

Workshop Streams & Key Issues

  1. Managing the Trusted Insider

    • Defining access and privilege: least-privilege models, privileged-user monitoring

    • Cultivating a security-first culture: recruitment, training and ongoing engagement

    • Addressing psycho-social hazards: fatigue, burnout, social engineering and radicalization

  2. Convergence: Technologies, Opportunities & Challenges

    • Blurring boundaries: IT/OT integration, IoT, 5G and edge computing

    • Security implications of AI and machine learning in critical systems

    • Balancing innovation with risk: regulatory frameworks and rapid prototyping

  3. Trust in Third Parties & Supply Chains

    • Due diligence and continuous vetting of suppliers and partners

    • Contractual safeguards, audits and certification schemes

    • Information-sharing models: threat intelligence, incident reporting and cross-sector collaboration

Expected Outcomes

  • A consolidated set of workshop findings, case studies and practical applications

  • Draft recommendations to inform upcoming revisions of international and national security standards

  • A network-map of working groups for ongoing collaboration across industry, government and academia

By the Forum’s close, participants will have co-created a roadmap for cultivating the next generation of trusted professionals—bolstering our critical capabilities and ensuring Australia’s security in an increasingly complex global environment.

Forum Facilitators:

The forum is a joint activity between the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Centre and the Defence Science and Technology Group in conjunction with Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation on public-private cyber resilience.

Who Should Attend

  • Senior Government Representatives from security, intelligence, military and law enforcement

  • Corporate Chief Security Officers and Administrators

  • Leaders and practitioners in cyber security

  • Corporate and business executives responsible for security and risk management

  • Critical infrastructure owners and operators