Melissa is Head of Cyber Insurance and a Special Counsel (Partner from 1 July 2022) at Lander & Rogers. Melissa is an experienced insurance litigation lawyer, with a focus on cyber. Melissa provides incident response management services and advises on privacy and other issues arising out of cyber incidents. Melissa also advises on complex coverage issues, cyber recoveries and regulatory investigations, as well as acting in disputes arising from cyber incidents.
Melissa has been awarded the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University credential for Cybersecurity Risk and Strategy. Melissa has also been recognised by Lawyerly as a Litigation Rising Star, Insurance Business Australia as a Young Gun, and Australasian Lawyer as a Litigation and Dispute Resolution Rising Star. Melissa regularly provides in-house training for clients and market participants on cyber issues.
Madhuri Nandi is a security expert with over 15 years of professional experience in a wide range of security domains and has worked in a variety of industries including services, retail, storage, and fintech.
She is now working as an IT Security Manager for Till Payments, where she is responsible for the development of security strategies and the implementation of IT security solutions across the Till Payments organization. Her interest in security has led her to position herself as a self - directed learner who offers coaching and mentorship to aspirants in her network. She had designed a framework for IT Security awareness which will help organizations to measure and implemented IT security awareness controls since she believed that security should begin with employee awareness.
Rachell DeLuca is a highly respected professional in the protective security industry, with a career spanning over 25 years. As founder of her own business, Protective Security Advisory Pty Ltd, she focuses on providing her clients with strategic and holistic approaches to security risk management. Rachell's extensive experience allows her to identify root causes to problems and develop solutions that provide measurable reduction to risk exposure. She has a broad range of expertise that includes security risk, threat and vulnerability assessment, technical system design, strategy and policy development, CPTED analysis, and strategic security consulting.
Her dedication to excellence has been recognised by the industry, as she was awarded the 2017 OSPA for Most Outstanding Security Consultant in Australia. Rachell is also actively involved in fostering ongoing development of the security and risk industry within Australia, working closely with numerous industry associations. Rachell joins the AWSN Board having worked extensively to promote career options for women in security and was recently named Protective Security Champion in the Australian Women in Security Awards (2023).
Jacqui is a cybersecurity expert with over 2 decades of global experience in IT and Information Security. She is passionate about security and collaborating with others to drive innovation and change within industry. She is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Australian Women in Security Network.
Jacqui started her career working in PC support and Helpdesks while at university in Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Information Systems and started working as a unix administrator before moving to Europe and into a career in cybersecurity. She spent 14 years working on various high profile projects as a security consultant in London and Paris, including within the European Commission, UK government, NHS and financial sector. She returned back to Australia in 2014 to work for a utility company, financial institution and a startup. At the same time, she created and built up the AWSN in her spare time. Then in 2021 decided to dedicate her time and efforts to the AWSN.
Linda’s career spans law enforcement, politics and cybersecurity, with a keen focus on the nexus between technology innovation and the considerations of privacy and ethics in its development. Having spent 22 years with the Australian Federal Police and 2 years as an advisor to the Chief Minister for the ACT, Linda commenced her cyber security career with AustCyber in 2019 as Manager of the Canberra Cyber Security Innovation Node and departing as Chief Operating Officer.
During her time in AustCyber, Linda established the National Missing Persons Hackathon; a global and Australian first crowdsourced open source intelligence event that assists Australian law enforcement investigations into missing person cases. In 2021 Linda moved into the private sector as Chief Operating Officer for Cybermerc, an Australian-owned cyber security and threat intelligence company and was the architect of Purple Team Australia; a non-traditional training and recruitment approach to attract new women and First Nations Australians into the cyber security industry through a partnership between industry, education, not-for-profit and government.
Linda is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cygenus, using her time, passion and drive to support founders of cyber security startups and scaleups with foundational business and corporate services for growth. When she’s not doing all things cyber, Linda can be found sharing cat reels with her daughter or powerlifting at the gym!
Lukasz is a high proficient security professional, previously responsible for the technical direction and leadership for one of the worlds largest technical security consultancies. Now, he heads up Corporate Security at SEEK. In this role he is responsible for ensuring the protection of sensitive information across a multitude of business systems, corporate systems and IT infrastructure.
He has worked with some of the world largest banks and financial organisations, has worked with federal, state and local governments, presented at and organised a number security conferences, and helps mentor the next generation of security professionals.
Matt Tett is the Managing Director of Enex P/L. He is well known globally across industry and government as a very well connected, highly technical straight shooter. Effectively applying science to translating complex technology for the lay person, ensuring customers receive what they are paying for. Enex TestLab’ objective is to use science to keep tech vendors honest by rigorously testing their product claims and ensuring consumer requirements are met factually. Enex TestLab is an independent ISO17025 accredited testing laboratory with a 33+ year history, university heritage (RMIT), and ISO 9001 QMS Quality, ISO 27001 ISMS Security and ISO 45001 OH&S certifications.
Matt is a current board director of Communications Alliance and a former board director of the Internet Industry Association (IIA). He is also the current chair of IoT Alliance Australia (IoTAA) enabler Work Stream 3 (eWS-3) – Cyber Security and Network Resilience and sits on the IoTAA Executive Council. Matt is an Advisor and Subject Matter Expert (SME) for IoT Security Mark P/L who operate the global IoT Security Trust Mark™ (STM) Certification and voluntary cyber security labelling scheme. He is the founder of the national Day of The Month (DOTM) clubs, which currently has over 3800+ members across the information security industry. Matt is a Director of eMetric P/L (T/AS Honesty Box™) developing innovative hardware, software and systems utilised to deliver accurate independent internet performance measurement for organisations such as CHOICE.
He also serves on the Online Safety Consultative Working Group (OSCWG) for the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, the Communications Alliance Cyber Security Reference Panel (CSRP), the CSRP Fraud subgroup and the Communications Resilience Administration Industry Group (CRAIG), the Internet Australia Cyber Security SIG, and is a member of the research advisory committee for the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory at Federation University. He is a committee member participating in the development of Standards related to IT-042-00-01 – IoT and Related Technologies. Matt has a deep technical background in network and security systems and he holds the following security certifications in good standing for 17+ years: CISSP, CISM, CSEPS and CISA. He is a certified Government security advisor and retains State and Federal Government security clearances. He is also a judge for a number of industries, including the Commsday “Edison” Awards, IT Journo “Lizzies” Awards, InnovationAus Awards for Excellence, IoT Impact Awards and the Australian Women in Security Networking Awards.
