Dear ISACA Auckland Chapter Members,
The ISACA Auckland Chapter is pleased to announce our next lunchtime hybrid event, to be held from 12pm to 2pm (NZST) on Monday, April 7th,2025.
Topic:
AI and Cybersecurity - What's the Likely Impact?
Abstract:
Austin Chamberlain will give a overview of AI in cyber operations. AI presents enormous potential - and threat - in cyber security. Every aspect of cyber defence can be enhanced through AI, such as analysis, human-machine teaming, and task automation. For cyber offence, AI can enhance and automate reconnaissance and analysis, as well as massively increase the effectiveness of social engineering through targeted language generation. Other techniques and tools - like autonomous agents - are effective for both cyber offence and defence. The range of AI systems and tools available is also experiencing rapid growth. The nature of the systems themselves presents risk in data governance and national influence. DeepSeek has burst onto the scene with great effect, raising questions about resources required and usage models.
In addition to a general overview of AI in cyber, Austin will present a recent experiment in autonomous cyber defence agents. FVEY Science and Technology is a collaborative research programme between the defence science agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States. A FVEY S&T experiment in autonomous agents ran from 2021 to 2024. The experiment developed a sandbox environment in which such agents would operate, and ran a series of challenges where agents would act on a given scenario to protect and secure the network. These challenges - CAGE Challenges 1 to 4 - increased in complexity and design over time, and were open to public submissions. The submissions were ranked on effectiveness to understand what makes a good autonomous agent. In this talk Austin will present the components of the autonomous cyber challenge, the lessons from running the challenge, and the results in rankings and outputs.
Speaker:
Austin Chamberlain is a scientist with Defence Science and Technology, part of the New Zealand Defence Force.
Austin started his career as a system administrator working predominantly on web-facing systems. This provided a fast understanding of information security and he focused increasingly on information and cyber security, making the jump to a cyber role in due course. He served part time in the British Army reserve, initially as a logistics officer, and later transferring to a cyber operations role. In his civilian career he has predominantly worked in the academic sector.
This combination of academia, technical and military cyber experience provided a strong foundation for a military cyber research role, and he now works on studying and integrating next generation and generation-beyond-next cyber capabilities into the NZDF.
Venue
- On-site: the Pavilion room on the Ground Floor at ANZ, 23 Albert Street, Auckland
- Online
Agenda
Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your knowledge, network with like-minded professionals, and advance your career. Whether you attend in person or online, this event promises to be a valuable experience for all participants.
Registration
ISACA Auckland members or non-members can register for the event through the official ISACA website by:
- 11:00 PM on Thursday, April 3th, 2025, if you are attending in-person
- 11:00 PM on Friday, April 4th, 2025, if you are attending virtually
A link to the webinar will be shared with all registered attendees. Online attendees can join the event from 10 am NZST onwards on April 7th,2025.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Regards,
Abby Zhang
Vice President
ISACA Auckland