Wrap-Up: ISACA Oceania CACS Conference

After a very busy 2 days in Melbourne at ISACA’s Oceania CACS Conference last week, the Solisma team have returned to the office full of new thinking, new approaches, new ideas (and many new friends) from the wealth of keynotes and presentations taking place across the conference.  As Anthony Rodriques put it at the opening of the conference “Great things happen when great minds come together”.A lot was covered, but we did take away three key themes from the conference:

• The first was the theme of Women in Leadership. It was great to see Keynotes and Panel sessions covering this topic and it was inspiring to see the Jo Stewart-Rattray Award be presented to Elizabeth Bonny. This award recognises outstanding leadership and commitment in increasing the representation of women, in technology leadership roles and the tech workforce.

• Cyber Security is still a hot-topic issue and therefore worthy of being our second key theme. The Shadow Assistant Minister for Cyber Security, Gai Brodtmann, talked about the requirement for fundamental Cyber training and making the community aware of the importance of cyber security at all levels.  Victoria’s CISO, John O’Driscoll also emphasised the importance of cyber security and gave an overview of the Victorian State Cyber strategy.

• Of course, Cyber Security is just one part of a broader requirement for Integrated Assurance, so this is our third theme.  Solisma’s Managing Director, Michael Nyhuis, presented ‘Integrated Assurance: Balancing Risk, Compliance & Quality‘ on day two of the conference.  Whilst most work in at least one or more aspects of Assurance, Michael’s presentation confirmed people’s thinking that they need to find ways to pull all three together. Whilst many GRC tools support Risk, or Compliance, or both, it is hard to find principles that also bring the need for Quality and Continual Improvement into the mix.

For those that attended Michael’s presentation (and for those that didn’t!), Michael mentioned a BDO Report that highlighted how “few organisations have formalised their risk appetite approach”.  This survey was conducted in partnership with the Australian Institute of Company Directors and ‘indicated that disruptive forces such as technology can’t be ignored and organisations need to have the capacity to take on some risk”.

Many people in the room took to their notepads and devices to take down the URL, so we’ve included it here for those that missed it: https://www.bdo.com.au/en-au/insights/advisory/publications/enterprise-risk-management-report-2018.  This report provides a worthwhile and insightful read on the state of Risk awareness and maturity in Australia.

We trust that Michael’s presentation provided attendees with new ideas they can take back to the workplace. If you’d like a copy of the presentation slides, please ask.

Whilst the conference is now over for another year, we’re still happy to talk all things Integrated Assurance or provide you with a demonstration of Service Improvement Manager (SIM) if you’d like to see it in action.