Brendan Dowling
The reason we gather all of you together in this conference, is because the jobs we do, all of us in this room, are the things that will keep this nation functioning through whatever comes next, whether that's conflict, instability, natural disasters. And all of those are getting worse over the next few years.
Athena Jayaratnam
You know, we're having those conversations. We're looking at where those gaps exist and what do we do about it in the processes and making sure that the right mitigations are in place as well, because at the end of the day that we do provide a fundamental service, communications to customers and Australians as well, right? And you don't want that to go down.
Nikki Peevor
You can buy all the tools. You can spend money on all of the different technologies. If you don't have the people that understand how to use it and make the most out of those tools, they're just meaningless. So number one, invest in your people and then everything else will follow from there.
Brendan Dowling
You're already being targeted. We know in a cyber sense every day, but know that you are the front line of the difficult and dangerous world that awaits us over the next few years.
Rebecca Carpenter
It's not about humans being the weakest link. It's about humans being a significant variable. And just like a, you know, a strength overplayed can be a weakness. I think there's tremendous opportunity in the human factor. and as you say, it comes back to culture, training, recognition and, and like that of human centred approach.
Brendan Dowling
The theme of today's conference is resilient connections. I think increasingly, what we all understand is you can't predict what will happen. You can't predict the upstream and downstream effects, but you can know who to call, know, who relies on you know, who you rely upon. And don't just have those numbers in signal, because when the data centre goes down, you can't get on signal. Suddenly you lose all your details. Those basics of resilience and redundancy remain the most important thing that positions us, for what lies ahead.
Simon Brown
Collaboration is really key to the resilience, the ecosystem and events like this, and particularly this conference, is a great opportunity to hear from people across different sectors and different hazards and hear those expert perspectives and help us get to know each other better and work out how we can work together to better protect Australia.
Sally Pfeiffer
It isn't, it's never just about the assets or the networks or what we, physically are actually dealing with. It's about people for us, and it's about the trust that the public places in us to keep these essential services resilient and secure. Collectively us, mean, no matter what the pressures we face. And so, today has really helped to remind us that, progress is what happens when we really share openly and challenge assumptions and have those real conversations.
And we try to really extend what we talk to you about to try and get you to really think broadly. And we hope that that really helps you in what you're doing as well, to protect our critical infrastructure, because ultimately, it's you guys doing that.
Nikki Peevor
I've already met people I have not met in person before and just had great conversation. And, and it just might just make a huge difference in, in your relationships going forward.
Brendan Dowling
It's about our collective resilience and our national, resilience. So, that's something that is a shared effort that none of us can solve alone, but we can address together. Thanks very much everyone.
