SecureIT Conference 2026

Agenda

• 8:40 am

  River Nygryn - Command Ridge Virtual Asset Authority / Follow the Ledger: How Blockchain Forensics Exposes Crypto Crime

  Overview Blockchain is often described as anonymous, unregulated or impossible to police. In reality, public blockchains can provide one of the most powerful forensic trails available to investigators, auditors, regulators and security leaders. This keynote explores how blockchain forensics works in practice, from tracing wallet activity and identifying suspicious transaction patterns, to understanding scams, laundering typologies, exchange exposure, DeFi risks and the role of forensic analytics in investigations. The session will bridge the gap between technical blockchain analysis and governance accountability. It will show why digital asset risk is no longer just a crypto issue, but an audit, fraud, cyber, AML, regulatory and board-level concern. Learning Outcomes By the end of this keynote, participants will be able to: Understand how blockchain transactions can be traced and analysed. Recognise common crypto-enabled fraud and laundering techniques. Explain how blockchain forensics supports investigations, compliance and enforcement. Identify key risk indicators across wallets, exchanges, mixers, bridges and DeFi platforms. Understand the governance role of auditors, risk teams, CISOs and boards in digital asset oversight. Better assess whether an organisation has appropriate controls for digital asset exposure, fraud response and incident investigation. Keynote #2 if you wanted it Keynote 2: When Encryption Breaks: Blockchain Security in the Quantum Age Overview Blockchain security depends on cryptography. Wallets, signatures, private keys, consensus mechanisms and transaction integrity all rely on cryptographic trust. But as quantum computing advances, today’s cryptographic assumptions may not hold forever. This keynote examines what quantum risk means for blockchain, digital assets, identity systems and critical digital infrastructure. It will separate hype from realistic threat timelines, explain how quantum computing could affect current cryptographic systems, and explore why crypto-agility should now be treated as a governance and resilience issue. The session is designed for audit, risk, cyber, governance and executive audiences who need to understand the strategic implications of post-quantum readiness without getting lost in technical jargon. Learning Outcomes By the end of this keynote, participants will be able to: Understand the basic cryptographic foundations that secure blockchain systems. Explain how quantum computing may affect encryption, digital signatures and blockchain wallets. Distinguish between near-term cyber risks and longer-term quantum threats. Understand the concept of crypto-agility and why it matters for digital infrastructure. Identify governance questions boards and executives should be asking about post-quantum readiness. Assess the importance of migration planning, key management and long-term data protection in blockchain environments.

• 9:20 am

  Sheree Ip - Curtin University

• 10:15 am

  MORNING TEA

• 10:35 am

  Rachael Jones - AUDC / From Settlement to Autonomy: What Programmable AUD Reveals About the Future of Money

  Overview Most conversations about programmable money are still theoretical. This one isn't. AUDD is Australia's ASIC-regulated AUD stablecoin, with $1.9 billion in transaction volume across eight blockchains and four years of live operation. Drawing on direct experience leading ecosystem and strategic initiatives at AUDC, this session maps what digital money actually enables across three frontiers reshaping how value moves globally: cross-border settlement, institutional adoption, and the emerging frontier of AI-driven autonomous payments. Each use case moves further along the horizon, from infrastructure that is working now, to patterns that are scaling, to early signals that most institutions haven't yet started thinking about. Together they surface a question every technology and governance leader needs to be sitting with: when money can carry logic, execute without human instruction, and settle instantly across jurisdictions, what changes about how we design, trust, and oversee financial systems? This session is grounded in what's actually being built, not what the whitepapers promised. Learning Outcomes Understand how regulated stablecoin infrastructure operates in practice across multiple chains and use cases Gain practitioner insight into cross-border settlement and institutional adoption patterns at scale Explore the governance and strategic implications of AI-enabled autonomous payments at the emerging frontier

• 11:15 am

  Millie Liew - Curtin University / Rethinking Blockchain Innovation and Emerging Risk: Insights from Emerging Research

  Blockchain is reshaping the way organisations think about value, trust, and digital transactions. But alongside its promise comes a new wave of challenges—from fraud and financial crime to governance and compliance. This presentation explores the growing role of blockchain across financial systems and digital platforms, while highlighting the risks and responsibilities that come with its innovative nature. Drawing on academic insights, this presentation aims to enhance understanding of blockchain-enabled threats and oversight, and pathways to build resilience in an increasingly complex digital environment. Relevant to professionals, managers, and board-level stakeholders responsible for audit, risk, security, and governance, this session offers a practical, forward-looking perspective on blockchain technology. Participants will gain a clearer understanding of blockchain opportunities and risks, emerging fraud and compliance challenges, and the governance, investigative, and strategic capabilities needed in corporate and IT settings.

• 11:45 am

  Luke Forsyth - Deloitte / Chains of flexibility in an environmentally aware world.

  Blockchains can be used in high trust solutions that both create high levels of assurance but also enable greater agility than legacy solutions. In this presentation we will look at real world blockchain solutions for diverse requirements such as trading warrants and customer loyalty programs. In each of these examples there have been existing single ledger solutions. These are dependent on legacy protections that focus on the security of that single ledger. A distributed ledger, a blockchain, can be used to create both higher levels of assurance and enhanced agility. This agility then needs to be balanced with the environmental considerations of the potential increased power consumption of a distributed ledger. The requirement then becomes to employ entropy and calculus optimisation to balance assurance with environmental impact.

• 12:10 pm

  LUNCH

• 1:00 pm

  Prof. Robert Cunningham - Curtin University / AI and Information Environmentalism: Towards Public Good(s)

  The presentation will draw upon an ‘information environmental governance framework’ to make the case for public good AI.

• 1:40 pm

  Nirosha Dilhani Kapu Arachchilage - Edith Cowan University / Blockchain's role in sustainability reporting

  This presentation on Blockchain's role in sustainability accounting will cover how blockchain as an innovative technology is impacting sustainability reporting practices and specifically how its implementation will benefit the reliability of sustainability data reported by companies. Core focus of the presentation will be two fold. (i) Indicate current issues in the preparation of sustainability reporting and disclosure by specially focusing on the case of supply chain carbon data and its reliability; (ii) Provide a possible solution to such issues by conceptually discussing how a blockchain based system can support more transparency and assurance in the management of carbon-related data across suppliers

• 2:05 pm

  Jonno Newman - TRM Labs / Blockchain Intelligence in the Age of AI-enabled Crime

  AI has accelerated scam operations: crypto and generative AI have collapsed the gap between scammer intent and impact, enabling synthetic identities, deepfakes, fake documents, and social engineering at global scale. Blockchain intelligence can expose and disrupt scam networks: the deck shows how tracing flows can identify additional victims, map scam supply chains, and support proactive threat intelligence beyond simple transaction tracking. Beacon-style collaboration is already producing measurable results: examples include $458M USDT frozen across 17 jurisdictions, 80 victims identified and tracked, 5 partner VASPs collaborating, and wins such as $1.5M flagged/frozen and $800K located for recovery.

• 2:30 am

  AFTERNOON TEA

• 2:55 pm

  Bob Ledger - BLOCK8.AI/ Beyond the Blockchain: How AI Finds the Real Attack Surface

  Blockchain isn't usually what attackers target—it's everything connected to it. This session explores how AI-powered offensive security helps organisations identify and understand the real attack surface surrounding blockchain environments. Using real-world breach examples, attendees will see how attackers exploit identities, cloud infrastructure, APIs, wallets, and trust relationships to gain access and move laterally. The session demonstrates why continuous security validation is becoming essential as environments evolve, and how AI can help security teams think like attackers, uncover genuine attack paths, and prioritise the risks that matter most.

• 3:10 pm

  Andrzej Gwizdalski - UWA, WAWEB3 / The Future of Digital Money: Between Privacy and a Surveillance

  Overview Since Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention of Bitcoin, digital money has evolved from peer-to-peer cryptocurrency into a rapidly expanding landscape of stablecoins, tokenised deposits, central bank digital currencies, and blockchain-enabled payment systems. This presentation explores how these innovations are rewiring money, identity, trust, and financial infrastructure. It will compare the benefits of programmable, faster, more inclusive and efficient payment systems with the risks of surveillance, exclusion, cyber vulnerability, concentration of power, and loss of privacy. The session will highlight why digital money is not only a technical or financial issue, but a social, governance and security challenge requiring active public, industry and policy engagement. Learning Outcomes Attendees will gain a clear overview of key digital money models, their benefits and risks, and the role of blockchain and DLT in payment innovation. They will also understand why privacy, identity, cybersecurity and governance must be designed into future money systems from the outset.

• 3:35 pm

  Robert Laurie - Cyberproof / Privacy by Design, Trust and Cryptocurrencies

  As decentralised finance matures, the tension between radical transparency and individual privacy has become a critical fault line. While blockchains offer "trustless" verification, they often do so at the expense of financial anonymity, creating significant risks for both individuals and institutional actors. This session explores how the principles of Privacy by Design (PbD) are architected into the next generation of digital assets. We will examine the shift from pseudonymity to verifiable privacy, focusing on the integration of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and Selective Disclosure frameworks. By moving beyond the binary of "total transparency" versus "total secrecy," we can build systems where trust is derived from mathematical certainty rather than data exposure.