2027 Outline Conference Topics include:
Community Resilience and ‘Whole-of-Society’ Preparedness (including PPPs)
Explore how communities can prepare for, respond to and recover from disruptions by bringing together government, emergency services, infrastructure operators, businesses and CI fraternity. The session will examine practical approaches to whole-of-society preparedness, including risk awareness, local resilience planning, crisis communication and coordinated response. Discover how effective public-private partnerships can strengthen capabilities, improve information sharing, mobilise resources and build stronger connections between critical infrastructure and the communities they serve.
Emerging Threats against CI and Critical Entities
The evolving landscape of threats facing critical infrastructure and critical entities, including terrorism, insider threats, climate-related events, cyberattacks and the emerging challenges posed by AI and ploy-crises cannot be under-estimated. As these threats become increasingly interconnected and complex, organisations must adopt a proactive, intelligence-led approach to protection and resilience. The session will explore how critical entities can identify, monitor and assess emerging threats, understand their potential impact, and strengthen preparedness and response capabilities.
Cyber Resilience Standards And Governance
The evolving standards, frameworks and governance requirements shaping cyber security across critical infrastructures aim to deliver enhanced resilience to operations. The latest developments in cyber incident reporting, including CIRCIA and initiatives like Fortify are designed to strengthening organisational security and resilience. Learn how organisations can align governance, compliance and incident-response processes, navigate evolving regulatory requirements, improve cyber preparedness, and adopt practical, risk-based approaches to protecting critical systems and services.
Resilience & Security by Design
Secure by Design and Resilience by Design embed security, resilience and recoverability as fundamental requirements throughout the entire lifecycle of critical infrastructure. Rather than adding protection after systems are developed, these principles integrate threat modelling, risk assessment, secure supply chains, operational resilience and recovery from the earliest concept and design stages through development, deployment, operation, maintenance and eventual decommissioning. The approach aims to create infrastructure that is inherently secure, adaptable, robust and capable of withstanding, responding to and recovering from disruption.
Operational Technology (OT), ICS and Industrial Cybersecurity
Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and SCADA environments face growing resilience challenges as increasingly sophisticated cyber threats expose vulnerabilities across operational technology. This session explores practical approaches to securing legacy systems, managing IT/OT convergence, implementing Zero Trust, strengthening remote access, improving visibility and protecting Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT). It will also examine supply chain risks, threat detection, incident response and recovery, and strengthening OT resilience without compromising safety, availability or operational performance.
Power, Energy & Grid Resilience
Power and energy infrastructure faces growing physical and cyber threats across generation, substations, transmission, distribution and fuel supply. The rapid expansion of data centres is intensifying electricity demand and placing additional pressure on grid capacity and resilience. This session will consider the role of rapidly deployable modular substations in restoring critical services, alongside the opportunities and challenges presented by mini nuclear reactors, and strategies for strengthening energy security, flexibility and resilience across increasingly interconnected infrastructure.
Maritime & Subsea Critical Infrastructure Security
Maritime and subsea infrastructure is vital to global trade, energy security, communications and national resilience. Ports, shipping routes, undersea cables, pipelines and offshore energy assets face growing physical, cyber and geopolitical threats. Protecting these interconnected systems is essential to preventing economic disruption, environmental damage and interruptions to critical services, while ensuring the continued movement of goods, energy, data and resources that underpin national security, economic stability and societal resilience.
Strategic Resilience Planning from Concept to Delivery
Strategic resilience planning requires a long-term, integrated approach that moves from concept to delivery, ensuring critical infrastructure can anticipate, withstand, adapt to and recover from increasingly complex and interconnected disruptions. This session will consider how resilience strategies can be translated into practical programmes – from concept to delivery. Policies, investment decisions and operational capabilities moving beyond traditional disaster recovery to embed resilience across planning, design, governance and day-to-day operations of critical infrastructure organisations and government bodies.
Situational Awareness, Incident Preparedness & Response & Business Continuity
Maintaining situational awareness is critical to anticipating threats, making informed decisions and coordinating an effective emergency response when critical infrastructure is disrupted. This session will consider how prepare organisations to strengthen intelligence gathering, information sharing, monitoring, incident preparedness and crisis coordination across complex and interconnected environments. How can an effective response frameworks, exercises, communications, mutual aid and business continuity planning reduce disruption, accelerate recovery and maintain essential services.
Drones & UAS – Airspace Threats & Security
Drones present a growing threat to critical infrastructure due to their accessibility, manoeuvrability, and payload capabilities, enabling surveillance, disruption, or delivery of explosives. However, they can also support infrastructure protection through monitoring and response applications. This session examines the evolving drone threat landscape, available countermeasures, and the dual-use role of drones in both challenging and enhancing critical infrastructure security and resilience.
Technologies to Detect and Protect
The latest technologies for detecting and predicting threats to critical national infrastructure span ground, land, underwater, space-based, and cyber domains, supported by advanced sensors and access control systems. Artificial intelligence increasingly enhances these capabilities by improving speed, accuracy, and cross-domain analysis of threat signals. New, developing systems and solutions enable earlier detection, better prediction, and stronger situational awareness across interconnected infrastructure systems.
Modelling and Simulation to Enhance Resilience Strategies
Modelling, simulation and digital twins are increasingly important tools for strengthening critical infrastructure resilience. They enable organisations to understand complex interdependencies, test disruption scenarios and identify vulnerabilities without the cost or consequences of real-world failures. By simulating cascading impacts, recovery strategies and resource constraints, decision-makers can evaluate options, validate resilience plans, prioritise investment and improve preparedness. These capabilities support more informed, evidence-based decisions and help ensure infrastructure can anticipate, withstand, adapt to and recover from disruption.
AI for Infrastructure Protection and Defending Against AI
AI is transforming both critical infrastructure protection and the threats facing it. This session will consider how AI can enhance threat detection, predictive maintenance, situational awareness, incident response and resilience planning, alongside emerging risks such as AI-enabled cyberattacks, automated exploitation, deepfakes and misinformation. Learn how organisations can assess and manage these opportunities and threats, establish effective governance and safeguards, and harness AI responsibly while avoiding new vulnerabilities, dependencies and resilience challenges.
Critical Infrastructure as the Frontline Defense for National Security
As geopolitical, cyber and physical threats grow, critical infrastructure interdependencies can turn individual disruptions into cascading impacts across sectors. This panel examines how energy, communications, IT and chemical sectors can strengthen resilience through trusted relationships, information sharing and public-private partnerships. Drawing on real-world experience, it will explore improving situational awareness, identifying systemic vulnerabilities, coordinating responses, managing supply-chain risks and addressing emerging technologies. Gain an insight to practical approaches to institutionalising cross-sector collaboration and strengthening collective security.