Brisbane Branch
AISA's Brisbane Branch has over a hundred members and holds 10
evening meetings a year, mostly held at BDO, Level 15, 300 Queen
St, Brisbane. We also hold occasional breakfast meetings in various
locations.
Branch Meetings provide members with a wide variety of speakers
and meeting formats including presentations, debates, panel
discussions and international speakers.
The local chapter actively encourages participation in the AISA
Focus Groups
and supports the AISA
CISSP Study Groups. In fact the chair of the Forensics Focus Group is
a Brisbane member and there is strong interest in this area and the
ISMS
Users Focus Group.
The Brisbane chapter is unique within the AISA family due to its
history. Brisbane is well known as the home of the
information security industry in Australia. Brisbane was the
centre in World War II for code breaking Japanese messages.
Brisbane is home to some large infosec R&D teams and
Auscert. 40 per cent of all e-security activity here is
linked to research and development, rather than servicing the
infosec needs of locally headquartered companies. The Gold Coast is
the location of annual Auscert conference and we are delighted to
welcome our AISA cousin from 'down south' with Queensland
hospitality. So while many of our members are security
practitioners inside organisation or consultants, we try to cater
for people developing security technology as well. Our focus
is information security from a practioner's perspective which may
include talks on risk assessment, security architecture, latest
hacker trends or we may delve into the detail of a protocol,
technology or threat. Our speakers aim to make their talks
relevant and understandable to a broad church.
We have strong links to other professional organisations such as
ISACA and CPAs, and make a habit of inviting them to our monthly
meetings. We also occasionally organise joint activities.
Finally we strongly value our role as network facilitator - much
of our 'work' occurs outside of the formal presentation over a
coffee or having a juice after the meeting. We believe that
the networks developed enable security practioners to be more
effective in their work.
