Biography

David is currently the Deputy Director with responsibility for IT Infrastructure, Data Services and operational security at The University of Queensland (UQ). He is also the Director of AusCERT, one of the oldest CERTs (Computer Emergency Response Teams) in the world and a not-for-profit organisation based at The University of Queensland.

With a career spanning 38 years, it has seen him in roles straddling electronic engineering, IT and astrophysics. His 6 years as a university researcher was the catalyst for travelling to and falling in love with Australia, which he now calls home.

David is passionate about the opportunities that public cloud services, such as AWS and Azure, bring to organisations. Finding the pragmatic balance between on-premise and public cloud to realise the opportunity to focusing teams on higher value activities and the ability to deliver better services to the UQ Community is a fundamental driver for him.

In the Data Services space, David is currently transforming The University of Queensland to a ‘data centric’ organisation. Through initiatives such as data lakes, digital twins, holistic data governance and AI/ML, he hopes to move the organisation from data-rich to information-rich and in the process, support the increased demand for community data access.

AusCERT is a member based Computer Emergency Response Team that provides Incident Response, Cyber Threat Intelligence and training to many Australian agencies and companies. In an age where cybersecurity is on the agenda from the boardroom to the shopfloor, David has seen a healthy growth in membership during his tenure. A firm believer that security is everyone’s business, he advocates for “security is job zero” and is everyone’s responsibility. Exploring new markets, delivering new products and delivering services that the clients truly value are strong drivers for David.