Protecting Government Services from Modern Identity Threats: Why Identity Is Now Critical to AI, Compliance and Service Continuity

Across Australian governments, ransomware and persistent cyber threats increasingly targeted the identity foundations that underpinned service delivery. Once an attacker gained a foothold, identity compromise became the fastest path to privilege escalation, lateral movement and widespread disruption.

This session was designed for leaders accountable for service continuity, cyber risk and digital transformation. It focused on how to strengthen identity assurance across hybrid environments, improve visibility and detection, and reduce the likelihood that a single compromise escalated into a whole-of-service event. This included identity risks originating in legacy Active Directory environments that continued to underpin access, trust and privilege across modern cloud and AI-enabled services.

Drawing on real-world public sector experience and current ASD guidance, speakers explored what “modern identity defence” looked like in practice, including how to strengthen monitoring, reduce privilege pathways, and prepare for high-pressure recovery decisions when identity systems were impacted.

Key discussion points

• Why identity compromise was the quickest path to systemic impact: How attackers used identity pathways to move fast after initial access.
• Why “secure by default” still was not enough: Where visibility broke down in legacy identity foundations and hybrid environments.
• Hybrid identity risk and on-premises weaknesses that became cloud compromises: How trust relationships and identity dependencies could bypass expected controls.
• From reactive recovery to continuous assurance: Baselining, monitoring, and practical steps leaders could sponsor without creating complexity.
• Preparedness under pressure: the decisions that determined outcomes: What leaders needed to have pre-agreed for containment, recovery and eradication.

Meet your facilitators

James Duncan

Technical Director Government Uplift, Australian Signals Directorate

Richard Kulkarni

Head of APAC, Quest Software

Craig Lawrence

Principal Consultant, NTT Data