Former CEO of Fujitsu Oceania — bridging the gap between cybersecurity risk and boardroom decision-making
Mike Foster brings over 25 years of senior technology executive experience across Australia and North America. He has held roles including CEO and Chairman of Fujitsu Oceania, Global Corporate Officer at Fujitsu, CEO of KAZ Group, Managing Director at Telstra Business Sales, and senior positions at EMC, NCR Australia, and Teradata. Under his leadership, teams of thousands delivered enterprise-scale solutions with revenues exceeding $1.3 billion, while he spearheaded initiatives in Big Data, Analytics, AI, Cybersecurity, and digital transformation. He holds qualifications from Victoria University and Charles Sturt University, has completed executive programmes at Harvard and Babson College, and is currently pursuing a Master's in Cybersecurity at UNSW.
Beyond his executive career, Mike is an active advocate for workplace diversity — a Male Champions of Change STEM board member — and a former director on multiple corporate boards including AIIA and Telstra joint ventures. Since leaving Fujitsu he advises emerging and established Australian companies in Automation, AI, and Cybersecurity. His speaking topics address what senior non-IT executives actually need to know: how to assess cyber maturity, ask the right questions of their IT teams, ensure governance works, and use AI and automation to stay ahead of threats.
Mike speaks to audiences across Australia, North America, Europe, and Asia, and suits technology conferences, leadership summits, board education sessions, and any event where organisations need to understand the strategic — not just technical — dimensions of AI and cybersecurity. His experience running billion-dollar technology operations gives him a credibility with C-suite and board audiences that few technology speakers can match.
Mike Foster is a keynote speaker who speaks on artificial intelligence, innovation and leadership. Book through Executive Speakers Australia.
What a senior non-IT manager will learn:
- To give each group a high-level overview of what is happening in the world of Cyber?
- Get them to question; are they doing enough? Or do they know enough? What is your Cyber Maturity Assessment score?
- Show them the many dimensions of what is happening in cyber and that it isn’t enough to leave it with the IT team.
- To give senior executives and board members so tools/questions to ask.
- Make Governance work for you. Ensure checks and audits as to what IT, Data Management and Workforce Behavior doing what they attest to?
- Check there is compliance to cyber and security standards
-Give management their top 5 exposures to cyber and what they need to be doing to address them.
- Review the company response plan across a number of scenarios. Within your Company, Supply chain or Ecosystem.
- The importance of using AI/Automation and associated Tools to combat Cyber. The importance of having Executive Dashboards help you manage the following:
Prevention: Risk scores are generated by systems based on variables such as behavioural patterns and geolocation. Zero trust architecture i s combined with machine learning. Asset management leverages visibility using machine learning. Comply with regulations by improving discovery, classification, and p rot ection of data using machine learning. Data security and data privacy services use machine learning for data discovery.
Detection: AI, advanced machine learning, and static approaches, such as code file analysis, combine to automatically detect and analyze threats and prevent threats from spreading, assisted by threat intelligence
Response: AI /Automation helps in orchestrating security technologies for organisations to reduce the number of security agents installed, which may not talk to each other or, worse, may conflict with each other.
Recovery: AI/Automation continuously tunes based on lessons learned, such as creating security policies for improving future accuracy. AI also does not get fatigued, and it assists humans in a faster recovery
Mike is also currently leading 4-hour workshops with businesses looking to gain intel on business security.
During these sessions executives will learn about:
- What is happening in the world of Cyber.
- Get them to question; are they doing enough? Or do they know enough? What is your Cyber Maturity Assessment score?
- The many dimensions of cyber and that it isn’t enough to leave it with the IT team.
-Tools/questions to ask for senior executives and board members.
- How to make Governance work for you.
- Ensuring checks and audits for IT, Data Management and Workforce Behavior – Are they doing what they attest to?
- Checking for compliance to cyber and security standards.
- The top 5 exposures to cyber and what they need to be doing to address them.
- Reviewing the company response plan across a number of scenarios (Within the Company, Supply chain or Ecosystem).
Tell us about your event and our consultants will return a curated shortlist within one business day.
