SekuroKon 2023: Where There is Risk, There is Opportunity

On 2 November, Sekuro hosted its annual SekuroKon event at Sydney’s Iconic Luna Park.

We had nearly 500 registrations, with over 350 people turning up to hear the diverse conversations on building business and personal resilience, with the likes of customers Cisco, Canva, Aspen Medical, Toll Group, Reece Group, Morgans Financial, and Tyro Payments all sharing their insights and experience. Whether it was discussing strategies to combat new adversaries or stories of immense personal courage, the biggest takeaway of the day was the idea that where there is risk, there is opportunity.

First up, Sekuro’s CEO Noel Allnutt reminded us, in the words of Steve Jobs, “If you want to go fast – go alone! But if you want to go far – go together.” Resilience is about building your tribe and recognising you are stronger as a team.

Next, we had Sarah ‘Sharkie’ Harkness, CEO of Project Lotus. In her keynote speech, she shared her inspiring story of resilience during her years-long battle with serious illness. Sarah is living proof that resilience can be our superpower and taught us that in business, fostering personal resilience in your team will seep through the organisation.

“A culture of resilience means everyone is going to give it everything they’ve got, because they believe that together they can do anything.” – Sara ‘Sharky’ Harkness

Prashant Vadlamudi, Vice President – Head of Global Cloud Compliance at Cisco, joined us all the way from San Jose to deliver a customer keynote deep diving into how to overcome competing priorities to build global resilience.

To round out the day we heard from Jen Bewes, CEO and Chief Pilot at iJETPACK Aeronautics who overcame childhood adversity and countless roadblocks as she pursued her love of coding, eventually finding herself creating a first of its kind jetsuit.

Throughout the day we heard from various customers, partners and Sekurians, who all echoed the sentiment that we need to see adversity as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to build resilience, to innovate and to grow, as Sam Wall, Managing Consultant at Sekuro, spoke about.

He shared, “We formalise risk, we formalise recovery but we don’t formalise resilience. We do that by adding an opportunity column to our risk register.”

If we are prepared for threats, we can respond with practical, well-thought-out strategies. The last thing you want to do is panic because you’re not informed – whether that means investing in too much/the wrong tech, making poor decisions in a crisis or causing team burnout.

There are so many more interesting tips, tricks and tidbits that we want to share with you, so we’ll be developing a series of blogs with our key takeaways from various presentations and panels straight from SekuroKon ’23.

We want to thank each and every one of our speakers, partners and attendees for helping us create a buzzing, informative and relaxed community event. We would not be in the position of strength that we are today without our tribe.