Virginia Calegare
Founding Director,
Rightsec
RightSec’s founder, Virginia Calegare, is undoubtedly an ambassador for agile cyber security, driving cultural change to enable digital transformation, inform sound decision-making, and influence the C-Suite’s and Board's approach to Cyber Security. Virginia has played strategic key roles as a CISO in the Military and large enterprises in the private sector.
Formally educated in national security affairs, counterterrorism, intelligence, cyber warfare, nuclear criticality, incident response, knowledge and risk management, and possessing a deep understanding of today's cyber threat landscape, Virginia has a unique ability to safeguard organisations. Leveraging her vast experience in the Public and Private sectors, including the Defense and Critical Infrastructure, Virginia has helped organisations define and implement their cyber strategies and comply with legislation, regulations and industry standards. SABSA-certified, with extensive knowledge of Enterprise Security Architecture and security platforms, she has headed and advised Security Programs, implementing SOC, XSIAM, DLP/CASB/SASE, IDAM, Email, Cloud, and Network Security, Vulnerability Management, BCP, IR, and Training.
Virginia is RightSec’s Founding Director. The first female-founded SOC in Australia, she actively leads and inspires a team of 40% women cyber security professionals. She runs the business and is ultimately liable for all deliverables and implementations.
Through RightSec’s strategic services Virginia acts as vCISO to Government organisations and large enterprises. Together with a team of consultants, she leads the delivery of cyber security strategic adequacy assessments, implementation and audit of a range of different legislation and standards (ISO/IEC 27001, NIST CSF, ASD E8, GDPR, etc.).
Virginia is directly responsible for RightSec's incident response function and has planned and launched RightSec’s Precision AI-powered Modern SOC.
In 2024 Virginia led RightSec through the social and environmental responsibility journey achieving B-Corp certification
Finalist 2023 Australian CISO of the Year (the only female)
Finalist 2024 Women in Digital - Cyber Security Leader (ongoing voting)
Mentor to students and mature women transitioning to cyber (including neurodiverse).
RightSec’s SOC, envisioned, designed and launched by Virginia, is a finalist for 2024 “SOC provider of the year” (the only Small-Medium Business among the finalist)
Australia Cyber Awards 2023 only female finalist “CISO of the year”.
Finalist WIT Leadership Professional Technology Award 2022.
Nominated AWSN Most Outstanding Woman in IT Security 2022.
Board/ELT advisor for multiple regulatory bodies and ASX-listed companies
Guest Speaker/panel member:
Australian Cybersecurity Summit (2023) Operational Technology Security Panel
AusCert Conferences (2022, 2021, 2020)
AISA BRISSec MC (2022)
Gartner Symposium
Radio/podcasts.
Sessions
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10-Oct-2024Cloud AI Horizon Keynote TheatrePanel discussion - Cutting-edge advancements in the AI application to established industry verticals in Australia and Singapore