Melissa Osborne is the Head of National Security & Defence for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Australia. Based in Canberra, Melissa leads a team focused on enabling and supporting National Security and Defence customers, including partners, to embrace digital innovation and transformation projects. Melissa combines her public and private sector experience with extensive knowledge of the IT market, products and services, including cloud computing and cyber security.

 

Melissa advocates for Women in STEM/IT/Leadership, as well as the inclusion and recognition of all First Nation’s people. She is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) and the Australian Information Security Association (AISA), is an ongoing judge of the Australian Technology Competition.

 

Three years prior to joining AWS, Melissa was the Chief Technology Officer for Dell Technologies, Australia and New Zealand. As part of the leadership team, Melissa drove mid-long-term strategic pursuits, enabled customer innovation and digital transformation projects and led digital cities and digital twin initiatives. Melissa led diversity and inclusion, social impact and sustainability projects, and continued her focus on cyber security initiatives.

 

Melissa spent 24 years of her career in National Security, Intelligence, and Defence roles for the Australian Government, including the Australian Department of Defence, the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC). Prior to 2018 she was the Certification Authority for gateways, cloud services, product evaluations (such as Common Criteria), supply chain, data centre, and select export controlled technologies. Melissa has expertise in security risk and compliance across physical, personnel, and cyber security. She led the Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) which provided security assurance services for government, particularly focused on enabling cloud adoption.

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