Dr Sharif Abuadbba
Team Leader, Distributed Systems Security
Data61 CSIRO
Dr Sharif Abuadbba leads the Distributed Systems Security team at CSIRO’s Data61 and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at UNSW, Sydney, Australia. With over 14 years of cybersecurity experience, he has driven major national and international projects with partners such as the Cyber Security CRC, Home Affairs, WA DGov and NAB. His award-winning work includes SmartShield (NSW iAwards 2022), TAPE (2024 finalist), and ThreatModelling-GPT (2025 finalist), all deployed in operational environments.
Sharif focuses on key challenges such as deepfakes, misinformation, and AI-driven cyber threats, while ensuring the safe and secure adoption of technologies like AI, digital twins, and 6G, and mitigating their associated risks. He earned his PhD in computer security from RMIT University, Australia, and received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence in Technology. His cybersecurity startup, EyeCura Pty Ltd, won the Eureka Innovation Award the same year and has three products with over 10,000 users.
In 2022, he received a CSIRO Julius Career Award and the Data61 Best Performance Award, and is the winner of the 2024 Australia AI Innovator-Cybersecurity Lead Award. He has also contributed to several US cybersecurity patents during his time with the California-based technology company AgilePQ Inc as well as CSIRO’s Data61. He also serves as Associate Editor for Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, and contributes to Australian and international standards (AI Security Institutes Network, NIST, Standards Australia).