This yeaR's Agenda

The CyberMarketingCon
2026 Agenda

Please note that session times and dates may change.

High Level Schedule: When should I arrive?
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To experience the whole conference, plan to arrive in the late morning on Sunday, November 15 and leave late afternoon on Wednesday, November 18 (or stay over to Thursday if you would like or are attending our CEO-Founder-Investor Dinner!)

Sunday - 11/15

Sunday will be a day of workshops and our opening night reception! Plan to arrive around in the late morning or early afternoon if you don't want to miss our 3 hands-on workshops, which start at 1pm CT. Opening night reception starts around 7pm CT.


Monday - 11/16

We kickoff with a keynote at 8:45am CT. Sessions, workshops, and networking throughout the day, including our GovCon Summit. We end the day with a group outing!


Tuesday - 11/17

Today we have sessions, workshops, and networking, plus our CyberCMO Summit; the day kicks off at 9am CT. Tonight we will have multiple activities and dinners.


Wednesday - 11/18

Our final keynote will kick off at 9am CT. Today we will have a three-quarters day of sessions, workshops, and our closing remarks end at 3:30pm CT. Founders, CEOs, and Investors may attend our CyberCEO Dinner at 5:30pm CT.

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8:00am
9:00pm
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Note on event times

Event times are subject to change and may not reflect the most up-to-date schedule. Please refer to the conference event app VirtualPro for the latest and most accurate times.

Sunday

Registration Desk Open!

Stop by the Registration Desk on the 2nd Floor Foyer and pick up your badge, swag bag, official conference notebook, and official conference t-shirt!

Explore the Expo Hall, the Fun Station, and join one of the workshops that we have set up on Sunday!

12:00 pm
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12:45 pm
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)
Workshop

Claude Beginner Workshop

Curious about Claude but not quite sure what to do beyond opening a chat and asking it questions? This hands-on beginner workshop is for you.

Designed specifically for cybersecurity marketers at CyberMarketingCon, this session will help you get comfortable using Claude for real marketing work — without requiring any technical or AI expertise.

We’ll cover the basics of how to work with Claude effectively, how to give it the context and direction it needs, and how to start using it across everyday workflows like research, campaign planning, content development, messaging, analysis, and more.

You’ll work through practical examples alongside other cybersecurity marketers and leave with ideas you can put to work immediately.

Bring your laptop and your corporate or personal Claude account. No AI expertise required!

1:00 pm
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2:00 pm
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)
Workshop

Claude Intermediate Workshop

Ready to move beyond one-off chats and start building repeatable AI workflows?

This hands-on workshop is designed for cybersecurity marketers at CyberMarketingCon who already use Claude and want to take the next step: turning the work you do repeatedly into reusable systems.

We’ll focus heavily on Claude Skills—what they are, when to use them, and how to build them around real cybersecurity marketing workflows. We’ll also explore more advanced ways to structure Claude around your work, connect context and resources, and create repeatable processes that can help you and your team work faster and more consistently.

Rather than spending the session perfecting individual prompts, we’ll think bigger: How do you teach Claude how you work once, then reuse that knowledge again and again?

Bring your laptop, your personal or corporate Claude account, and come ready to build!

2:10 pm
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3:00 pm
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)
Workshop

Points for Creativity: A Roller Derby Workshop for Cybersecurity Marketers

Cybersecurity marketing is defined by constraint: dense jargon, complex concepts, and audiences who demand precision. The challenge isn’t a lack of creativity; it’s finding space to play, experiment, and make ideas feel truly memorable inside those constraints. This workshop is designed as a creative reset for marketers whose brains have been on “perform under pressure” for a little too long… or those who know they are over-relying on AI for tasks that used to feel fun.

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Using the bold, irreverent naming culture of roller derby as our playground—think Penelope Bruise, Hermione Danger, Momentum Mori—we’ll explore what happens when you step away from AI and lean back pure sporting instinct. We’ll treat derby naming as a proxy for branding; names must instantly signal identity, tell a mini-story, and provoke a reaction, just like the best campaigns.

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The workshop starts with a short individual warm-up to get people out of polished marketing mode and into free thinking. Attendees will quickly jot down the words, frustrations, and ideas that feel most “stuck” or overused in their day-to-day work—terms they’re tired of, value props that feel flat, or product areas that feel impossible to make exciting. This becomes our raw material.

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From there, we’ll move into guided prompts such as:* “If this product or problem were a derby skater, what kind of troublemaker would they be?”* “If you could lean into FUD as a joke, what would you really call this thing?”Participants will then work in small teams, remixing their raw material into surprising combinations: pairing technical jargon with unexpected metaphors, fusing emotional states with security concepts, and bending industry clichés until they become something stranger and more interesting. The focus is less on “getting it right” and more on seeing how far they can stretch a concept without compromising accuracy. Teams will, for example: - Take a word from someone else’s list and combine it with their own to create a new character or brand.- Build a “family” of three related derby names that could all be features of the same product.
Additional playful constraints will push their creativity further: limiting word counts, forcing a quick pivot from serious to absurd, or asking teams to defend a ridiculous name as if it were going into a boardroom deck. Each round builds on the last, moving from silly and safe to sharper and more deliberate.

As the workshop progresses, teams will converge on a brand concept and tagline born from this chaos—something that still nods to the original cybersecurity idea but now feels alive, specific, and ideally, fun to scream out loud.

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Throughout, we’ll surface the meta-lessons: how constraints can unlock creativity instead of shutting it down, and how embracing a bit of discomfort or a “bad idea” often leads to better ones.

Attendees won’t leave with a rigid framework or a perfect campaign. They’ll leave with at least one absurd-but-delightful concept, a renewed sense of creative confidence, and a reminder that even in a jargon-heavy, high-stakes industry, there’s room to play for points.

3:15 pm
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4:15 pm
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)
Workshop

Workshop: Business Networking Pickup Lines

There will be NO NAPPING during this workshop, where everyone will stand up, talk, move around, and learn how to be a professional business “flirt.” We challenge both extroverts and introverts to come to this session and learn how to make in-person cold connections, find *the* person in the room you need to talk to, and qualify someone for a potential business relationship. Check out this video from our workshop at Cyber Marketing Con 2023. If you attended the 2023 workshop, come back again! This brand new workshop is loaded with new exercises.

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4:30 pm
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5:30 pm
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)

Opening Night Welcome Reception

CyberMarketingCon 2026 Welcome Reception: Choose Your Own Character

Every adventure starts with a character. Who will you be?

We’re kicking off CyberMarketingCon 2026 and our theme, Create Your Own Adventure, by inviting you to dress as your favorite character—from literally anything. Anything!

Here's some ideas: Indiana Jones, a medieval knight, an enterprising elf, Taylor Swift, the CISO at the last company that you sold into, Steve Jobs, Skyrim guards, a boxer, or someone entirely of your own creation.

Go all out or come as yourself (if you’re your own favorite character, that's totally fine)!

Join us to meet fellow adventurers, reconnect with friends, and get the CyberMarketingCon conference started!

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7:00 pm
-
9:30 pm
CT
Moontower Hall - Expo

Monday

Single Speaker

FedRAMP 20x GTM: How to Market “Continuous Validation” Without Selling Snake Oil

FedRAMP 20x is triggering a wave of “it’s easier now!” messaging — and it’s going to backfire.

20x doesn’t magically reduce effort; it moves the burden upstream from documentation theatre into engineering reality: continuous signals, continuous change visibility, continuous vulnerability response. That shift changes what buyers need to hear, what proof they’ll ask for, and how your marketing and sales motions should work.

In this session, I’ll break down how we’re positioning FedRAMP 20x at 38North Security to create demand without overpromising: the narrative, the content architecture, the ABM approach, and the practical GTM assets that convert “confused & stalled” teams into discovery calls.

You’ll leave with messaging frameworks, a content blueprint, and a simple way to build credibility in a market that’s drowning in hot takes.

10:00 am
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10:30 am
CT
Waterloo 4 Summit Room
Single Speaker

Behind the Booth: The Untold Stories of a Field Marketer Who Uses AI

A strategic and highly practical session that challenges how Field Marketing is evaluated in an AI-driven world; not another “AI will help marketers be more efficient” talk. Field marketing has long been misunderstood as booths, swag, and badge scans. But it’s so much more than that. This session is not about AI tools. It’s focused on what actually drives results at events and how to use AI more effectively to prove the impact field marketers can have in business outcomes. Attendees will leave knowing exactly where AI helps field marketing scale, and where human judgment is still non-negotiable. Ready to challenge lazy marketing and elevate your thinking in the field?

10:00 am
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10:30 am
CT
Waller CD General Session (Virtual Room 1)
Single Speaker

Where AI Belongs in Your Positioning

In cyber, we could say AI is like any other buzzword that has been used too broadly before (ahem, cloud security and Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)). But that would be ignoring the fact that AI IS in fact pervasive, and we are all in new territory. Sometimes it feels like we all jumped in at the same time to join the startup that is ‘AI.’ So we can’t avoid incorporating it into our positioning.

What we can do is incorporate it effectively while staying true to our own core message.

To do this, we first need to reframe our positioning process to think like a startup and form a hypothesis. Then we need to figure out your angle in the AI landscape, using real stories of other companies that have succeeded and failed at doing this. The third step is a hands-on workshop where you will build a hypothesis with those learnings in mind, ending with a clear view of where AI belongs.

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10:00 am
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10:30 am
CT
Waterloo 3 Breakout Room
Single Speaker

Make Them Laugh, Then Make Them Buy

They say the way to someone's heart is through their stomach. Well, the way to someone's wallet is through their diaphragm...

This talk is about the mechanics of humor in B2B. Why irony builds trust with skeptical buyers. Why parody signals you actually understand your market. Why self-deprecation (we named ourselves after the least effective martial art, after all...) makes people lean in instead of scroll past. And why none of it works if the product underneath is mid.

--- On OnlyScans, Toilet Paper, and Other Things That Outperformed Our Whitepaper....How Humor Took Aikido from Zero to Unicorn.

10:45 am
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11:15 am
CT
Waller EF Breakout Room (Virtual Room 3)
Panel

Our Messaging Was Outdated Before We Finished Writing It. So We Built a Living Messaging System.

Messaging moves fast, and it moves even faster in cybersecurity. We have historically accepted that our messaging houses are always a little behind. And then we scramble every time a startup launches a new security product, a new CVE reframes the conversation, an analyst report contradicts what your team has been saying in the field, or frontier model providers ship a feature that will “kill the cybersecurity market”. Even with the best version control and distribution, the document you have living in Google Drive somewhere is not enough.

Our team decided to stop trying to maintain a group of documents and build an AI-powered, living messaging system instead.

We created a Claude skill that contains our canonical positioning and messaging. It lives in GitHub as markdown files, not in Google Drive as a well-designed document. Every marketer on the team has access to it through Claude, and whether they type “/review-messaging” or just ask Claude to draft something, the skill runs to make sure what they’re working on is on message.

When messaging needs to change, which in cybersecurity is all the time, anyone can submit a messaging update request through a Slack workflow. An AI agent reviews those requests, cross-references them against the current skill files, and opens a GitHub pull request with proposed updates. A human reviews and merges it, and then the skill updates for everyone.

We'll walk through what we built, how we built it, what broke, and what we're still figuring out. One of the questions we’ll answer is “When you make it easier to change messaging, does your messaging change more often?”. And we’ll share what it actually looks like when your canonical positioning is a GitHub repo with version history instead of a slide deck that nobody updates or looks at.

10:45 am
-
11:15 am
CT
Waller AB Breakout Room (Virtual Room 2)
Workshop

3 AI tactics that make your whole company think marketing runs on magic (launch 1 on the plane home)

You don't need to be an AI expert to look like one. Three practical tactics that make your entire marketing team — and your whole company — think you've unlocked something nobody else has. Each takes under 3 hours to launch, works across your whole team, and drives real pipeline.

No coding, no AI background required.

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10:45 am
-
11:15 am
CT
Waterloo 3 Breakout Room
Workshop

Kill the AI Tells: A Practical Editing Method for Better AI-Assisted Copy

AI can get you to a first draft faster. Then comes the part that can eat up all the time you thought you saved: reviewing, revising, and trying to make it sound like something a credible human wrote. Even partially AI assisted works have many recognizable tells, including the "not X, but Y" construction, the notorious em dash saturation, vague or inflated claims, and dramatic fragments desperately trying to sound important.

Asking AI to "sound more human" doesn’t really fix the problem. The next draft may flow better but retain many of those telltale default patterns. And telling the model to “sound more human” often just produces a smoother version that still has AI fingerprints all over it.

In this fast-paced 15-minute session, you’ll see a live teardown of cybersecurity marketing copy and a practical, human-guided method for making that review process more focused and repeatable. Instead of rereading a draft and thinking, Something about this feels AI-ish, you’ll learn how to use AI to assist with the editing and concrete criteria for finding problem patterns, explaining why they weaken the copy, and proposing specific revisions for you to evaluate. All of which can strengthen even human written copy especially technical copy

The goal isn’t to eliminate every so-called AI trope. It’s to recognize when those patterns start piling up enough to undermine voice, credibility, and subject-matter expertise—and to spend your editing effort where it actually matters.

10:45 am
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11:00 am
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)
Single Speaker

How to Build Your Own Conference

You’ve sponsored the booths, planned the dinners, and walked the expo halls. But what happens when you’re the one building the entire conference? Join Gianna Whitver for a behind-the-scenes look at building CyberMarketingCon—and what cybersecurity marketers can learn from creating an event that people choose to spend their time, budget, and travel days attending.

This session goes beyond booking a venue and finding speakers. We’ll explore the decisions that shape a conference before the first ticket sells: who it’s for, why it deserves to exist, how it supports your business goals, and what will make it worth coming back to. From programming and sponsorships to ticket sales and attendee experience, Gianna will share lessons from building a conference around a specialized community.

We’ll also get into the less glamorous—but essential—work: making the budget work, setting expectations with stakeholders, deciding where to invest, and figuring out what your team can realistically deliver. And we’ll talk about the difference between putting people in the same room and helping them genuinely connect.

Whether you’re considering a customer conference, partner summit, or industry gathering, come ready to think beyond the event checklist. The goal isn’t just to put on a conference. It’s to build something your audience would miss if it didn’t exist.

10:45 am
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11:15 am
CT
Waller CD General Session (Virtual Room 1)

FAM, Freelance & Fractional Marketers Mixer

Independent doesn’t have to mean alone. This mixer brings together FAM professionals, freelancers, fractional marketers, consultants, and other independent experts working across the cybersecurity industry. Meet potential collaborators, exchange lessons from the field, and build a stronger network of people who understand the opportunities and realities of independent work.

10:45 am
-
11:30 am
CT
Mixer Space in Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)

Tuesday

Mighty Team of One Mixer

Find your people at CyberMarketingCon. Held in our dedicated lounge in the Expo Hall aka Marketing Land, these hosted mixers bring together attendees with shared roles, challenges, and interests. Your host will help spark introductions and conversation, making it easy to form meaningful connections within your corner of the cyber marketing community.

Mighty Team of One Mixer

Doing the work of an entire marketing department...often before lunch? This mixer is for solo marketers and lean-team leaders balancing strategy, execution, technology, content, campaigns, and everything in between. Connect with people who understand the challenge, swap practical ideas, and find peers you can call on long after the conference ends.

2:00 pm
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2:55 pm
CT
Mixer Space in Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)
Single Speaker

Keeping The Brand Alive After The Deal Closes

For many startups, an acquisition is seen as the finish line. But in reality, it marks the beginning of a different kind of challenge: learning how to grow inside a much larger organization without losing the qualities that made the company successful in the first place.

In this session, I will explore one of the most overlooked risks in post‑acquisition (cyber) marketing: Brand Dilution.

The conversation will also look at brand autonomy through a business lens, particularly how decisions around brand voice, digital presence, and go to market execution are often tied directly to customer engagement, pipeline performance, and revenue growth. Eighteen months after the acquisition, Cyberint still maintains parts of its own digital presence because those channels continue to generate meaningful inbound activity and business results.

The session will highlight the balance required between structure and flexibility inside large organizations and the importance of creating enough alignment to scale effectively while still giving teams the ability to move quickly, experiment, and continue doing the things that proved effective in the past.

2:55 pm
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3:20 pm
CT
Waterloo 3 Breakout Room
Single Speaker

The Cybersecurity Newsroom: How OX Security Built a Category-Defining Brand Through Earned Media

Building a recognizable brand in cybersecurity is hard. The space is noisy, buyers are skeptical of ads, and most companies end up looking and sounding the same. At OX Security, we made a deliberate bet: instead of outspending competitors, we'd out-publish them.We built an internal newsroom — a dedicated research and PR team producing original, timely cybersecurity intelligence — and used it to drive earned media coverage, establish genuine thought leadership, and grow our brand presence in ways that paid media simply can't replicate.In this session, OX CMO Idan Gol shares the strategy, the structure, and the real campaigns behind how OX went from unknown startup to a brand that journalists, analysts, and buyers actually seek out.

2:55 pm
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3:20 pm
CT
Waller EF Breakout Room (Virtual Room 3)
Single Speaker

How to win over sales

At my core, I am a product marketer. But, there is only one golden rule in my playbook and that is to win the trust of your sales team above all else.

For an enterprise buyer, the AE and the SE are the primary source of truth. When product marketing builds a deck, and the sales never uses it, it leads to fragmented and confusing messaging. The buyer sees one thing on the website and hears a different story from the seller. Fixing this alone can increase the impact to 100x.

Most product marketers tend to operate at a very high level. The sales decks they build sit in Google drive while sales builds their own versions. John -- are you using this deck from 2022??

In this talk, I will share a set of hard-earned principles that have helped me get invited to customer meetings, QBRs, EBCs and ensure sellers actually use what I build for them.

PS: This talk is not about version control on Sharepoint although we could all use a lesson on that.

2:55 pm
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3:20 pm
CT
Waller AB Breakout Room (Virtual Room 2)
Single Speaker

CMO Wins and Fails - Transforming a Cyber Marketing org with AI

As a CMO in an AI-forward cybersecurity software company, we unleashed the AI floodgates early, mandating our teams learn the tools and ramp adoption to accelerate projects and improve outcomes.

What is uninteresting is that we’re using AI: what marketer isn’t these days?

What’s perhaps more interesting is we were adopting AI while we rebranded the company, moved to a new tech stack, and accelerated our transformation from product to platform. Along the way we had some spectacular failures, as well as some meaningful contributions we could not have achieved without AI. Join the session to gain a CMO’s perspective on AI for cyber marketing across all critical marketing functions.

2:55 pm
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3:20 pm
CT
Waterloo 4 Summit Room
Speed Session

5 Moves to Strengthen Demand Performance in 30 Days

Most demand teams have what they need: content, buyer signals, measurement, sales processes, and qualification. What's hard is knowing what to prioritize to make the biggest pipeline impact.In this fast-paced session, we’ll walk through five practical ways to improve demand performance.This isn't your grandma's five-point checklist to take home and forget. You'll have receipts.As we go, you’ll size up your own demand program, choose the area you want to put to work first, and map out one change you can test over the next 30 days, including how you’ll know if it’s helping.Finally, put your instinct to the test with a five-question Demand Performance Assessment to take a closer look at your overall performance and see where you may want to focus next.

2:55 pm
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3:10 pm
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)

Wednesday

Book Your Complimentary Extras & Activities

Make the most of your CyberMarketingCon experience with these complimentary experiences. Reserve your spot in advance—or stop by to see if a walk-in time is available.

Podcast Studio

Record a podcast, interview, or video in a private, professional studio. Four microphones and an AV technician are included, so all you need to bring is your idea. Walk-ins are welcome when the studio is available.

One-on-One Expert Consultations

Get complimentary, personalized advice from experienced professionals—including cybersecurity industry analysts. Book a session to discuss marketing, channel strategy, graphic design, career strategy, your LinkedIn presence, or the cybersecurity market.

Professional Headshot

Refresh your LinkedIn photo, speaker profile, or professional bio with a polished new headshot. Visit the headshot studio in the Expo Hall, located behind the Fornix Marketing booth. Walk-ins are welcome when space is available.

Fun Station & Postcards

Add some personality to your conference badge with stickers, supplies, and badge ribbons—or write and mail a postcard to someone back home. Stop by the Fun Station in the Expo Hall aka Marketing Land whenever you’re ready for a creative break.

7:30 am
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8:15 am
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)

Registration Desk Open!

Stop by the Registration Desk on the 2nd Floor Foyer and pick up your badge, swag bag, official conference notebook, and official conference t-shirt!

8:00 am
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8:45 am
CT
Expo Hall (Moontower Hall)

Complimentary Coffee, Breakfast & Expo Hall (Marketing Land) Open!

Good morning, CyberMarketingCon! Join us at 8:00 AM for complimentary coffee and breakfast, catch up with fellow attendees, and explore the booths in the Expo Hall, aka Marketing Land!

We’ll have a set number of breakfasts ready to welcome you, available first come, first served while supplies last.

There’s plenty to explore: send a postcard from our fun station, drop in for a fresh headshot, catch content on the Expo Hall stage, or settle into a seat for networking and meetings. Come grab a bite and start the day with us!

8:00 am
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8:45 am
CT
Waller CD General Session
Keynote

Social Engineering 101: Scam Your Way Into Anything

How do you get someone to open a door, bend a rule, or trust a stranger? Magicians, con artists, and social engineers have spent generations figuring it out.

In this funny, interactive keynote, Brian Brushwood (host of Discovery's Scam School and National Geographic's Hacking the System) takes you on a fun, funny tour inside the attacker's mindset. Through stories and demonstrations, he explores how trust, urgency, authority, and familiarity can be used to steer decisions, and why smart people are still vulnerable to a convincing story.

For cybersecurity marketers, it's a look at the human behavior behind the headlines: how believable deception gets constructed, why it works, and how understanding those mechanisms can help us recognize manipulation. Expect a talk that's fun, funny, and just a little bit dangerous.

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8:45 am
-
9:15 am
CT
Waller CD General Session (Virtual Room 1)
Single Speaker

MQLs, Memes and Building a Growth Team

Most growth marketing sessions focus on channels, tools, or that magic campaign that'll solve everything. This isn't one of them.

In this session, Nicole Gates, VP of Global Growth Marketing at Varonis, shares the three things she found actually determine whether your growth team scales or stalls: the metrics you choose to optimize for, the people you hire (and why), and the culture that makes growth at the center of everything you build.

Because real growth happens when your strategy becomes shared thinking and your team can carry the vision without you in the room.

This session is for marketing leaders at every stage of building - whether you're making your first growth hire, restructuring a team that's outgrown its design, or trying to figure out why a talented team isn't producing the results the strategy promised.

9:25 am
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10:10 am
CT
Waller AB Breakout Room (Virtual Room 2)
Single Speaker

Zero to Flagship: The Campaign Architecture Behind 96% Engagement in One Quarter

In Q1 2026, CIS launched its first-ever flagship campaign, Secure by Design, and the results rewrote our marketing playbook. In one quarter: 96% engagement rate to our campaign landing page, 85% audio completion rate, 3,000+ guide downloads, 1,400+ leads, and 900k+ paid media impressions. None of it happened by accident. This session is a candid, step-by-step breakdown of how we built an integrated paid, owned, and earned campaign around a single idea and made it work for two completely different audiences simultaneously. You’ll leave with a replicable framework, the lessons we learned, and the one number that surprised us most.

9:25 am
-
10:10 am
CT
Waller EF Breakout Room (Virtual Room 3)

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