The CyberMarketingCon
2026 Agenda
Please note that session times and dates may change.
High Level Schedule: When should I arrive?
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.
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!
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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!
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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!

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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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!
Monday
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The State of Federal Cybersecurity Purchasing: What GTM Teams Need to Know
For cybersecurity companies selling into the federal government, understanding how agencies buy is essential to deciding where to focus your go-to-market efforts.
Hillary Coover will explore the state of federal cybersecurity purchasing, including agency priorities, budget pressures, and the procurement realities shaping buying decisions. The session will examine what these dynamics mean for cybersecurity vendors and how marketing and sales teams can better align their messaging, outreach, and planning with federal buyers’ needs.
You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of the federal buying environment, the questions to ask when evaluating opportunities, and how to set realistic expectations for pursuing business in this market.

From Scrappy to Serious: Maturing Your Startup Brand Without Losing Your Edge
You've got product-market fit, a growing pipeline, and a sales team that needs air cover yesterday. But your brand still looks like it was built on a weekend and a free Figma trial. So how do you evolve — without blowing up what made you credible in the first place?
This candid fireside conversation between a VP of Marketing who's navigated this exact journey inside a high-growth cybersecurity startup, and the founder of a brand agency that specializes in B2B tech, digs into the messy, high-stakes process of brand maturation — when to do it, how to fund it, and how to bring your skeptical executive team along for the ride.
No brand theory. No agency pitches. Just the real frameworks, hard decisions, and lessons learned that marketing leaders need to hear before they walk into that rebranding conversation.

The PLG Playbook For Early Stage Cyber Marketers
Product-led growth isn't just viable in cybersecurity, it's one of the most powerful tools available to resource-constrained teams looking to find product-market fit and build pipeline. Drawing on lessons learned from scaling Intruder to 3,000 customers with a PLG-first strategy, we'll cover how PLG accelerates demand gen and generates the kind of organic social proof that resonates in a sceptical buying environment, where the strategy genuinely falls short, and how to blend PLG with a sales-led approach as you grow. You'll leave with a practical lens for evaluating the role PLG can play in your business.

Securing Water Infrastructure: Cyber Defense Strategies for the Modern Threat Landscape
Municipal water infrastructure has become a prime target for cybercriminals, nation-state actors, and insider threats, making cybersecurity not just an IT concern, but a critical public health imperative. The 2021 Oldsmar, Florida incident, where a hacker attempted to poison a city's water supply by manipulating chemical levels remotely, and the Maroochy Shire breach that released millions of gallons of raw sewage, serve as stark reminders of what is at stake when water utilities remain unprotected.For cybersecurity professionals working on the go-to-market and business side of the industry, water utilities represent one of the most compelling and underserved market opportunities today. Thousands of municipal water systems nationwide operate with aging infrastructure, limited security budgets, and minimal OT specific expertise, creating both significant risk and significant demand for scalable, practical cybersecurity solutions.This session draws from real-world implementation experience securing water infrastructure for the City of Dallas, covering freshwater treatment plants, wastewater facilities, and flood control systems serving 3.5 million residents. Attendees will gain firsthand insight into how defense in depth strategies, including network segmentation, zero trust architecture, AI powered anomaly detection, and secure remote access, were successfully deployed across legacy operational technology environments without a single moment of unplanned downtime.Beyond the technical framework, this presentation unpacks the unique challenges of selling and marketing cybersecurity solutions to water utilities: navigating procurement cycles, communicating risk to non-technical municipal executives, and aligning solutions with regulatory mandates such as NIST SP 800-82 and ISA/IEC 62443.Whether you are crafting go-to-market strategy, building sales narratives, or developing content targeting critical infrastructure clients, this session delivers actionable intelligence to help cybersecurity organizations position their solutions effectively in one of the most important and fastest growing verticals in the industry.
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AI-Driven Security as a Competitive Advantage
AI adoption in cybersecurity is accelerating, but many organizations struggle to translate technical innovation into clear business value. Based on real-world enterprise deployments across regulated industries, this session explores how AI-driven security automation improves resilience, strengthens brand trust, and supports executive-level risk narratives.
In this session, we will examine how agentic AI frameworks in modern SOC environments affect customer confidence, operational maturity, and strategic differentiation. Attendees will gain practical insights for aligning AI-powered security initiatives with marketing, trust, and growth objectives.

When Creativity Meets Revenue: Designing Events That Perform
In this session, you'll learn how to create unforgettable event experiences that capture attention, spark meaningful conversations, and drive measurable business outcomes. Through real-world examples and practical frameworks, we'll explore how creative concepts, booth experiences, customer engagement, and content strategy can all be intentionally designed to support pipeline generation and revenue goals.
Whether you're planning a flagship conference, executive event, or customer experience, you'll walk away with actionable ideas for balancing bold creativity with data-driven decision making, proving the impact of your programs, and turning every event into a growth engine for your business.

A Time to Scale: The Competitive Advantage of Marketing Across Cultures
Let's talk about the operational reality of marketing across cultures. As cybersecurity companies grow globally, marketers must do more than simply translating messaging. They need to understand how different cultures build trust, collaborate, and come to an agreements. Drawing from years of experience leading international marketing initiatives from Norway across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas, Anne Simpson shares practical lessons on how cultural intelligence can strengthen cybersecurity marketing, global collaboration, and brand growth.
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Lunch & Free Time
Refuel, connect, and keep the energy flowing! Lunch will be served in the Expo Hall, giving you time to explore the booths, meet sponsors, catch up with new connections, and continue the search for your conference buddy.
Looking for people who share your interests? Grab a seat at one of our Birds of a Feather tables, organized around specific topics and areas of interest. It’s an easy, informal way to exchange ideas and enjoy lunch with even more folks who truly “get” your world.

Virtual Networking
Connect with fellow virtual attendees from around the world! Grab your favorite beverage, turn on your camera, and join an interactive networking session designed to make meeting new people easy.
Swap marketing ideas, discuss your favorite conference takeaways, and build lasting relationships with peers who understand the world of cybersecurity marketing and GTM.
Tuesday
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Cybersecurity Songs
I am a Keynote Singer – I perform original songs about Cybersecurity and GTM at tech conferences. I can perform one of the songs in my portfolio, or I can create a custom song specifically for the event based on a theme or message.
Here's one I custom created for Palo Alto Networks:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3kPzyweARA
Here's the AI-Based Sales Song:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yinoSpkrgoc
Here's the GenAI Security Risk Song:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOTT0BaKD98
Here's the Customer Success Song I wrote for AA-ISP:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6D9JWsEG0A
I have more on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KeynoteSinger/featured
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How to Crack the Market and Gain Momentum as a Startup
Cybersecurity startups don’t fail because of weak demand generation or field marketing. They fail because their positioning is wrong.
We’ve all seen it: a company invests heavily in messaging –whether through a top-tier agency or internal product marketing – and lands on a polished, board-approved narrative. It sounds impressive. It looks great on a pitch deck.
But look closer, and it’s often some version of “the everything platform.”
Then they launch.
Leads come in – but revenue doesn’t. Sales misses targets. Marketing is blamed – but the real issue is that the market doesn’t understand what the company actually does, or who it’s specifically for. Teams scramble to fix campaigns, channels, and conversion rates, when the real problem isn’t execution – it’s positioning.
In this session, Kate Turchin, Senior Director of Growth at Atico ATX, breaks down the most common positioning mistakes she sees across the industry – and why they quietly kill growth.
Drawing from hands-on experience helping startups translate narrative into revenue, Kate introduces the concept of the “narrative wedge”: a sharp, focused position that a company can uniquely own – and win with.
Startups don’t win by casting a wider net. They win by throwing a sharper spear.

How I Hacked the RSA Innovation Sandbox Application
Getting selected for the RSA Innovation Sandbox is the holy grail for early-stage cybersecurity startups - the exposure to customers, industry leaders, and VCs is unmatched. VCs literally treat a finalist selection as a massive validation signal.
But what do you do when you want to apply, but your company hasn't even officially launched yet? I decided to submit my company anyway - and we actually got accepted. It turns out, the "launched" requirement can be interpreted flexibly, and early startups shouldn't self-exclude over narrow technicalities. In this rapid-fire session, I am pulling back the curtain on the exact application strategy I used to sell our vision before we had a fully commercialized product.
I'll share how I structured a winning narrative that prioritized real impact over buzzwords, and how you can turn your next award submission into high-converting marketing collateral.
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How to Build a Threat Research Content Engine and Stop Publishing Into the Void
Threat research is one of the most powerful marketing assets in the industry, but it won’t go anywhere without a production engine behind it.
This session gives a behind-the-scenes look at the content engine behind Varonis Threat Labs. Discover how to translate complex threat research into narratives that enterprise audiences actually trust, that journalists actually want to cover, and that make an impact on deals. It started with world-class research and zero marketing muscle. What came next was equal parts strategy, creativity, and scale.
From editorial standards and thought leadership to CTF activations at Black Hat and DEF CON, this is a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to build a threat research brand. Attendees will leave this session with inspiration and a repeatable framework for doing it yourself.

Real-Time ABM for the CISO Who Never Fills Out a Form
The Fortune 1000 CISO is the hardest buyer in B2B to reach. They don't fill out forms, they research in stealth, and they ignore vendors by default. For a year, everything we did online at WithSecure reached exactly five of them. Then we rebuilt our account-based marketing from scratch, and in three months it reached over a hundred of them.I'll show you the machine, honestly and in detail. We watch who lands on the site, identify the account in real time, score it against our target list, and run everything through one central system in Salesforce that moves our ad budget toward the right accounts on its own, fast enough that we can start advertising to a visitor within seconds of their first visit.You'll see the architecture, the numbers, what broke, and the privacy guardrails that keep account-level tracking compliant. It's built on Salesforce, but the thinking ports to any stack.
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Run Your Marketing Department Like a Business: The Operating Rhythm of a CMO Turned CRO
Strong marketing leadership shows up in how you run the function every day: the priorities you set, the numbers you review, the meetings you lead, and the decisions you make.Missi Carmen, CMO turned CRO at Safetica, will share the operating approach she used to run Marketing as a business before her role expanded across the commercial organization. She’ll cover five practical ways marketing leaders can build a stronger operating rhythm and connect execution to business results:
- Build a weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence that keeps priorities, spending, and execution aligned.
- Run meetings and reviews that lead to decisions, not status updates.
- Focus on the numbers that matter to the business.
- Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs in a way that builds confidence with the CEO, CFO, and executive team.
- Create accountability while keeping strategy and execution connected.
This is a practical session for marketing leaders who want to operate as true business partners, not just functional leaders.
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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.
